NOTE: no code here yet; the following is documentation of intended functionality, for now.
This is a SIMPLE command-line frontend to lots of astrophotography tools. It's for grabbing images of objects in space, CORRECTLY. What you do after that (science, or artistic interpretation with false color, or whatever) is up to you, but there is no reason for a lot of manual monitoring or intervention in the data acquitision process: we just want to get the data accurately, to begin with.
- A camera, connected to a computer, compatible with INDI, and pointed at something in the sky
- A goto mount
- A decent telescope, on said mount
- An IR-capable astrophotography camera, on said telescope
- (Especially for an Alt-Az mount) an autoguider and autoguider camera, either attached to the telescope mount directly ("internal") or via your computer
- A USB-controlled filter wheel
- An autofocuser
- INDI compatibility for all of the above
- All of the above, plus an INDI-compatible observatory
# apt-get install pipx
# pipx install moast
To configure your system, run commands similar to the ones below (but matching your system, of course). This will store the entered data in ~/.config/moast:
moast add telescope "My-Scope" --aperture 200mm --focal-length 2000mm
moast add mount "My-Mount" --type Alt-Az --autoguided=True --slew-rate "4deg/sec"
moast add filter "Near-IR-Pass" --wavelengths "300nm-400nm" --description "Near infrared"
moast add filter "Luminance" --wavelengths "400nm-700nm" --description "Luminance filter for capturing overall brightness in visible spectrum."
moast add filter "Red" --wavelengths "620nm-750nm" --description "Red filter for capturing red wavelengths in the visible spectrum."
moast add filter "Green" --wavelengths "500nm-570nm" --description "Green filter for capturing green wavelengths in the visible spectrum."
moast add filter "Blue" --wavelengths "450nm-495nm" --description "Blue filter for capturing blue wavelengths in the visible spectrum."
moast add filter "Ultraviolet" --wavelengths "300nm-400nm" --description "Ultraviolet filter for capturing UV light."
moast add sensor "Mirrorless1" --sensor "CMOS" --resolution "4000x3000" --pixel-size "5.4um" --description "Astrophotography camera designed for deep-sky imaging."
moast add sensor "AstroCam1" --sensor "CMOS" --resolution "4000x3000" --pixel-size "1.56um" --description "Astrophotography camera designed for deep-sky imaging."
moast add filter-wheel "MyFilterWheel" --reconfigure-time "3s"
moast add filter-wheel-slot-content "MyFilterWheel:Slot1:IR-Cut"
moast add filter-wheel-slot-content "MyFilterWheel:Slot2:Luminence"
moast add filter-wheel-slot-content "MyFilterWheel:Slot3:Red"
moast add filter-wheel-slot-content "MyFilterWheel:Slot4:Green"
moast add filter-wheel-slot-content "MyFilterWheel:Slot5:Ultraviolet"
moast add config "MyScope-AstroCam1-LRGBUV" --scope "My-Scope" --mount "MyMount" --sensor "Mirrorless1" --filter-wheel "MyFilterWheel"
You can back up and sync your config between machines simply by rsyncing ~/.config/moast -- just don't run moast at the same time (for now; this will be atomic, but later).
$ moast add plan "plan-1" --target "M 31" --summarise
Plan is as follows:
Config: "MyScope-AstroCam1-LRGBUV"
Scope: "MyScope"
Mount: "MyMount"
Autoguider: "True"
Autoguider-Type: "internal"
Reconfigure Time: 5s
Slew Rate: 4 degrees per second
Slew Rate scale: 1x
Channels:
- "Near-IR-Pass"
- "Luminence"
- "Red"
- "Green"
- "Blue"
- "Ultraviolet"
AFOV: 2 degrees
Panels: 4
Exposures per panel: 3
Exposure Time: 3m
Total Images: 12
Total Imaging time: 12 minutes 0 seconds (720 seconds)
Total time (post initial slew): 13 minutes 1 seconds (781 seconds)
$ moast add run "run-1" --plan "plan-1" --now
$ moast run-scheduled
run-1 was scheduled for "now". Beginning.
Connecting to equipment... complete.
Beginning slew... complete
Capturing panel 1:
Near-IR-Pass: complete.
Red: complete.
Green: complete.
Blue: complete.
Ultraviolet: complete.
Capturing panel 2:
Near-IR-Pass: complete.
Red: complete.
Green: complete.
Blue: complete.
Ultraviolet: complete.
Capturing panel 3:
Near-IR-Pass: complete.
Red: complete.
Green: complete.
Blue: complete.
Ultraviolet: complete.
Capturing panel 4:
Near-IR-Pass: complete.
Red: complete.
Green: complete.
Blue: complete.
Ultraviolet: complete.
Disconnecting from equipment... complete.
Processing images:
Panel 1:
Exposure 1: De-rotating... complete.
Exposure 2: De-rotating... complete.
Exposure 3: De-rotating... complete.
Stacking exposures... complete.
Panel 2:
Exposure 1: De-rotating... complete.
Exposure 2: De-rotating... complete.
Exposure 3: De-rotating... complete.
Stacking exposures... complete.
Panel 3:
Exposure 1: De-rotating... complete.
Exposure 2: De-rotating... complete.
Exposure 3: De-rotating... complete.
Stacking exposures... complete.
Panel 4:
Exposure 1: De-rotating... complete.
Exposure 1: De-rotating... complete.
Exposure 3: De-rotating... complete.
Stacking exposures.. complete.
Stitching panels... complete.
run-1 (4 Panel, 6 channel capture of M 31) successful.
Run scheduling will be supported later with plan-1
When you run a plan, data is captured to ~/.local/moast by default, but this path is configurable, so that you can easily store your astrophotography data
on a NAS, for example. You can browse your data directly --- they're normal astro files (FITS + metadata files, zipped to keep the two together) --- but can
also manage your data using moast data:
$ moast data list
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Run | Plan | Target | Capture Start | Capture End | Images | Panels | Exposures/Panel | Exposures | Size | Proc? | Orig? |
+-------+--------+--------------------------+------------------+---------------------+--------+--------+-----------------+-----------+--------+-------+-------+
| run-1 | plan-1 | M 31 (Andromeda Galaxy) | 2025/01/01 12:00 | 2025/01/01 12:15:25 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 12 | 500GB | Yes | No |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Proc=Yes means that the original data has been processed (de-noised, de-rotated, stitched, etc.). Orig=no means that original individual exposure per panel data has been removed, post-processing. You can control this behaviour at plan execution time with commands like:
$ moast run run-1 --no-process
$ moast run run-1 --keep-orig
or later, with:
$ moast process run-1
$ moast data drop-orig run-1
You can find your data files on disk with:
$ moast data path run-1
~/.local/moast/data/run-1/
and finally, you can completely purge the data for a job with
$ moast data delete run-1
plan-1 deleted.
Eventually archiving and retrieving (to a separate, fixed location, like a volume on a NAS) will also be supported, and there will probably be a way to manage the original data as a size or time-limited archive, with keep/retain options, rather than immediately deleting it after processing.
To view the captured images:
$ moast view plan-1
Launching default FITS viewer...
Since moast has already rotated, denoised, stitched, etc., this is all you need.