Q:

match_template from skimage returns 1X1 area

I'm trying to coalign sequential images of astonomical object using match_template from skiimage. Images are numpy areas 500x500, and very similar. The only difference is introduced by slow rotation of the object itself (movement is less than pixel between images, I tried to increase difference by making average template over 10 images, but it did not help much, result is almost the same). As the result I'm getting only 1x1 array 
   In [22]: result
   Out[22]: array([[ 0.98132336]], dtype=float32)

Why is this happening?

A:

Well, it took me some time, but I figured out what is going on. 
The problem is that images are too similar to each other. If the change between images is a sub-pixel resolution, this particular code will return just one number, simply because images do match to each other almost perfectly.
The workaround I found was based on my old code written in IDL, where, by using the Fourier transform I managed to calculate the amount of shift I need to use between images in series so that I can co-align them. 
I needed very good precision because of the analysis I need to do on the images.  
If you bump into the same problem, send me a message. I will gladly share the code. You're free to use it, as long as you cite me in your paper. 
When I publish the paper, I will put all codes I used for analysis (including this one) on GitHub. Same condition will apply. 

