Astronomy image stacking scripts

README.md

Summary

So far I'm using an old but pro canon EOS camera and the defaults with this https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001DJ4FEE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I'm new to (astro)photography and image processing but so far things seem to be working. If you are into this and have any advice please get in touch

dependencies.sh

# I'm running fedora but these tools are available on all OSes
# Hugin: http://hugin.sourceforge.net/
# Gimp: https://www.gimp.org/
# ImageMagick: https://www.imagemagick.org
dnf install hugin
dnf install gimp
dnf install imagemagick

merge_images_toolkit.sh

# do merge_images Plus/Bumpmap/Screen etc (http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/compose/)
merge_images() {
    merge_mode="$1"
    image_pattern="$2"
    image_list=$(ls $image_pattern)
    first_image=$(echo $image_list | cut -d ' ' -f 1)
    cp $first_image temp.jpg
    for img in $image_list; do
        composite temp.jpg ${img} -compose "$merge_mode" temp.jpg
    done
    mv temp.jpg result.jpg
}

#I found that this is the best way so far to automate image cropping
simple_fuzz() {
    sensitivity=$1
    image_pattern=$2
    for img in $(ls $image_pattern); do
        convert $img -flatten -fuzz $sensitivity -trim +repage OUT_$img
    done
}

#So if you put all the images in a specific folder you can do for example
simple_fuzz 65% *.JPG
merge_images Plus OUT*.JPG

stack_images.sh

# These two simple commands merge multiple images together (it's called image stacking).

# I've found that these parameters take care of the alignment of the point of interest. 
# The out is the prefix for the resulting tiff images
# I've only tried a handful of parameters, the one I'm showing here I've found after I got 
#a big light-trail instead of the point of interest. This combination worked quite well.

# -C Auto crop the image to the area covered by all images
# -i  Optimize image center shift for all images, except for first.
align_image_stack -m -a OUT ${IMAGES} -C -i

# When the script finishes, you can combine all the stacks in one image with enfuse which comes with hugin installation

# I haven't played yet with the enfuse parameters but I'll update as soon as I find more.

enfuse --exposure-weight=0 --saturation-weight=0 --contrast-weight=1 --hard-mask --output=final_result.tif OUT*.tif

# Then you can use gimp to try some filters to further enhance the image.