There is some great software around now. For sequence capture and image session management, I settled on Sequence Generator Pro (SGP) which is absolutely brilliant, inexpensive, fully featured and well supported. It controls camera, focuser, mount, platesolver and autoguider – all seamlessly.
I also use Nebulosity – from Craig Stark – a really brilliant software with many batch processing and image processing features, again, really good, reliable, feature rich and easy to use.
Photoshop – expensive stuff, but if you can afford it it will allow you to enhance your images by drawing out that faint detail. Combine it with Noel Carboni’s astronomy actions which are really good, and you won’t need anything else in order to create professional looking night sky images.
ANSVR – by Andy Galasso – this is integrated with SGP and uses local Astrometry.net indexes to blind solve – brilliant and reliable.
Teamviewer – free for personal use and allows you to sit inside and control your ‘outside’ computer which has the kit attached. Easy to use and keeps you warm…
When I first started imaging, I used a freeware product called Astro tortilla – a blind platesolver which is really cool. It works with Astromtry.net.
