Siril

Siril is an application that was developed in order to provide amateur astronomers and those who photograph the night skies with a set of features that can perform astrophotography image processing.

Its functionality is based on image-processing algorithms that are fully capable of editing deep sky photographs. This feat is attained through its special feature that detects and registers stars in images. Two main methods, based on Discrete Fourier Transformations and Point Spread Functions, will perform a fully automatic detection process.

Manual alignment is also provided, and this means that users who input images of lesser quality, which fail to be corrected automatically, can still salvage them and perform the adjustment themselves.

Some of its main characteristics will enable one to use operations such as conversion, stacking, alignment or even enhancing.

The primary internal working image format supported by Siril is FITS, 16-bit unsigned. Nevertheless, those who have imagery into other formats can rest assured, as the application does come packed with a dedicated converter that will help them input their images.

Although Siril supports 32-bit images, which are the common practice among astrophotographers, loading such data will tamper with its quality and yield undesired results in terms of final accuracy.