Astronomers who routinely use Linux, frequently make use of a mix of Windows and Linux software to achieve their results.
AstroDMx Capture is an image capture program developed by Nicola Mackin that has versions for Linux (including the Raspberry Pi), macOS and Windows. This is the software that we use to capture SER files of planetary, solar and lunar data. It is also the software that we use to capture FITS and TIF long-exposure data of deep-sky objects. AstroDMx Capture was originally developed to provide stable and fast image capture for Linux, but has since been developed into a platform-independent program that is under constant development and refinement.
After the capture of a SER file for example, it can be stacked in Autostakkert! or sometimes Registax 5.1 running at native speeds in the Windows compatibility layer Wine. the name 'Wine' is a recursive acronym for 'Wine Is Not an Emulator'. No emulation or virtualisation is involved. What happens is that software calls to the Windows API are translated on the fly into POSIX calls (the system of compatibility for all UNIX and UNIX like operating systems) which are then executed by the POSIX compliant operating system (in this case Linux). Wine is very good and is improving all the time as it continues to be developed. However, not every Windows program will run easily in Wine.
One example of a Windows program that is difficult to get to run in Wine is Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor), an image stitching program second to none, that can be used to mosaic overlapping image panels, seamlessly into a larger composite image. It was a free offering from Microsoft for many years, but has now been withdrawn for no apparent reason, and with no replacement. Unless you already have it downloaded, the latest version of ICE is unobtainable. An earlier version of Microsoft Image Composite Editor 1.4.4 is at the time of writing, still downloadable from oldversion.com. Arguably, this was a nicer version of the software in that it was not replete with adverts. It is not straightforward to get this software to run in Wine and involves the construction of a Wine 'vat' or 'bottle' to contain everything that is needed.
Windows programs such as Registax 5.1 and Iris run well in Wine and can be used for wavelet processing of a solar, lunar or planetary image after stacking. For some reason Registax 6 does not always run properly in Wine.
Post processing can be done in the Gimp, a cross platform image processor that contains most of the functionality of Photoshop plus a plethora of plugins that increase its power.
For this demonstration we shall use the raw H-alpha data from May 14th and White light data from May 17th.
Everything can be done with native Linux applications
A Solarmax II 60, BF15 H-alpha scope was mounted on an iOptron Cube Pro AZ mount. An SV305M Pro monochrome CMOS camera was placed at the focus and AstroDMx Capture for Linux was used to capture two overlapping 2000-frame SER files of the solar disk.
Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture for Linux capturing H-alpha solar data for one image pane
A Panasonic DMC-FZ72 Bridge camera with 60 x optical zoom and fitted with a Baader solar filter was placed on a static, sturdy tripod and 131 images of the Sun were captured.
The images were precisely cropped in AstroCrop to facilitate their eventual stacking.
Selecting the region to precisely crop in all of the images
The images were then registered in Siril and the best 125 images were stacked
The resulting image was then wavelet processed and then deconvolved in Siril as previously shown, to sharpen it
