Astrophotography Tools
By
@jdszekeres
- 19 Devlogs
- 24 Total hours
A set of tools, hosted on an offline-accessible PWA, that helps anyone take better photos of the night sky
Ship #4
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
In this ship, I:
- Finally got to fixing the UI, making it more space-themed (i.e stars on every page background with comets, zero-g floating cards, comsic latte color scheme)
- Added planets and other visible celestial objects to the FOV preview
- Made the Bortle Scale indicator work by building my own light pollution map from the CU Boulder VIIRS dataset
Check out this photo of the moon I took!
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
37m 22s logged
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
2h 6m 53s logged
I fixed the Bortle Scale by building my own light pollution map from scratch using a light pollution scattering kernel using the CU Boulder VIIRS dataset.
Previously, the dataset I used didn’t have enough labels for each bortle scale and had country borders, which screwed with what the expected light pollution is.
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
1h 38m 49s logged
I’ve taken your feedback from the last ship and I’ve started work on a more space-y theme for this project. So far, I’ve switched up the color scheme to a dark blueish-purple and comsic latte (The average color of the universe). I also added a procderual starfield with comets in the background. Also, check out the homepage, the page cards also float around like they’re in microgravity!
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
1h 18m 41s logged
I did a lot of space saving (pun intended) to reduce the offline cache size by about 0.7 Mb to 3.8 Mb by better compressing images and minifying code and JSON. I also had to do an emergency fix for mobile, where it wasn’t working on certain phones.
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Ship #3
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
I added FOV preview and hyperfocal distance calculator tools to the site, as well as adding the Milky Way to the star chart. Lastly, I added a guide to help newer astrophotographers get comfortable with astrophotography. Here’s a photo I took of some star trails in the Dolomites.
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
47m 18s logged
Added a guide to Astrophotography tools to make it more beginner friendly.
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
1h 8m 56s logged
Added milky way to star chart! It looks kinda cool how it wraps off the page and it definitely wasn’t because it was too hard to remove it.
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
1h 58m 9s logged
I added a FOV preview, which shows how the 110 messier objects appear in photos based on your camera sensor size and lens focal length. It’s very useful for deep space imaging.
Super Star
As a prize for your great work, look out for a bonus prize in the mail :)
Ship #2
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
I added a star chart tool and a stacking calculator, as well as a recomended settings for major camera brands to my astrophotography tools PWA. One of my biggest challenges was the star chart generator. I wanted it to mirror other star charts with major stars and constellations. I spent a lot of time entering constellations by hand before realizing there was a dataset that already detailed exactly that. The photo below was taken using the info from these tools.
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
45m 15s logged
I added final UI improvements ahead of shipping and reduced redundant code
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
1h 9m 54s logged
Added a stacking calculator to show how well a stack of images will look based on their signal to noise ratio
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
21m 22s logged
Did some compression work to bring the download size down from 16 MB to only 4 MB. Mostly compressing images, but also making a new catalog, reduced catalog for stars.
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
2h 32m 4s logged
So, it turns out I didn’t need to enter all those lines manually, there are saved files out there for it.
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
1h 5m 26s logged
I got more constellations (Hydra, Bootes) and added offical International Astronomy Union names when applicable
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
36m 7s logged
Ha, I added orion and aries. This took forever b/c orion has so many connections
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
1h 15m 19s logged
I’m working on an offline star chart generator. I’ve been working with Astronomy Engine and the Yale Bright Stars Catalog to find the proper motion of the stars. I’ve only added the Big Dipper, but I plan add more of the 88 IAU constellations.
Ship #1
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
I made a set of Astrophotography tools to use in the field. They include an equivalent exposure calculator, Bortle scale finder and reference, sun and moon position calculator, and 400 rule tool. They all work offline and are mobile PWA compatible.
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
20m 38s logged
I actually used my project. Here is a shot I took of Bishop Pass in the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains.
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
46m 23s logged
Worked on getting the project deployed to Vercel (A lot of headaches with relative and absolute paths)
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
2h 35m 4s logged
Add redlight mode to prevent eyes from getting burned while adjusting to the dark
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
1h 30m 8s logged
I spent way too much time debugging how to use the data from lightpollution.it to find the light pollution index at a coordinate. Turns out they were using an off-centered projection that I used ChatGPT to decode (x = (lon + 126.44) / 0.03382; y = (-20.28 * lat) + 1862.4;)
@jdszekeres
on
Astrophotography Tools
1h 35m 17s logged
Created the equivalent exposures tool to calculate values for each part of the exposure triangle based on other values.
