ASTAP - Astrometric Stacking Program

I'm working my next challenge: making a light curve of a variable star. I was reading an article in magazine Heelal (November 2025 - Review Dwarf3 by Dmonique Dierckx) which explained the making of a curve using the Dwarf3 and ASTAP. So I went searching for more information on this software.

Downlaoding ASTAP was done via this link https://www.hnsky.org/astap.htm

I also downloading the following databases : D80 and V50

ASTAP, Astrometric Stacking Program, is able to stack images; so far I was only able to do this with Fits files. On top of this, it makes annotations, deepsky, asteroids, comets and variable stars.

There is a section Photometry, which calculates the magnitude and compares those with the database. Using color images, ASTAP can extract the green channel which makes values more accurate. 

When analysing the image with M51, two variable stars showed up. I let the software extract the green channel and measuring the magnitude. This data was copied into excel making the curve.