Astro-Photography Image Proccesing

A little bit about how I currently do my "image stacking" and post-processing.

I'm using "linux Ubuntu" and have loaded "Hugin Panorama Creator" from the software repository.
With this installed and two simple commands you can align and stack your images. You need to be a little conversant with using a command shell.
First put all you jpeg images in a folder and open a command shell and type the following at the prompt

align_image_stack -a  drag and drop all your files from your folder onto the terminal window, then hit return. Nothing will happen for a while....then it should start writing .tif files to the same folder as your jpegs.

When this has finished type enfuse -o 'name.tif' where "name.tif" is the file name you want to use complete with the full directory path, then drag and drop the tif files previously created onto the terminal window, it should then start stacking them and you will end up with a composite image called whatever you nominated at the "name.tif" part.

I then follow up with "Gimp"  adjusting "Curves" and "wavelet de-noise" for a final image.

There is also a good "Java" based program called "Regim" and it runs on any platform and has a nice user interface. This will do the aligning and stacking, but no post processing.

For "Windows" users "DeepSkyStacker" is another good option. Just do a Google search and you will find plenty of options.

I will post some more info and pics soon.