AkastroidAkash Astroverse
The astrophotographerwho built the software.
Akastroid was not written by a company. It was written by Akash Aggarwal, who shoots under the same skies you do and films it on Akash Astroverse.
The channel and the software are the same project
Most astrophotography software is made by people who do not shoot with it. Akastroid is the other way round: the channel came first, the frustration came from processing real nights of data, and the application is what that turned into.
That shows up in specific places. The processing runs entirely on your own computer, because an observatory with no signal is a normal place to work. The free tier is a real one rather than a countdown, because a trial that expires while it is cloudy is useless. And every number this software reports is measured rather than asserted — which is also why the comparison pages here say where Akastroid loses.
Tested on his own captures
The regression suite that gates every release is built from real data, not synthetic images: Orion and the Pleiades on a DSLR, M31, the Leo Triplet, Saturn and Jupiter on a planetary camera, the Moon at 4K. When a fix is claimed, it is claimed because those captures measured better — and when a change measures worse, it does not ship, however good the idea was.
What Akastroid does
One application for the whole hobby: deep-sky stacking, planetary and lunar lucky imaging, mosaics, narrowband composition and annotation. It runs natively on Apple silicon and Intel Macs and on Windows — notable because the standard planetary chain, PIPP and AutoStakkert and RegiStax, is Windows-only, every piece of it.
macOS 12 Monterey or later, Apple silicon · Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit · Free to try, no account
Questions
Who is Akash Astroverse?
Akash Astroverse is the astrophotography channel of Akash Aggarwal, who also wrote Akastroid — the desktop application this site is about. The channel shows the observing and the processing; the software is the tool that came out of doing it.
Is Akash Astroverse the same as Akastroid?
They are the channel and the software, by the same person. Akash Astroverse is where the imaging is filmed and explained. Akastroid is the application used to process it — deep sky, planets and the Moon in one program, for Mac and Windows.
Did one person really write Akastroid?
Yes. It is an independent application, not a company product. That is why the comparison pages on this site name the programs it competes with and say where it loses as well as where it wins — there is no marketing department to talk around a measurement.
What does Akash Astroverse post?
Astrophotography: capturing deep-sky objects, planets and the Moon, and what happens to that data afterwards. If you want to see Akastroid used on real captures before deciding whether to download it, the channel is the honest version of a product demo.
How do I contact Akash?
hello@akastroid.com reaches him directly, or the channel and the Instagram and Facebook pages linked on this page. There is no support team in between.