I was hoping to get my telescope aligned and trained and PEC train and smart-mount trained and all that without spending hours outside in the cold. I already made a cable to upgrade the software on my LX200GPS, and I own a Celestron Neximage, so now I just need autoguide software (I assume).

Anyone have any favorites they'd like to suggest?

Thanks in advance

phd used to be free if it isn't still free. It's also easy to use and setup.

I generally don't use autoguiding software because I have to setup and take down, usually on the same night. There's just too much setup involved in adding the autoguider to the mix.

Consequently, I have to go with shorter exposures, more like 5 seconds to 30 or 60 seconds. I then combine them to achieve the usual long exposures.

Often, I have klunkers that have some motion which must be tossed. Also, when there's an aircraft going past or a bump to the tripod, I don't lose many minutes with ruined images. Finally, I don't have any overfull bin artifacts on brighter stars to worry over.

The downside is it takes even more exposure time to achieve the same quality as a single image would.

What software do you use to combine images?

I use a program called PanoramaPlus3, by Serif. It's $25.

If you'd prefer the free route, there's the one that's included with all Canon cameras. I think it's called PhotoStitch. Another free utility, Autostitch, calls itself "the world's first fully automatic 2D image stitcher." I found the results pretty good, and it's probably the source code which the other programs are using for their paid products. But Autostitch final resolutions stunk, and it was slow. That's why I upgraded to PanoramaPlus3.

This page lists a lot more tools, both free and the not so free.

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If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

I meant what software do people use to add multiple images together into one brighter image, not to make panoramic images. Registax doesn't seem to do this, it just averages a ton of dim images into one dim image.

Actually averaging images is what you want as it gives the greatest signal to noise ratio you can get. Though Registar is used for combining photos of various image scales and for making mosaics. It also can stack images with differing distortions.

But for general stacking a program such as Deep Sky Stacker (free) would be good. It offers several sigma reject combines that gets rid of satellites, airplanes etc. But it also gets rid of asteroids which I like so I rarely use it unless there's no other way to rid my image of some pesky moving object. So I use averaging as my normal combine. Most camera's come with stacking software that will do the big three; average, median and add. Many are now including a sigma reject routine as well. Median is similar to a Sigma routine though usually pays a slight noise penalty. It is best used for flats and darks however. That way transient noise is rejected from say a cosmic ray hit or a power line glitch.

I do most of my stacking using averaging in CCDSoft which came with the camera. I have a stand alone free sigma reject program for those few times I use it Got it so long ago I can't recall the name but today I'd likely get Deep Sky Stacker for that purpose, it gives a bit more control or appears to anyway.

Adding actually doesn't help any as to brightness over averaging when you process the image properly. Both give the same signal to noise ratio. Adding does help when combining photos of short and long duration to bring out detail in very bright areas that is burned in the longer exposures. Otherwise it just adds the noise and the signal for the same ratio as you get when averaging. Noise goes down with the square root of time so that a 60 minute shot (either one long one or several short ones) will have about 2.5x better signal to noise ratio and thus appear 2.5 times brighter than a 10 minute one. You'd get the same result with adding the images. As the noise would now be strong in the picture so you end up the same place once it is processed down to where you don't see it any more. With the averaged stack you just brighten the image to where the noise starts to show instead of dimming it. Result is the same, you meet in the middle. Curves then allow you to brighten the noise free parts to increase contrast and give the image some zing.

I've oversimplified things but get such a program and try it for yourself.

Rick