Best Windows Software for Stacking Astro-landscape Images from Meteor Shower

nighthiker said:

Hi!

I'm not aware of any software which will stack and keep meteors visible as the intention of stacking is to remove single events like a meteor (or a satellite, random noise, ...). The usual way is to manually re-rotate the meteor image into the 'correct' location (easier if you used a tracker) and 'copy' the meteor via 'brighten' and a mask onto the base image. Of course you can improve the s/n of the base image by stacking first.

So if you are on a budget: Sequator for stacking and Gimp for the rest.

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wollumeg said:

I was lucky enough to have fairly clear skies where I live for the past two nights to capture the Geminid meteor shower. I have a windows machine and currently have perpetual licenses for DXO PL4, Capture One, Zerene Stacker (Use for macro) and Luminar 4. I have 1700-1900 images from each night that I can use to stack. I would like to stack images to reduce noise and also would be a great if the software would allow for a composite to be made of all the meteors I captured from each night.

What is the best software to use for this? Ideally, it would be great if it were free (i.e. not Lightroom/photoshop). I have heard god things about Sequator and that is really the only option i know of.

Click to expand...

1. Pick a single exposure (photo) that looks the best and can fit all the captured meteors within its field of view. This exposure doesn't need to contain a meteor, it will become the "background" image.
2. For every photo with a meteor therein, zoom in to pixel level and carefully use the selection tool to select the entire meteor. I usually give it a 1 pixel dither setting to help blend the edges.
3. With the meteor selected right-click and select Copy to New Layer option. This will separate the meteor into its own layer. Save this file.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each meteor.
5. Open the image which will be your background image and keep it as the bottom layer in the file. Copy each of the individual meteor layers and paste them into layers above the background image.
6. For each meteor layer, drag and/or rotate it into the position it was in in its original image.
7. You can now post process each individual layer (background and meteors) to taste, then save the image.
8. Export the image to a JPEG or PNG for posting on the internet, if you want, but keep the post process file for future edits.