FREEWARE DOWNLOADS

In this section you will find free software solutions to control your astronomy equipment, process astronomical images and tools for scientific research. Please beware that free software does not have technical support. Every free software producer provides the program "As Is" without any warranty. Any technical issues or software glitches have to be resolved by the end-user.

All the links forward your web browser directly to every software producer website. This website does not host any free software file for distribution or reproduction. This is only for informative purposes. 

Telescope control Interface platforms

ASCOM

Integrages multiple astronomy equipment devices like mounts, focusers, astrophotography cameras and filters wheels through drivers for 3rd party full telescope control programs. It runs under Windows OS only. 

Download here. 

INDI

Offers the same functionality as ASCOM but under Linux OS enviroment. Raspberry Pi devices like Stellar Mate work with INDI interface platform. 

 Download here. 

Telescope Control Software

N.I.N.A. 

Can control Cameras,Telescopes, Filter Wheels, Focusers, Rotators, Switches and Weather Devices for fully automated imaging sequences. N.I.N.A. can be connected to image plate solving software like ASTAP and astrometry.net for the Go-to system alignment with the sky coordinates. It runs under Windows OS only. 

Download here. 

CCDciel

CCDciel has all functionality required for advanced imaging of celestial objects for fully automated unattended operation. It can control the CCD/CMOS camera, focuser, filter wheel, rotator and telescope mount and uses image resolving software such ASTAP and astrometry.net for accurate alignment alignment of the Go-to system. You can use CCDciel on Windows, macOS or Linux.

Download here. 

Celestron PWI

Telescope control software made by Celestron with the colaboration of Planewave Instruments. It can control celestron mounts and focusers for the SCT, Edge HD and RASA Telescopes. Runs under Windows OS only. Allows the user to control his mount with a gamepad or joystick. 

Download here. 

ASCOMPAD

ASCOMPAD is a free, open source application that provides the ability to control ASCOM compatible Telescope Mounts and Focusers using a standard gamepad.

Download here. 

PHD Guiding 2 

Autoguiding software used to correct tracking errors with an autoguider camera. PHD Guiding 2 is the most popular. It runs under Windows and MacOS. 

Download here. 

Plate solving software 

ASTAP

Is a free stacking and astrometric solver (plate solver) program for deep sky images. It has a powerful FITS viewer and the native astrometric solver can be used  by CCDCiel, NINA, APT or SGP imaging programs to synchronise the mount based on an image taken.

Download here. 

Planetarium  software with telescope control 

Kstars

KStars is probably the most feature-rich free astronomy software. It provides an accurate graphical simulation of the night sky, from any location on Earth, at any date and time. For the amateur astronomer, it provides an observation planner, a sky calendar tool, and an FOV editor to calculate field of view of equipment and display them. Included with KStars is Ekos astrophotography suite, a complete astrophotography solution that can control all INDI devices including numerous telescopes, CCDs, DSLRs, focusers, filters, and a lot more. It runs on Windows, MacOS and Linux. 

Download here. 

Stellarium

Stellarium is the most popular free open source planetarium software for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. Since v0.19.3 was released on 12/22/2019, it has direct ASCOM support for Telescope control plugin on Windows OS. 

Download here.

Cartes Du Ciel

Is a free planetarium software for Windows, MacOS and Linux. It can control computerized Goto telescopes mounts and is ASCOM and INDI compliant. 

Download here. 

Long Exposure Deep Sky Astrophotography processing software

Deep Sky Stacker

The most popular software for registering and stacking single frames. Runs under Windows OS only. 

Download here. 

Dark Master

 Allows astrophotographers to quickly match dark frames of different temperatures. Excellent tool for DSLR and Mirrorless Digital Cameras. 

Download here. 

GIMP

Is a cross-platform image editor available for Linux, MacOS, Windows and more operating systems. Is a free alternative to Adobe Photoshop. 

Download here. 

Sequator

Easy stacking software for stars, nightscapes and milky way shots. 

Download here. 

Fitswork

Windows image processing software. It contains batch processing, histogram functions, many filters, etc. Fitswork works entirely in floating-point arithmetic.

Download here. 

FITS Liberator 4

Is a software develoved by the colaboration of ESA/ESO/NASA and NOIRLab to process astronomical images in the FITS format. 

Download here. 

Siril 

Is free astronomical image processing sofware for calibration, stacking and enhancement of astrophotography. 

Download here. 

Regim

Includes tools like  calibration (dark and flat), deblooming, registration, combination, color calibration, gradient removal and some more.

Download here. 

CCDSharp

It performs Lucy-Richardson deconvolution sharpening on SBIG Format images. Runs under Windows only. Must be downloaded with Internet Explorer. 

Download here. 

Planetary Astrophotography processing software

Registax

Registax aligns and stacks automatically the best frames from a recorded video to overcome atmospheric turbulences. Such astrophotography technique is called "Lucky imaging". This kind of imaging is suitable for planetary astrophotography. 

Download here. 

AutoStakkert!

As Registax, it perfoms Lucky Imaging. Suitable for planetary astrophotography. 

Download here.