Polishing up your astro images

In-phone apps and advanced programs to hone your smartphone shots

In astrophotography the image captured by the camera is rarely the final version and you’ll no doubt want to tweak pictures you’ve snapped with your smartphone too. You can of course bring your shots into your chosen image editor on your computer for sharpening, levels and curves adjustments and colour balancing, but there are also apps such as Snapseed and Adobe Lightroom CC which let you make tweaks on your device.

For more advanced work such as noise reduction – often needed with smartphone images – a program like Photoshop or GIMP on your computer is the tool to go for. If you intend to make a mosaic of the lunar surface, using multiple overlapping shots captured with your phone looking down the eyepiece of a scope, you’ll need a layersbased image editor like this.

To create such a lunar mosaic, first import all of the phone images into a new file as separate layers. Drag each image around, repositioning and rotating them where necessary so that they are aligned. Temporarily setting the ‘blend mode’ to ‘difference’ between individual layers can sometimes help you hone in on the correct orientation. Erase any hard edges or frame boundaries using a soft-edged eraser tool and then ‘flatten’ the image to create a final

Photoshop is one of the most versatile programs for enhancing your smartphone pictures

picture that can be adjusted further if needed.

When imaging the bright planets afocally with a phone and telescope, you may get better results if you capture a short video of the planet through the eyepiece. This video file can be brought into the software PIPP and turned into an AVI file. This AVI video file can then be analysed and processed by software such as RegiStax or AutoStakkert! to create a sharper, more detailed, final image.