Astrophotography Lab (APLab) is a free program intended for anyone interested in astrophotography. It has two main purposes:
- Interpreting data extracted from your astrophotos to produce useful information.
- Using this information as a help for further improving your imaging results.
The program consists of four main tools: an analyser tool, a calculator tool, a simulator tool and a plotting tool. The tools are connected, allowing you to transfer information between them, and easily go all the way from measuring your camera's sensor to finding the optimal settings for your next imaging session.
APLab supports a wide range of CCD and DSLR cameras and telescopes by default, and you can easily add the necessary information for your own equipment.
Check out the home page (linked to below) for more information and download links.
Features
- Automatically estimate the optimal ISO and exposure time for the object you want to image.
- Automatically calculate gain, read noise, full-well capacity and other sensor characteristics of your camera.
- Calculate the signal-to-noise ratio, skyglow, dynamic range etc. simply by selecting areas of an image.
- Find out how camera settings and imaging conditions will affect your images by plotting graphs or simulating a synthetic image.
- Measure the field of view or angular distances in your image.
- Get useful information about your camera, optics, image and imaging conditions.
Project Samples
