Saturn captured on the Celestron EdgeHD 11” with ASICap and a ZWO ASI224MC camera.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that there is a growing list of Mac planetary imaging and processing applications. There’s finally a very close equivalent to AutoStakkert on the Mac now too with Planetary System Stacker.
From the imaging standpoint we have the following:
oaCapture - always iterating and improving. But been around for some time.
Planetary Imager - very straight forward planet imager.
AstroImager - which within the last year added SER video recording for planetary imaging
FireCapture - one of the most popular planetary imagers
ZWO ASICap (part of ASIStudio and only for ZWO cameras) ASIStudio now also includes ASIStack for simple processing of planetary images.
From the stacking and processing standpoint we now have the following:
Siril - which has slowly been improving it’s planetary processing options
Planetary System Stacker - a new project that now has a stable Mac release. This is currently the most capable planet processing software on the Mac, and is getting extremely close to reproducing images on par with AutoStakkert on the PC. The user guide should be followed closely during your first attempt to use the software, it does have a slight learning curve to get the best results. This is a Python based Mac app, so installation is through the terminal. It’s not easy to set up but once you do get it up and running it’s great. UPDATE: Nick Kohrn, Mac developer, has lended a hand to this project to create a standalone launcher/installer, which makes it easier for people like me to install. No terminal necessary now. Download this instead of the above direct download. Nick’s installer will install and launch the application. First time launch is slow while it downloads and installs all the dependencies, so be patient. Subsequent launches are instant.
PixInsight - is known for DSO image processing, but has some capable tools for processing planets, seek out tutorials for how to do this if you already own the software. Otherwise look to one of the other options.
Linkeos - this software has been around for some time, but does not offer point alignment of parts of the planet to overcome seeing effects, it only does global alignment. So while it can stack and process an image, it will not get you fantastic results.
Seven single images processed separately, then combined in Photoshop to make an animated GIF. This was shot on my EdgeHD 11” telescope with ASICap and the ZWO ASI224MC camera.