Sky Atlas — framing, mosaic & target planning
The Sky Atlas (left nav) is an interactive sky view (Aladin Lite, DSS/HiPS surveys) with framing and mosaic planning on top. Plan a target visually, see exactly what your camera will capture, and hand it straight to the Sequencer or the Scheduler.
Workflow
- Find a target — type a name (M42, NGC 7000, …) and Go, or just pan/zoom
the sky view. Go asks Aladin to resolve the name; if that fails (or the sky view is offline) it falls back to the rig's own resolver, so a name still locks in a target.
- Frame current view ◎ — captures the reticle centre as the framing
target (a resolved search result also sets it directly). The framed RA/Dec is shown below the button.
- Set the field of view — your camera's FOV is drawn as an amber box on the
sky (see Field of view below).
- Frame & lay out a mosaic — set Rotation PA° to orient the box, and
Rows × Cols + Overlap % to tile a mosaic; every panel is drawn live on the sky as you type.
- Set the capture — Exp s, Count, an optional Filter, and a
Plan name (auto-filled from the target if left blank).
- Hand it off — click Add to Sequencer or Add to Scheduler.
Field of view
There are three ways to set the FOV box, checked in this order — whichever you fill last wins:
- From the connected camera + config — on opening the tab, Starship reads
[camera] focal_length_mm + pixel_size_um and the connected camera's sensor pixel dimensions and fills the FOV for you (pixel scale = 206.265 × pixel_size_um / focal_length_mm).
- From optics you type — enter Focal mm + Sensor W mm + Sensor H mm
and the FOV W′/H′ (arcmin) fill automatically (FOV = 2·atan(sensor / 2·focal)). These optics boxes are seeded from your config focal length and the connected camera's sensor size, so they usually start pre-filled — adjust them for a different scope or sensor.
- Direct — just type the FOV W′ and FOV H′ (arcmin) into the two FOV
boxes. This always works even with no optics configured and no camera connected.
The FOV readout also shows the pixel scale (″/px) when it can be computed.
Mosaic geometry
Tiles are laid out in the camera's rotated frame and centred on the target, with RA spacing scaled by cos(dec) and the requested overlap. PA rotates the whole grid. Rows and cols go up to 8 each; overlap up to 80 %. It's a small-field tangent-plane approximation — the rotator + plate-solve own the absolute on-sky PA at capture time, so framing is refined on the rig.
Add to Sequencer
Builds a plan that images every panel — a precise slew to each tile, a rotate to PA (only when PA ≠ 0), then the exposures (dithered), one block per panel — saves it, and appends it to whatever you already have open in the Sequencer (existing targets are kept, not replaced). You jump straight to the Sequencer to review and run it. A single-panel frame is just one target.
Add to Scheduler
Adds the frame to the unattended Scheduler as one project per mosaic panel (panels named … r1c1, … r2c1, …), each with a goal built from your Exp / Count / Filter and a default minimum altitude of 30°. A link to open the Scheduler appears on success. Use this when you want the framing folded into an autonomous, run-until-done campaign rather than a single sequence.
Getting here from Skyhunter
In Skyhunter, the Frame in Sky Atlas button on any object hands that target straight over to the Sky Atlas and resolves it, so you can go from "what's up tonight" to a framed mosaic in two clicks.
Offline note
Aladin Lite and its sky-survey tiles load from the internet in your browser (the rig itself needs no internet for this). If your browser is offline the sky image won't appear, but the framing + mosaic + Add to Sequencer / Scheduler controls still work — resolve a target via Search (uses the rig's resolver) and set the FOV. The tab retries the sky view the next time you open it.