Astronomy Linux with AstroDMx Capture

There is a distribution of Linux called 'Astronomy Linux'. It is based on Ubuntu and comes with a number of astronomical packages pre-installed. Our software, AstroDMx Capture for Linux is one of the pre-installed programs. Running AstroDMx Capture in Astronomy Linux still allows you to check for newer versions of AstroDMx Capture and download/install a newer version if required. At the time of writing, the latest version is pre-installed.
Being based on Ubuntu, Gnome 3 is the desktop environment provided with the Astronomy Linux.

Screenshot of Astronomy Linux showing some of the pre-installed software, including AstroDMx Capture for Linux.

Both the standard and debug versions of AstroDMx Capture can be seen on the first page.

Astronomy Linux is being actively maintained and may be the way to move to Linux from another OS and have many astronomy programs immediately available to use.

M27 with a tethered Canon 4000D and AstroDMx Capture for Linux

Nicola has been working on three versions of AstroDMx Capture: the Linux, macOS and Raspberry Pi (Pi versions 3B and 4B). This has involved building new tool-chains to enable the efficient compiling of the software. A test was performed on the night of July 5-6th.

A Canon 400D DSLR (with a 14 bit ADC) was directly mounted to an f/5, 150mm Newtonian and USB-tethered to a Fedora Linux laptop running the latest development version of Nicola's AstroDMx Capture for Linux. The software completely controls the functions of the DSLR. 30 x 60s exposures were captured of M27 along with 5 matching dark-frames.

The best 27 images were stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and the resulting image was post processed in The Gimp 2.10 and Affinity Photo and FastStone.

IR photograph of Nicola Gathering data on M27 with AstroDMx Capture for Linux and a Fedora laptop.

The Dumbbell Nebula, M27

The software is approaching a new release with more features, particularly DSLR support and hardware acceleration.