Update
I threw caution to the wind and ignored the Defender warning for Astap.
After I have had literally a play with the following with a view to just being able to just calibrate.
AstroimageJ
TychoTracker
DeepSkyStacker
AIP4Windows
Astap
ASTAP seems at first to be the most user friendly for someone of my limited experience of image processing and has
a dedicated routine for flat darks which seems to be missing from the others.
I loaded some lights, flats, darks and flat darks and ran the program which seemed to work(Furthest I have got so far).
It output a pretty nice “looking” (but huge image 62Meg)
I would have liked to upload it for inspection but it’s way to big, so I have attached the text file that appeared in the window.
I assume this is the FITS header. Only concern is the opening line which states:
SIMPLE = T / file does conform to FITS standard
Which I know is a bit of a deal breaker as they have to conform. So that’s where I am. Any thoughts please?
I’m sure that the others may prove much more powerful and useful when I am a bit more advanced.
The problem for me is that the more advanced and versatile the software the more parameters there are to play with.
Thanks to everyone for useful input for future plans. I will almost certainly ask some more questions.
Kevin