Softwares for Amateur Astronomers -- Bangalore Astronomical Society (old pages)

Skychart / Cartes Du Ciel program enables you to draw sky charts, making use of the data in 16 catalogs of stars and nebulae. In addition the position of planets, asteroids and comets are shown.

The purpose of this program is to prepare different sky maps for a particular observation. A large number of parameters help you to choose specifically or automatically which catalogs to use, the colour and the dimension of stars and nebulae, the representation of planets, the display of labels and coordinate grids, the superposition of pictures, the condition of visibility and more. All these features make this celestial atlas more complete than a conventional planetarium.

KStars is a Desktop Planetarium for KDE. It provides an accurate graphical simulation of the night sky, from any location on Earth, at any date and time. The display includes upto 100 million stars, 13,000 deep-sky objects,all 8 planets, the Sun and Moon, and thousands of comets and asteroids.

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.

It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.

http://www.stellarium.org/

Aladin is an interactive software sky atlas allowing the user to visualize digitized astronomical images, superimpose entries from astronomical catalogues or databases, and interactively access related data and information from the Simbad database, the VizieR service and other archives for all known sources in the field (see available data).

MaxIm DL provides complete integration of all observatory functions in a single package. It directly controls CCD cameras, filter wheels, autoguiders, telescopes, focusers, rotators, and domes.

MaxIm DL includes extensive image processing and analysis capabilities, including filters, deconvolution, color processing, alignment and stacking, photometry, astrometry, and much more.

ImagesPlus is a software that supports and compliments digital SLR imaging through the telescope from start to finish. It has two components which can be purchased separately. One for Camera Control and another for Image Processing.

BackyardEOS was created on the basis of simplicity without compromising on the features you need. It is designed and developed by amateur backyard astronomers just like you.

APT - Astro Photography Tool is an application that allows controlling Canon EOS cameras and is completely designed with astro imaging in mind. It is developed from astro photographers for astro photographers. The focus of this tool is to automate the control of your camera, to help in almost all stages of your imaging session, to preserve the dark adaptation of your eyes and to bring all this packed in flexible and easy to use form. Also important part is the possibility to plan and prepare your imaging session before you go out in the field. Currently APT works only on MS Windows.

This software writes short movies with your digital DSLR camera Canon (R) directly to computer. The camera must have LiveView feature to work, like in Canon EOS 450D for example. The Program has preview, Av, Tv and WB control.

Free software for alignment/stacking/processing of images. Especially useful for stacking planetary images/videos.

DeepSkyStacker is a freeware for astrophotographers that simplifies all the pre-processing steps of deep sky pictures.

After a shooting night you give all your pictures (light frames, darks frames, offset/bias frames, flat frames) to DeepSkyStacker and you go to bed. The next morning (or is it afternoon?) you can see the result and start post-processing.