“Need hardware and capture-train setup? → Astrophotography Gear, Capture & Observatories”

“Need object IDs and catalogs for annotation? → Targets, Catalogs & Databases”

Calculators

Astronomy.Tools - Great collection of calculators for determining the field of view, image scale, camera/scope suitability, etc.

Citizen Science Projects

Galaxy Zoo – Help astronomers classify galaxy shapes in millions of telescope images to study how galaxies form and evolve. 

Planet Hunters TESS – Scan light-curve plots from NASA’s TESS mission to spot the tiny dips that reveal new exoplanets. 

NASA Exoplanet Watch – Use your own small telescope or download public data to refine exoplanet transit timings and add to NASA’s archive. 

Aurorasaurus – Report and verify real-time aurora sightings to improve space-weather models and receive alerts when the lights might appear. 

Globe at Night – Measure sky brightness by comparing star charts and submit readings that map global light-pollution trends over time. 

AAVSO – Variable Star Observing – Join a century-old network of observers who track brightness changes in variable stars for professional research. 

Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 – Blink WISE infrared images to discover overlooked brown dwarfs and perhaps a new outer-solar-system planet. 

Disk Detective – Identify dusty debris and protoplanetary disks around nearby stars, helping astronomers find newborn planetary systems. 

Radio JOVE – Build a simple radio telescope to monitor Jupiter and solar bursts, contribute data, and learn hands-on radio astronomy. 

SETI@home – Donate idle computer time to analyze radio-telescope data in the search for possible extraterrestrial signals (now in hibernation but still a landmark citizen-science model). 

Platesolving

Astrometry.net (Web Upload) – Upload an image and get an automatic WCS solution with object IDs.

ASTAP – Free, super-fast local plate solver and image-analysis toolkit.

PlaneWave – PlateSolve2 Download – Lightweight stand-alone solver used by many imaging suites.

Software

Planetarium Software

Stellarium (Desktop) – free and open-source planetarium software for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Cartes du Ciel / SkyChart – free planetarium with advanced chart-printing and telescope-control features.

Kstars - KStars is a free and open-source astronomy software that simulates the night sky. It's a versatile tool for students, educators, amateur astronomers, and astronomy enthusiasts. KStars accurately simulates the sky, including planets, stars, deep-sky objects, comets, and asteroids. It also offers features like adjustable simulation speeds, observation planning, and astrophotography control. Thanks to Dave Kreiton for suggesting this!

Sky Safari - This is a premium software item for the Mac universe - primarily running on IOS, but the recent high end offerings can also be run on MacOS. I’ve never used this, but it seems to have a lot of interesting features and upgrade options. (Thanks to Rich Csenge for bringing this to my attention!)

Guiding Software

PHD2 Guiding – The standard open-source auto-guiding application: easy “Push-Here-Dummy” workflow. The gold standard of guiding software. It does it all, and does it well. Free!

Sequence Control Software

Astro Photography Tool (APT) – Affordable, user-friendly capture automation suite (Windows). This was my first sequence control package. Easy to learn. Demo available but this is premium software but with a very reasonable price.

N.I.N.A. – Nighttime Imaging ‘N’ Astronomy – Powerful open-source imaging sequencer with plug-in ecosystem. An amazing and very cable sequence control suite with plug-in capabilities that bring a large set of expanded capabilities to it. This is Open Source software with no fees. I am late coming to NINA, but I can tell you that I have found it very powerful and pretty easy to learn to use. Frankly - I am now sure why I would spend money on other software with this being available - but that is just my opinion.

Sequence Generator Pro – Feature-rich commercial capture suite popular with deep-sky imagers. Most of my images were captured with this software. This is premium software with a yearly license fee.

Voyager – Premium automation software noted for rock-solid reliability and advanced scripting.

Kstars - KStars is a free and open-source astronomy software that simulates the night sky. It's a versatile tool for students, educators, amateur astronomers, and astronomy enthusiasts. KStars accurately simulates the sky, including planets, stars, deep-sky objects, comets, and asteroids. It also offers features like adjustable simulation speeds, observation planning, and astrophotography control. Thanks to Dave Kreiton for suggesting this!

Pixinsight Image Processing

Pixinsights’s Channel in YouTube. A great set of introductory videos for Pixinsight.

Pixinsight Part 1 of 12  total beginners tutorial. Mitch's Youtube Tutorial Series - a GREAT place to start your Pixinsight journey

https://tinyurl.com/t7z2k7cn - An amazon link to Warren Keller’s Book “Inside Pixinsight”

https://thecoldestnights.com/2020/06/pixinsight-dynamic-narrowband-combinations-with-pixelmath/ - some nice stuff on band

blending and mixing

https://www.youtube.com/c/adamblock - Adam Block’s free Youtube Channel. Adam’s stuff is the best in my opinion.

https://www.adamblockstudios.com/ - This is Adam Block's premium Pixinsight instruction service. VERY pricey - but worth it if you really want to get a better understanding of how to use Pixinsight well.

Cosgrove’s Cosmos 2-Minute Tutorials Series on Youtube. This is a series of short video (ok not quite 2 minutes - some go longer!) that take one apsect of Pixinsight and focuses a short practical tutorial on it. A more organized and curated view of this series can be seen on this website HERE.

https://www.youtube.com/@anotherastrochannel2173 - This is Bill Blanshan’s channel - he creates great Pixinsight Scripts.

https://www.youtube.com/@rrcroman - Russel Croman’s Channel - cerator of great AI software!

Deconvolution

https://astrodoc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Sky-and-Telescope-July-2017-Deconvolution-article.pdf - A well-written article by Ron Brecher on the use of deconvolution, which appeared in Sky & Telescope

https://jonrista.com/the-astrophotographers-guide/pixinsights/proper-use-of-regularized-richardson-lucy-deconvolution/ - A really useful article written by Jon Rista, where he describes the use of Wavelet Regularization to handle noise rather than an object mask: 

https://cosgrovescosmos.com/tips-n-techniques/using-deconvolutioninpixinsight-part1-introduction - My own article on the use of Deconvolution - a series in 7 parts

https://www.pixinsight.com/examples/M81M82/index.html - written by Juan Conejero of Pixinsight, offering a Deconvolution and Noise Control Example with M81/82.

Image-Processing Software (Beyond PixInsight)

Siril – Free, cross-platform deep-sky workflow suite (calibration → stacking → stretching) with new AI-assisted color calibration and star removal tools. 

DeepSkyStacker – Classic Windows freeware that excels at registering and stacking long-exposure deep-sky frames, flats, darks, and bias files. 

Astro Pixel Processor (APP) – Commercial but widely used all-in-one package noted for easy mosaic creation, advanced gradient reduction, and excellent multi-band blending. 

StarTools – Signal-tracking image processor that lets you push noise levels safely; includes modules for wipe-gradients, deconvolution, and vivid star mask editing. 

Sequator – Lightweight, free Windows app for aligning and stacking DSLR night-scape frames without an equatorial mount, ideal for Milky Way shooters. 

RegiStax 6 – Popular planetary/solar stacking + wavelet-sharpening program that squeezes detail out of lucky-imaging video sequences. 

AutoStakkert! – Fast, sub-pixel accurate alignment/stacker for planetary and lunar videos; pairs perfectly with RegiStax for final sharpening. 

GIMP Astrophotography Tutorial (YouTube) – Step-by-step video showing a full deep-sky processing workflow in the free, open-source GIMP editor. 

Affinity Photo Astro Workflow Guide – Community thread + video links demonstrating stacking, gradient removal, and star-shaping in Affinity Photo. 

Photoshop Astronomy Tools Action Set (Video Overview) – 15-minute walk-through of the popular one-click action bundle that automates star shrink, noise reduction, and H-alpha boost in Adobe Photoshop. 

Topaz DeNoise AI for Astro – Article reviewing strengths and pitfalls of AI-driven noise reduction/sharpening on nebula and galaxy images. 

BlurXTerminator – AI-powered deconvolution plug-in for PixInsight that sharpens and corrects optical/atmospheric blur without inventing detail. 

NoiseXTerminator – Fast neural-network noise reducer for PixInsight & Photoshop, trained exclusively on deep-sky data to preserve faint structures while smoothing background noise. 

StarXTerminator – AI star-removal tool (PixInsight, Photoshop, Affinity) that separates stars from nebulae/galaxies for independent processing or star-less compositions. 

GraXpert – Free, open-source tool that uses AI to eliminate gradients/vignetting from astro images; works stand-alone or as a PixInsight companion. 

“Need hardware and capture-train setup? → Astrophotography Gear, Capture & Observatories”

“Need object IDs and catalogs for annotation? → Targets, Catalogs & Databases”