AstraLite

AstraLite is software for deepsky astrophotography and live stacking on low power PCs (like raspberry Pi or Orange Pi)

! The program is under active development !

AstraLite uses INDI server to work with astrophotography hardware. See https://www.indilib.org/download.html to install INDI

Compiled binaries and discussion here: https://www.indilib.org/forum/clients/13006-astralite-simple-indi-client-for-astrophotography.html

Features

• Supported INDI devices are cameras, focusers and mounts
• Saving RAW frames
• Live stacking with automatic satellites and meteor tracks removal
• Background gradient automatic removal
• Darks, biases and defective pixels library
• Light frames quality filter
• Mount polar alignment
• Guiding and dithering by PHD2 or main camera
• Autofocus
• Sky map
• Manual mount control
• UI for INDI devices control

Requirements

Condition	Requirements for 12 MP sensors	Requirements for 24 MP sensors
Astrophotography only	>= 2 CPU cores, >= 1 GB of RAM	>= 2 CPU cores, >= 2 GB of RAM
Live stacking	>= 2 CPU cores, >= 1 GB of RAM	>= 4 CPU cores, >= 2 GB of RAM
Live stacking with tracks removal	>= 2 CPU cores, >= 2 GB of RAM	>= 4 CPU cores, >= 4 GB of RAM

>= 4 CPU cores, >= 4 GB of RAM is enough for most cases

Dependencies

INDI (https://indilib.org/) - library to access devices (camera, focuser etc)

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indi-full

PHD2 (https://openphdguiding.org/) for guiding (optional)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pch/phd2
sudo apt update
sudo apt install phd2

Local Astrometry.NET with index (https://astrometry.net/) - plate solver (optional)

sudo apt install astrometry.net
sudo apt install astrometry-data-2mass-08-19 astrometry-data-2mass-07 astrometry-data-2mass-06
sudo apt install astrometry-data-2mass-05 astrometry-data-2mass-04

Screenshots

Future plans

• INDI driver crash recovery
• Live view from camera in video mode
• Meridian flip support

How to build AstraLite

Prerequisites for Linux

• Rust compiler: https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install
• Libs and tools:

sudo apt install gcc libgtk-3-dev build-essential

Prerequisites for MS Windows

• Rust compiler (i686-pc-windows-gnu): https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install Note! You have to install *-gnu (not *-msvc) toolchain:

rustup-init.exe --default-toolchain=stable-x86_64-pc-windows-gnu --default-host=x86_64-pc-windows-gnu

• MSYS: https://www.msys2.org/
• Libs and tools (type inside MSYS command line):

pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-gtk3
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-pkg-config base-devel mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc

Don't forget to set your PATH environment variable to point to the mingw64\bin directory of MSYS

How to build for your platform

To build optimized binaries for your current platform, just type

cargo build --release

Building and creating deb-packages for arm64, armhf and x86_64 platforms

Prerequisites

• Install podman or docker (I prefer podman):

sudo apt install podman

• Install cross https://github.com/cross-rs/cross :

cargo install cross --git https://github.com/cross-rs/cross

How to build

Execute build_cross.sh. Once build_cross.sh has finished running, you will find the deb packages in the dist folder.

Data sources

DSO:

• Messier, NGC and IC catalogue from OpenNGC - https://github.com/mattiaverga/OpenNGC
• Caldwell catalogue - http://www.hawastsoc.org/deepsky/caldwell.html
• DSO nicknames list - https://www.astrobin.com/fg7b5l/

Stars:

• Tycho-2 catalogue - https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/hipparcos/tycho-2
• HYG v3 catalogue - https://github.com/astronexus/HYG-Database/tree/main/hyg/v3

Constellations:

• Celestial Data - https://github.com/dieghernan/celestial_data