Pendleton, OR
ASG Observatory
NGC2244
IC405, IC410, IC417, NGC1931
NGC 3372
NGC 1499
NGC7000
M45
Horsehead & Flame Nebula
Barnard 33
Phone and tablet apps are a great help in astrophotography. Apps are available to help track and predict cloud and weather data, they can be helpful for calibration, and even help plan what targets and locations to best acquire your data with. The following 8 apps are great for various aspects and hopefully you find them useful.
#1 app on my list is Astrospheric and its weather predicting capabilities. I use this app almost daily and it provides weather data out of its Canadian atmospheric and weather prediction team. It offers a good view of both cloud cover, seeing, and visibility as well as sun/moon cycles and other data. I find it to be pretty predictive of the correct seeing, although I have had a few nights where it was clear and still showed it shouldn’t have been a good night on this app.
#2 on my list is Clear Outside which is another good alternative to match up with Astrospheric. I find it’s usefulness in it’s simplicity and ease of use as it shows low, medium, high cloud cover for a location you are at. I feel it’s a little less predictive than Astrospheric and usually tilts toward the cloudy side when it can still be a good night for observing, but I do like it’s simplicity in reading and usually pair this up with other apps.
#3 on my list is NightShift which gives you a clear visual of the evening conditions, including a report if it’s excellent or not out. I find that its graph is a little hard to understand with moonlight and other factors. It does have better tools for things such as the highlights of the night or objects to look for, which is also a good useful tool that the other weather plaforms don’t offer. I use this last as it often shows worse conditions than really are, but coupled with Astrospheric and Clear Outside, you can develop a more worthy seeing score on your own.
#4 on my list is observatory software and for this there are 2 key platforms. SkySafari plus is a paid version, but worth the small app fee. It will also allow you to not only see the night sky objects and object information, but also slew many scopes out there if you can connect to a network with them. The actual sky visual appearance is not as nice as Stellarium, but the connectivity it offers to scopes is worth the compromise.
#5 on my list is Stellarium which is actually my favorite desktop app. The mobile app is ok, but with the desktop app you can plan and see night objects using this well developed observatory grade software with really nice visual aspects. While it can control scopes with some network connectivity, it’s not nearly as reliable as SkySafari Plus in that respect, but for desktops or laptops and slewing around to see objects or plan targets, it is much more configurable and customizable… including building your own landscapes and backgrounds to match your backyard seeing conditions!
#6 is a calibration software that just gives you a simple bright screen on your tablet. I like this app because of it’s adjustable brightness that lets me create a whitescreen that is dimmable and easily take your Flat calibration images with. It’s simple and it just works. I have used other apps for this, but the adjustability here is very nice.
#7 on the list is a simple tool for light as well… just a red screen that lets you not destroy your night vision eyes after spending countless hours acclimatizing yourself.
#8 is the ASIair Pro app and it does require you to have the ASIair Pro system running on your scope, but it’s capabilities have grown drastically recently. This app lets you connect your scope, main camera, guide camera, guiding system, filter wheel, and electronic focuser into one easy to use app. Plan your targets, set times and shooting parameters, and let it handle meridian flips and take care of slewing, centering, multistar guiding and more. I can’t stress enough how this one small app replaces a laptop and 5 other apps all in one device… it’s really #1 on my list as apps go and recent beta testing with the team at ZWO has only increased its functionality and performance.