Photometric pipeline made for the automated 24-inch telescope at Van Vleck Observatory (VVO), Wesleyan University
Please refer to ASTAP website and its SourceForge page. The command line version should suffice, but there's no harm in using a full version with GUI. If you use the command line version, what you download is the executable, and you will need the path to this executable. If you use the GUI version, the path to the executable is usually /Applications/ASTAP.app/Contents/MacOS/astap on a Mac.
A star database with the right size corresponding to the images' FOV is required, as illustrated on the ASTAP website. For the VVO 24-inch, the FOV is 0.7". Therefore, the default choice is D50, but D80 might give better results(?), although it requires more storage space on the computer. If storage is limited, D20 or D05 is also acceptable, but not other ones.
As adapted from ASTAP Mac installer SourceForge doc:
"Open a terminal tab and copy paste and execute the following command: codesign --force -s - [path_to_executable]
"The code signing is required only once. An update doesn't require code signing."
macOS will prompt that the ASTAP program and the star database installer "cannot be opened because the developer cannot be identified." To override this, go to macOS's System Settings – Privacy & Security, scroll down to the "Security" section, find the message about ASTAP or the star database, and click "Open anyway." When prompt again, click "Open."
ASTAP uses Gaia data to do photometric solving. Considering acknowledging Gaia. See ASTAP star database doc and Gaia Data Credits and Acknowledgemnts. (Note: I'm not sure if ASTAP uses Gaia DR3 or EDR3...)
Warning: do not modify the name of this repository because it is linked in Chris's thesis.