Today, I released my OnStep Python API on Github. This API allows commands to be issued from any Python 3.x program to an OnStep controlled telescope.

This allows a lot of use cases, for example, testing certain scenarios, or automating certain tasks.

Several examples are provided as starting points on how to write your own programs.

Patches for features, and fixes are welcome.

Yesterday, I released ETL-Astro, a set of Python programs that generate astronomical catalogs in a variety of formats from license friendly data source, allowing for incorporation in GPL-licensed products.

The programs can do the following:

This is a time lapse video of Comet Iwamoto C/2018 Y1, on February 22nd 2019, racing against the background stars of the skies. Note that the comet occults two stars during this video. This is a composite of 51 exposures of 60 seconds each, at ISO 800. Taken using a Celestron C8 with a 0.6X reducer on a Vixen SXD mount running OnStep, and a Canon T4i DSLR.

An Artificial Star is a point source of light. It is used to simulate a real star indoors, so you can collimate your telescope's optics indoors and/or during daylight.

Commercial artificial stars, such as this Hubble Optics one, cost $25 or more, and their main feature is a small plate that has precision holes of 50 micron up to 250 microns.

You can make your own artificial star, which is very close in function to the commercial ones.

You can watch this short 4 minute video on how I did it, and read on for detailed instructions.

A month ago, Dave Schwartz completed a design for a Smart Hand Controller (SHC) for the OnStep open source telescope controller.

After completing the hardware, I ported the firmware for it, from the Teensy 3.x to the lower cost ESP32.

Here is a video that I did demonstrating the features.

PCB

Here is an image of the SHC PCB, V1.03.