Introduction

MacOS support for astronomy software is becoming better these days. For planetary imaging we can already use Firecapture and many camera manufacturers provide MacOS drivers as well. For post-processing I can recommend my own application LuckyStackWorker, which has a seperate easy to install DMG distribution for both Apple silicon based machines (M1-M4) as well as the older Intel based macbooks. But so far a good stacking software applications seemed to be missing. Well lo & behold, no need to despair because I'm here to tell you that you can you can just run and install the as of today still most popular, fastest and most effective planetary stacking application AutoStakkert developed by Emil Kraaikamp on your Macbook!

Since AutoStakkert is developed for Windows machines exclusively it can only run natively on machines containing a 64-bit Intel processor. This will work fine in combination with Wine which is a piece of software that allows you to run most windows based applications from MacOS.

But if you own a newer Macbook you will still be able to run AutoStakkert by using the Rosetta emulator. This emulator is meant to be used for MacOS apps that only have an old Intel x64 distribution, which is the case with Wine as well. 

0. Read this before you start

NB: I do not take any responsibility on this should anything go wrong, so do this at your own risk. All the required additional software such as Homebrew, Rosetta and Wine are very commonly used on MacOS by software developers, but these instructions aren't fool proof. So if you're uncomfortable with some minimal usage of the terminal, you'd better ask somebody who is and help you with that.

With that being said, here's how to install and run Autostakkert. Perform the following steps in the exact order as mentioned below:

1. Install Homebrew

In case you don't have it yet, install the Homebrew package manager. This is a very common package manager on MacOS. Open your browser and navigate to the following website, then follow the instructions from there: https://brew.sh/

2. Install Wine

To do so, open the terminal app. It can be found on the Launch pad under Other > Terminal. Click on it, then paste the following (see the example screenshot below):

brew install --cask --no-quarantine wine-stable

3. Install Rosetta

This step is only required in case you have a new Mac M1..M4 (Apple silicon) machine. Rosetta is an emulator that meant to be used for MacOS apps that only have an old Intel x64 distribution, which is the case with Wine as well. To do so, paste the following in the same terminal window:

softwareupdate --install-rosetta --agree-to-license

3. Download & unzip Autostakkert 

Now download AutoStakkert from the website to a folder of choice. I advice you to create a seperate /Applications folder under your home folder, but feel free to create or use another folder for this purpose. To do so, paste in the following in the terminal window:

mkdir -p ~/Applications/AutoStakkert

unzip ~/Downloads/AutoStakkert_4.0.13_x64.zip -d ~/Applications/AutoStakkert

4. Run AutoStakkert

Now you are ready to launch AutoStakkert. This last step needs to be repeated for every consecutive usage of AutoStakkert. Because it is a Windows app it can only be run from the terminal using wine:

wine ~/Applications/AutoStakkert/AutoStakkert.exe

That's all! Below you see a screenshot of AutoStakkert running on my Mac M3: