AstroHelm - Smartphone-Powered Telescope Aiming with Live Plate Solving
Show HN: AstroHelm – Use your phone camera to aim a telescope or telephoto lens
AstroHelm transforms your smartphone into a precision telescope aiming system. Mount your phone on any telescope or telephoto lens, and AstroHelm uses live plate solving to match the stars in your camera's view against a massive database, guiding you to galaxies, nebulae, planets, and stars with observatory-grade accuracy. No GoTo mount or proprietary hardware needed. It works offline, even under light-polluted skies, and integrates with Stellarium and SkySafari. Free to use with one-time upgrades for advanced features. Perfect for casual stargazers and serious astronomers alike.
This app has been so good that I sold my other push-to and GoTo hardware.
- chantepierre
Hey, I'd actually use that. I build telescopes (see personal site in profile) and only do visual astronomy. I voluntarily prefer to use old-ish phones, i.e. currently I am using an iPhone SE 2022. Do you think the weak signal under the night sky would work with your plate solving ?
- danbruc
- Accurate up to within 10 arcseconds (1/360 of a degree)
- Computes coordinates in less than a second
For comparison, the sky moves 15 arcseconds per second. So without a motorized mount to keep the telescope on target, the accuracy will be short-lived.
- skypanther
This looks like a nice alternative to PiFinder. No extra hardware required. https://www.pifinder.io/
- Tepix
Interesting, thanks.
A related issue I’ve been wondering about: Why don’t gimbals for cameras and smartphones offer an astrophotography mode for long exposures of the night sky?
- _ph_
Looks cool! Plate solving is an incredibly useful technology for astronomy, putting it into the smartphone makes it available for a lot of "non-smart" setups. Only one question: does it have a polar align feature? This is my biggest challenge, when e.g. setting up a simple star tracker. The app would be very useful for this.