Star Alignment

Abstract

Registering one astronomical image to another can be required for many reasons. As the ultimate goal is to digitally combine the signal of individual exposures into a single master frame, the features of the subjects in the individual exposures must lay atop their counterparts in the other images with sub-pixel accuracy, before they’re integrated. In the absence of stars—such as in lunar, solar, or planetary imaging, a correlation of surface features must be performed, something PixInsight plans to address in the near future. Imagers of these objects should look to programs such as AutoStakkert! 2 or Registax for this purpose. While PI is primarily concerned with deep-sky objects, it does currently address comet alignment, which will be profiled in Part IV of the book (Chap. 29).