How to Create Star Trails using Siril

In this tutorial, I'll guide you through creating stunning star trails using the powerful and free astrophotography software, Siril. Discover how to transform your night sky images into mesmerizing cosmic images that capture the beauty of the universe in motion. I'll also cover how to remove plane and satellite trails from the final image using the new artificial intelligence (AI) based, Generative Fill in Photoshop.
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[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Please consider supporting this channel on Buy Me a Coffee!: www.buymeacoffee.com/deepspaceastro

[@andy372]

Thank you so much. This is wonderful. I ran the script, worked perfectly.

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Glad it helped! Thanks!

[@aerozg]

Did the same thing with PixInsight, stacked with WBPP, then Gradient Correction, Color calibration, SCNR, and finally a GHS stretch. Might try a few other scripts as well.

[@johnknight7293]

I did one of those last winter - didn't even think to do the background extraction! 😮

[@AstroAF]

That’s cool! Thanks for showing the new generative ai feature!

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

You bet!

[@dretwav]

Another way to create selections of your plane path is to go into quick mask mode (q), click on one end of path, go to the other end and shift-click. A selection the width of the brush will be created. I find that much easier than drawing polygons. Most people seem to have forgotten about the quick mask method given all the sophisticated methods we have now but it is really good if you have straight lines to select.

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Thanks for the tip! I'll give this a try!

[@RijoeDamy6444]

good to know this,i will try that this weekend

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Great! Let me know how it goes.

[@AstralHarp]

informative video. and cool intro

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Much appreciated!

[@Chorge1972]

Thanks!!!!

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

You're welcome!

[@dretwav]

interesting. My OM-1 camera has a mode (live composite) which can create star trails in camera. Stacks them but only adds where light pixels occur that was dark before. In other words your existing foreground image doesn't blow out by the increased exposure length but new "starlight" is added. Works very well but the biggest issue is you don't have the individual subs so you can't throw out a bad one. I am surprised you didn't just eliminate the frames with plane trails in them before you stacked in Siril. Thanks for the script.

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

I could have but I'd expect gaps in the trails if I did that.

[@dretwav]

@@DeepSpaceAstro Shouldn't be much of a gap with 15 sec subs. Your stars will barely blur in 15 sec in a wide angle shot like this. It is a pain though to go through and examine 240 frames and PS does a pretty good job.

[@indysbike3014]

I think it’s easier removing the airplane trails in the individual frames.

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Can you do that easily if the data is raw? Genuinely curious.

[@roberteigenberger5064]

Hi, like your vids, very informative. I’ve using Siril for a couple months now and am getting used to it. Now today it wouldn’t run. I uninstalled it and tried to reinstall and my virus software thinks it’s infected. Have you heard anything on this issue and is there a work around? Thanx

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

I would tell the antivirus to exclude Siril.

[@maurofagiani2365]

Do you think Siril could be good for Milky Way processing? I think this script could do the job

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

This script generates start trails so it wouldn't be good for the Milky Way. I've used the OSC_Preprocessing script for that in the past, and then added my foreground in PS

[@maurofagiani2365]

@@DeepSpaceAstro yep, it was a rather dumb question. I was just hoping to be able to ditch sequator (I'm not really satisfied with the results)

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

No dumb questions! Yeah I've had mixed results with Sequator as well.

[@billinglendaleca5093]

@@maurofagiani2365 Siril will work for Milky Way landscapes and the results can be quite good, where you will run into problems is if you have foreground elements that stick into the sky, then Sequator is pretty much your only choice.

[@neupy88]

I keep getting script fails. Says lights dir does not exist. It's my working directory. I've tried everything I can think of.

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

The "Lights" directory needs to be in your "working" directory. Then your images go in the Lights directory.

[@neupy88]

@DeepSpaceAstro yeah I've even tried making the working directory c:/lights

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

So just to be clear, and for example... Create a directory called Working in the root of your C: drive. So that looks like this: C:\Working. Open that directory and create a sub-directory called Lights. So now the path looks like this: C:\Working\Lights. Put all of your images in the Lights directory. Set your working directory in Siril to C:\Working. Verify that at the top-middle of Siril's screen after setting. It MUST show C:\Working or the script will fail. Then run the script.

[@neupy88]

@DeepSpaceAstro yeah I'm an idiot. I figured out what I was doing wrong. I was pointing TO lights not the directory its in. Thanks!

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

You're not. It's an easy mistake to make. Glad you have it sorted.

[@iwantthattclphone9240]

i tried running the script, didn't work for me :(

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Sorry to hear that. What didn't work? What's the error?