# PixAstro – Astrophotography — Stack & process deep-sky shots

> Stack & process deep-sky shots (iPhone/iPad app by Fernando Lopez.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/pixastro-astrophotography/id6821605433 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [Fernando Lopez](https://appshunter.io/developer/6787067163)
- Category: Photo & Video, Utilities
- Price: Free with in-app purchases
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 16.0 · 117 MB
- Languages: American English, European Spanish
- Released: 2026-10-29
- Data updated: 2026-10-31

## What is PixAstro?

PixAstro turns the frames from your astrophotography session into a presentable final image, right on your iPhone and without needing to know the theory.

Pick the folder with the frames from your ASIAIR, your camera or your capture software (USB drive, Files or iCloud Drive), or bring them straight from your ASIAIR's internal storage over Wi-Fi, and press Process. PixAstro does the rest:

• Works out what each file is: lights, darks, flats and bias (from the FITS header, the name or the content).
• Calibrates, measures the quality of every frame and drops blurry, trailed or cloudy ones.
• Aligns the stars and stacks while removing satellites, planes and hot pixels.
• Removes the background gradient, calibrates colour, stretches without burning out bright areas, reduces noise and stars and enhances local contrast.
• Detects the kind of object (nebula, galaxy, cluster or Milky Way) and adapts the processing.

Automatic mode, or Guided mode with sliders for every step, live preview and a before/after comparison. Every concept comes with a one- or two-sentence explanation.

Made to be used next to the telescope:
• Red night mode, so you keep your dark adaptation.
• Works offline and never sends any data.
• Your original files are never changed.

Processing and adjusting are free. PixAstro Pro, a one-time purchase, unlocks saving the result as 16-bit TIFF, 32-bit FITS, PNG or JPG and sharing it.

Formats: uncompressed FITS (mono, colour and Bayer), 16/32-bit TIFF, PNG and JPG. DSLR RAW files cannot be read on the iPhone yet; process them with PixAstro for Windows, macOS or Linux, which is free.

Same processing engine as the desktop version.

## Pricing and in-app purchases

Base price: Free.

**One-time purchases**

| Purchase | Price | Type |
| --- | --- | --- |
| PixAstro Pro | $9.99 | one-time |


## Is PixAstro safe?

Not enough ratings yet to assess PixAstro.

## Is PixAstro legit?

PixAstro – Astrophotography appears legitimate, with a few gaps. The AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for PixAstro is 65 out of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data.


## Version history (last 3 releases)

### 1.6.0 — 2026-10-31

• Frames straight from the ASIAIR. A new From the network (ASIAIR)… button in Your frames finds the ASIAIR on your Wi-Fi, lists its folders by date with last night's session already ticked, and copies the ones you choose to the iPhone. Nothing on the ASIAIR is touched. The ASIAIR only shares its internal memory over the network: frames saved to a USB drive plugged into it don't show up.
• Cleaner background with one-sided gradients. When the sky is flat on one side and falls off sharply on the other (Moon or light pollution), the flat side no longer comes out with a bright band.
• Dual-band filters: neutral sky. With an Hα/OIII filter (L-eXtreme, L-eNhance…) the sky no longer turns cyan.

### 1.5.1 — 2026-10-29

• AI noise reduction, our own. A neural network trained on real sessions with the two half-stacks (even and odd frames) learns to tell noise from signal. It runs on your iPhone, offline, with no third-party models: 1.5 to 3 times less grain, stars just as sharp and faint ones intact.
• Also for stacks from other programs and short sessions. Linear stacks from Siril, DeepSkyStacker or PixInsight, and sessions under 8 frames, are cleaned too. Already processed images (stretched JPG or TIFF) are left alone.
• Narrowband palettes. A new Palette menu on the result: SHO, HOO, Hubble style or natural colour, applied instantly without restacking. SHO comes out in the Hubble palette (golden nebula, blue oxygen), with no magenta or violet star halos.
• Dual-band filters. With an Hα/OIII filter you get a Hubble-style imitation; with two sessions, Hα/OIII and SII/OIII, real SHO. The filter is also read from the file or folder name (L-eXtreme, Askar C2…).
• Mono cameras: narrowband with RGB stars. The nebula comes from the narrowband frames and the stars take their real colour from the RGB ones.
• Crop and rotate. A new Framing card rotates, flips or crops the image with your finger, freely or with a fixed ratio (1:1, 4:5, 16:9…).
• Deconvolution sharpening. Measures on your own stars how much the image is blurred and undoes part of it, with no extra noise in the sky.
• Finer stars. Better colour demosaicing (Malvar-He-Cutler): stars 5 to 14 % narrower, no false colours. Frames rotated after a meridian flip, or with some optical distortion, align better in the corners.
• Darks of several exposures: each frame is calibrated with the one matching its exposure.
• Several frames at once: in Your frames, tap Select to change the type of several frames or remove them.
• Faster and lighter. Cancel responds within a second, the preview is quicker and finishing needs much less memory. Hidden macOS files (._…) are ignored when loading.
• Saved FITS keep the raw stack, so reopening it in PixAstro gives the same image without stacking again.

### 1.2.4 — 2026-10-29

No release notes.

## More apps by Fernando Lopez

- [Cuidanza — care as a family](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/cuidanza-care-as-a-family/id6787390231)
- [Gesture Search](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/gesture-search/id6815694543)

All apps by Fernando Lopez: https://appshunter.io/developer/6787067163

---

*Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-10-31.*