ASTAP is a free stacking and astrometric solver (plate solver) program for deep sky images. It works with astronomical images in the FITS format, but can import RAW DSLR images or XISF, PGM, PPM, TIF, PNG and JPG images. It has a powerful FITS viewer and the native astrometric solver can be used by CCDCiel, NINA, APT, Voyager or SGP imaging programs to synchronize the mount based on an image taken.
The publisher has announced new features to the platform. As they note, “The first is “Track and Stack” for minor planets and comets. This new feature allows the ability to compensate for the velocity of these objects and keeping them centered in the stack. This allows improves the signal to noise ratio. The program can also extract the time and position and put them in a MPC1992 report line to check the object in the minor planet center MPCchecker. The second change is the possibility to add a SIP 3th order polynomial to the solution. This improves astrometric measurements and also improves the stitching of a mosaic.
ASTAP is a Windows based program and more information can be found here.
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