Astrophotography Software For Mac Os X
What are the essential Mac apps for the backyard astronomer? In this article, I've listed some of the most notable OS X apps that round out a complete technical package for the amateur astronomer.
It's been a good three years now since I swapped my HP laptop for a Macbook Pro. In the mean time, I've started doing a bit more astrophotography and of course the change of operating system has affected the tools I use to obtain and process photos.
Amateur astronomers have traditionally mostly used Windows, so there are a lot of Windows tools, both freeware and payware, to help. I used to run the freeware ones in Wine on Ubuntu with varying levels of success.
When I first got the Mac, I had a lot of trouble getting Wine to run reliably and eventually ended up doing my alignment and processing manually in The Gimp. However, that's time consuming and rather fiddly and limited to stacking static exposures.
However, I've recently started finding quite a bit of Mac OS based astrophotography software. I don't know if that means it's all fairly new or whether my Google skills failed me over the past years :-)
Software
I thought I'd document what I use, in the hope that I can save others who want to use their Macs some searching.
Some are Windows software, but run OK on Mac OS X. You can turn them into normal double click applications using a utility called WineSkin Winery.
Obtaining data from video camera:
- oaCapture (MacOS X, free)
- AstroImager (Mac OS X, payware, free trial)
Format-converting video data:
Aircrack-ng for os x. You should always start by confirming that your wireless card can inject packets. This can be done by using the injection test. Enjoy!It focuses on different areas of WiFi security:. Monitoring: Packet capture and export of data to text files for further processing by third-party tools.
- Handbrake (Mac OS X, free, open source)
Processing video data:
- AutoStakkert! (Windows + Wine, free for non-commercial use, donationware)
Obtaining data from DSLR:
- AstroDSLR (Mac OS X, payware, free trial)
Processing and stacking DSLR files and post-processing video stacks:
- RegiStax (Windows + Wine, free)
- Nebulosity (Mac OS X, payware, free trial)
Post-processing:
- The Gimp (Max OS X, free, open source)
Telescope guiding:
- AstroGuider (Mac OS X, payware, free trial)
- PHD2 (Mac OS X, free, open source)
Hardware
A few weeks ago I bought a ZWO ASI120MC-S astro camera, as that was on sale and listed by Nebulosity as supported by OSX. Until then I'd messed around with a hacked up Logitech webcam, which seemed to only be supported by the Photo Booth app.
I've not done any guiding yet (I need a way to mount the guide scope on the main scope - d'oh) but the camera works well with Nebulosity 4 and oaCapture. I'm looking forward to being able to grab Jupiter with it in a month or so and Saturn and Mars later this year.
The image to the right is a stack of 24x5 second unguided exposures of the trapezium in M42. Not too bad for a quick test on a half-moon night.
Settings
I've been fiddling with Nebulosity abit, to try and get it to stack the RAW images from my Nikon D750 as colour. I found a conversion matrix that was supposed to be decent, but as it turns out that made all images far too blue.
The current matrix I use is listed below. If you find a better one, please let me know.
| R | G | B | |
|---|---|---|---|
| R | 0.50 | 0.00 | 1.00 |
| G | 0.00 | 1.00 | 0.00 |
| B | 1.00 | 0.00 | 0.50 |
DSLR Shutter
DSLR Shutter is designed to be a simple tool to capture long-exposure images from digital SLR cameras using their 'bulb' setting. It allows you to specify the number of frames, their duration, and various delays to act as a software interval timer for your camera. It is a cross-platform application with both Windows and OS X versions (Universal Binary for 10.4 and 10.5 - may work in 10.3.9), supporting both the ShoeString Astronomy DSUSB adapter, serial port, and parallel port triggering (parallel port on Windows only).
Best of all, DSLR Shutter is distributed here as freeware (and will stay as such). If you use DSLR Shutter, enjoy it, and wish to make a donation to help support it, its development, and the development of similar products, you can use the button below. All donations are greatly appreciated.
Features
- Simple, clean interface
- Any number of exposures or exposure duration
- Initial delay prior to sequence start
- Delay prior to each image (e.g., mirror lockup stabilization)
- Delay after each image (e.g. for writing image data)
- Optional Mirror-lock signal
- Continual status showing what step is being done and how many exposures have been collected
- Countdown timer showing total time remaining
- Support for ShoeString Astronomy's DSUSB/DSUSB2 adapter (Windows and OS X)
- Support for serial port triggers via the RTS data line (Window and OS X)
- Support for parallel port triggers via the D0 or D1 (pin 2 or pin 3) lines (Windows)
- Support for Hap Griffin's IR-based Nikon serial port adapters (Windows)
- Support for Pierro-Astro's EOS long-exposure adapter
- FREE
Recent Updates
v1.10- Updated DSUSB DLL and support for DSUSB2
- Connect dialog lists last-used adapter
- Abort button bug fix
1.8 (2/22/08)
- Fixes to AF mode to work with mirror-lockup
- Fixes on Macs for newer DSUSB adapters
- Saves AF mode across sessions
- Pressing Start during a capture no longer causes problems
v1.7 (2/1/08)
- Control over auto-focus (AF) pin added with settings for None, only at the start, and held open during the whole exposure. This last mode is required for newer Nikon cameras.
- Bug fixed for using Pin 3 on parallel ports
1.6 (11/9/07)
- Mirror lockup pulse lengthened
- Text entry fields widened
- Leopard support.
v1.5
- Maximum values for each field increased to 9999 to allow for longer exposures, greater # of images, etc.
v1.4
- (1.4a) Fixed bug in parallel port pin 2 use
- Fixed display in Windows for users with screens set to higher DPIs
- Fixed timing drift that would slightly lengthen exposures
v1.3
- Serial port triggers added to Mac OS X version. Common (and inexpensive) Prolific USB->Serial adapters verified along with Keyspan adapter
- COM 5-8 added as choices on PCs
- Pin 3 (aka D1) option added for parallel ports
- Final fix of signal logic for Hap Griffin's IR-based adapters
v1.2b
Free Software For Mac Os
- Adjustment of timing for IR-based adapters
- Dialog at startup indicates that the default is to connect to a DSUSB and, when not present, to prompt the user for a parallel / serial port
Best Astrophotography Software
v1.2Dslr Astrophotography Software For Mac Os X
- Scripting of captures added
- Logo now red during sequence capture
v1.1
- Mirror-lockup control added (signal sent at start of 'Before Frame' delay)
- Mouse-over tooltips added
- Parallel port support added (Windows)
- Support for Hap Griffin's IR-based Nikon serial port adapters (Windows only)