Sample · Mojave Desert
Veil NebulaRASA 8 · ASI294MC Pro · Advanced VX3.6h total120s × 108IDAS NBZ-II✓ Complete
Astrophotography planner
Astrophotography plannerBe ready to strike when the sky is right.
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Astrophotography planner
No account is created in this build. Plans, gear, projects, sites, and feedback remain in this browser unless you export them. No payment, public profile, analytics upload, or session replay is active. Treat exported files as private because they can contain observing details.
Search a place or tap a starred site, pick the night — the Night Signal and conditions on the right tell you whether it's worth it.
Sunset to sunrise for the night you picked up top. All times local.
Attilla Danko's astronomy forecast for the nearest site. CLEARHOUR already builds a usable conditions model from your location; this specialist chart lets experienced observers confirm or refine the automatic transparency and seeing estimates when they want to.
Chart by A. Danko, cleardarksky.com. Columns run left to right in hours; darker blue is better.
Hourly forecast across your observing window. Everything it fills in stays editable.
Use these only when your local instruments or specialist forecast disagree. Light pollution is managed with the site map below.
Your equipment library, rig builder, and future rig optimizer. Returning users can switch rigs immediately; first-time users can work through the modules in order and save the result.
Pick a saved setup and Clearhour applies it everywhere. Starting a new setup never edits an existing saved rig.
Each component stands on its own. Approved product images can appear automatically; otherwise CLEARHOUR uses matching modular equipment artwork without inventing accessories or depicting a fictional assembled rig.
Clearhour distinguishes verified requirements, deterministic calculations, planning heuristics, and unevaluated combinations. “No rule loaded” never means “guaranteed compatible.”
Obstruction-aware recommendations, ranked by usable dark time after CLEARHOUR checks every sampled path against the active site's saved buildings, trees, poles, and horizon mask. Click a target to add it to your run plan (up to three); click again to remove.
Draw the parts of the horizon you cannot see. Simple mode avoids compass math; Advanced mode exposes exact angles when you want them.
Stored with the active starred site. Azimuth is measured clockwise from north; altitude is the highest blocked angle.
Drag around the compass to select blocked directions. Moving toward the center means the obstruction reaches higher in the sky.
Turn tonight's selected targets into a continuing acquisition plan. Future nights are capacity scenarios—not weather promises—and update as completed data is logged.
One deduped plan: what to point at, when to slew or refocus, and the filter/sub/gain/temp recipe for each block — order, window and frame count follow the run plan below, not restated twice.
Your scope and camera, and what they actually put in the frame. Change anything here and every number in the wizard follows.
288 Wh nominal, ~85% usable after inverter and cable losses.
RASA-specific items are flagged. The red-bordered ones are the ones that cost you a whole night.
Describe the night once, validate the critical fields, then review what the receiving capture system can accept before transferring the plan.
Target coordinates, time windows, filters, exposures, framing, mosaic pointings, focus/changeover events, and safety context are preserved in a machine-readable file.
Enter when you last shot each set. Darks and flat darks are home jobs — flats are not.
Flats are the only frames you cannot shoot later. Everything else waits until you're home.
Cap on, cooler at set point, run it while you sleep.
Everything above, condensed. Copy it into your notes or the ASIAir plan.
Pre-filled from tonight's plan — adjust to what you actually got, per filter and, for a mosaic, per panel. Feeds future planner suggestions: continue for more data, finish an under-shot panel, or switch filter.
Seeing, transparency, what went wrong, what to change. Gets appended to the card above.
Log tonight as imaging-completed — actual capture counts, polar alignment and notes are saved together as a Portfolio session you can add the processed image to later.
Your calibrated subs, from stacked to finished. Steps and detail adapt to your experience level and learning mode — set on Home.
Community preferences vary a lot here — pick what you actually use. Each step below can also be overridden individually.
Every night you memorialize — session log, finished image, site, rig, targets, and the data you collected. Your globe, session history, and photos stay visible together so the Portfolio feels like an observing history, not a set of hidden views.
Drag Earth to rotate it, scroll to zoom, and click a pin to see sessions and images from that site. Use Find in session log to jump directly to the night that produced an image.
Flat map view of the same observing history. Click a pin to focus the Portfolio on that site.
Photography by Christopher Walker with a Celestron RASA 8, ZWO ASI294MC Pro, and Celestron Advanced VX. These demonstration session records are fictional but complete, use plausible acquisition settings, and keep location at a privacy-safe regional level.
Images stay connected to their session, site, rig, filters, integration, and project history — not just a loose gallery.
Search, filter, revisit, or multi-select related nights to continue a project. A pin or image can bring you straight back to the session that created it.
Bring the image. Bring the story. Show someone what you found in the dark.
A global community for sharing the beauty, mystery, and scale of the universe through astrophotography. Celebrate the finished image and the night behind it. When you want to learn, ask a question or invite constructive feedback; critique is always optional.
Every tab change and object switch tonight, logged locally — a page or object you kept bouncing back to is usually a sign the info belongs somewhere more prominent.