AstroTelescope at Mac App Store analyse

AstroTelescope is a simple planetarium application for the astrophotography.

The star map can be displayed in any scale and rotated by any angle, with selectable star density and with or without star names. Hipparcos Catalogue and selected NGC and IC DSO object are available from the application locally, but any object can be searched online by calling public SIMBAD service on Strasbourg Astronomical Data Center.

An application can control connected mount both by selecting object on the star map or manually, mount position can be synced automatically from solved image in AstroImager application. AstroTelescope is now also integrated with AstroGuider.

Its built-in drivers support many mount controller protocols both over serial line and TCP or UDP. Application can be used as a client to any remote or local INDIGO or INDI server with any supported telescope mount.

A supported dome can be synced to the controlled telescope mount and observatory position can be read from external GPS. The mount can be controlled with joystick.

The following devices can be controlled from the application:

GPS and dome simulator drivers,
PegasusAstro NYX101, DMFC, UPB, PPB and FlatMaster drivers,
Baader Planetarium Classic dome driver,
Lunatico Limpet/Armadillo/Platypus Powerbox drivers,
LX200 mount driver (supports Meade, AvalonGo, AvalonGo2, PegasusAstro, Losmandy Gemini, 10micron, EQMac, Astro-Physics GTO, OpenAstroTech and OnStep dialects),
NexStar mount driver (supports Celestron and Skywatcher dialects),
Takahashi Temma mount driver,
iOptron Mount driver,
SynScan/EQDir mount driver,
ExploreScientific PCM8 mount controller driver,
RainbowAstro mount driver,
NexStarAUX mount driver,
Vixen Starbook Ten driver,
ZWO AM5 mount driver,
Generic NMEA 0183 GPS driver,
GPS Service Daemon (GPSD) client driver,
HID Joystick driver,
Unihedron SQM sky quality meter driver,
ASTROMECHANICS PLM aux driver,
Geoptik flat driver,
Artesky flatbox driver,
Lacerta Flat Box Controller driver,
Optec Flip-Flat driver,
USB_Dewpoint V1 and V2 driver,
Lunatico AAG CloudWatcher driver,
Lunatico Astronomia Dragonfly Dome and Relay controller drivers,
Astromi.ch MGBox v1/v2, MBox, MGPBox and PBox driver,
NexDome Dome driver (based on G.Rozemas firmware),
NexDome Dome driver (requires firmware v.3.0.0 or newer),
Beaver dome driver,
Interactive Astronomy SkyRoof and SkyAlert drivers.

Even if it can be used separately, it is meant to be used together with AstroImager or AstroDSLR and AstroGuider. If you want to use AstroImager, AstroGuider and AstroTelescope, you can consider to purchase INDIGO A1 (All-in-One) application instead.

AstroTelescope is a member of our astrophotography tools family including also AstroImager, AstroDSLR, AstroGuider, FITS Preview, INDIGO Server for OS X, INDIGO Dashboard, INDIGO Control Panel, INDIGO Script Editor, Astrometry for OS X and INDIGO Sky linux distribution for RaspberryPi.

Unusable

• ★☆☆☆☆   Paul Allikas 7 years ago ( v 1.10 )

Don’t waste your money on this app. The star map is totally unusable. The fonts are so tiny as to be unreadible, and the background for the star map cannot be changed. it is dark grey on slightly lighter grey, and you cannot zoom the fonts for the labels at all. I contacted the developer, and got lip service about how they chose to use the standard OSX presentation space. Bad choice, virtually no support. That said, the other apps appear much better, but still buggy and crashes often. Definitely a work in progress.

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