The wizard’s younger sibling

StackingWizard PUBLIC BETA

Drop the night’s folder in. Get a finished stack out. The wizard reads your headers, sorts the frames into their piles, grades every sub, aligns and stacks the keepers, and hands the finished stack to AstroWizard with one gold button. No settings to learn - the wizard picks, you look.

Public beta · free for everyone · rough edges guaranteed

This is a beta: the stacking is real and tested, the edges are still being sanded. It stacks FITS from colour cameras and smart telescopes (Seestar, Dwarf, ASIAIR and friends), uses your darks, flats and bias when you have them, and can combine finished stacks of the same target from several sessions (same scope and camera) into one deeper stack. Mono cameras with filter sets arrive in the next beta build. Report anything odd - every report makes the wizard wiser.

Four steps. In order. That’s the trick.

The Pile
Point it at the night’s folder. Lights, darks, flats and bias sort themselves by header; already-stacked images are recognised too.
The Looking Glass
Every sub graded - sky glow, noise, star size, trails - with a magnifier to see for yourself. Pick how picky the wizard should be.
The Stack
Watch the night build: each frame arrives, matched stars flash their constellations, the stack deepens live, receipts for everything.
The Handoff
Your finished stack, saved and sent to AstroWizard with one gold button - and, if you stacked the same target on other nights with the same rig, combined with those stacks first.

Download the beta

Windows WINDOWS 10 / 11 · BETA

Download StackingWizard for Windowsbeta build 2026-08-22

Every beta build, with its checksum, lives on the release page.

Download StackingWizard.exe - nothing to install, it just runs.
If a blue box says “Windows protected your PC”: click More info, then Run anyway.
Choose the night’s folder and follow the pips. The master autosaves beside your lights.

Why the warning? The same reason as AstroWizard’s: code signing is being set up and the beta ships ahead of it. The build on this page is always the official one.

macOS APPLE SILICON · BETA

Download StackingWizard for macOSApple Silicon (M1 and later) · beta build 2026-08-22

Every beta build, with its checksum, lives on the release page.

Download StackingWizard-mac.zip and double-click to unzip.
First time only: right-click (or Control-click) StackingWizard → Open → Open.
On newer Macs (macOS Sequoia) that trick is gone: double-click it once (it gets blocked - that’s expected), then open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down to “StackingWizard was blocked…” and click Open Anyway.
After that, open it normally like any app.

Why right-click? The same reason as AstroWizard’s: Apple signing is being set up and the beta ships ahead of it. Intel Macs and Linux follow shortly - the ovens are warming.

Beta notes - read me once

Beta 2 - 23 August

Big nights fixed at the root: aligned frames stream through a disk cache (freed afterwards), memory stays flat at any frame count, the final vote uses every core - measured on the workshop PC: 187 Seestar frames in 2 minutes 31 seconds end to end, where the first beta needed over 8 minutes for the final vote on 60 frames alone
Every stage shows a measured time left; a Stop button stands while stacking
Six stars must agree before a frame is placed; frames get a second, harder look before they are given up
Still heavy: the Looking Glass list past about 500 frames - a lighter list is next

Stacks tonight

FITS lights from colour (OSC) cameras and smart telescopes
Darks, flats and bias - brewed into masters and matched honestly
Several sessions of one target from the same rig, already stacked (by any stacking program, or your smart telescope), combined into one deeper stack
Meridian flips, field rotation, nights that drift - registration copes

Not yet

Mono cameras with filter sets - the next beta build
Camera RAW files (CR2, NEF, ARW) - convert to FITS first
Comets, planets and the moon - StackingWizard is for deep-sky targets only: nebulae, galaxies, clusters
Mixing stacks from different telescopes (an S30 with an S50, say) - same rig only

Found something odd?

On The Stack page press copy the receipts (in the card at the top) - it copies the wizard’s own log with your build and platform - and email it to wizard@lukomatico.com. A screenshot helps too. Every report is read.

StackingWizard is a sibling of AstroWizard - stack here, process there, one gold button between them. Both are free for everyone, founded on and maintained by kindness: the Fellowship keeps the lights on.

Questions and reports: wizard@lukomatico.com · the workshop log lives on the changelog.