Range align ment is a key step of the motion compensation in inverse synthetic aperture rada r (ISAR) imaging. The quality of the range alignment affects the quality of the resulting reconstructed ISAR image. Based on the conventional Shannon entropy ba sed range alignment method, a new range alignment method using Tsallis entropy i s presented, where the Tsallis entropy is introduced to measure the sharpness of the synthetic range profiles (sum of the shifted range profiles), and estimate the amount of the range shift. The property of Tsallis entropy and the applicabi lity in range alignment are analyzed in detail. Simulated and real data are used to verify the performance of the range alignment method using Tsallis entropy. The results show that, compared with the range alignment method using Shannon en tropy, the range alignment method using Tsallis entropy has good anti noise per formance, and is able to obtain better alignment results.