Photography & Astrophotography
Tools for field photography, astrophotography, and the processing that follows. The dividing line is consistent: software handles the technical work — focus, exposure sequencing, hardware control — and the photographer keeps the creative decisions of composition, timing, and subject.
Contents
How They Work Together
shared coordinate math & device drivers"] --> PROC["Processing
EclipseStack · ASIAIR Import → PixInsight"]
The capture tools each target a different subject — aurora, deep sky, eclipse, landscape — but draw on one shared Rust library for coordinate math and device drivers, and hand their output to a common processing stage.
Astrophotography
AuroraPhoto
Planning · Python Swift · Full Details →
Automated aurora capture across a multi-node camera array. Raspberry Pi nodes drive Sony a7R V and a7 IV cameras over USB; an iPhone app handles composition and manages the array from one interface. Half-flux-radius tracking holds star focus through the unpredictable bursts of an aurora display, where there is no time to refocus by hand.
OpenAstro Node
Active · Rust · Full Details →
A headless astrophotography controller for low-power Linux devices (Raspberry Pi, Jetson). It manages the mount, camera, focuser, and filter wheel over INDI and ASCOM Alpaca, executes multi-target imaging plans unattended, and monitors weather and mount limits so an overnight session runs without supervision.
OpenAstro Core
v0.1 — Celestial Math · Rust · Full Details →
The Rust library beneath the OpenAstro tools: coordinate math (RA/Dec transforms, Julian date, sidereal time), an INDI protocol client, and an ASCOM Alpaca REST client. OpenAstro Node and Photo Tour share one correct implementation of the astronomy primitives rather than each reimplementing them.
EclipsePhoto
Phase 1 — Hardware Foundation · Python · Full Details →
A fire-and-forget Raspberry Pi controller for solar eclipse photography. It coordinates a camera over gphoto2 and a mount (ZWO AM5, Benro Polaris) over INDI to capture the full sequence from first to last contact. Guiding, exposure ramping, and fault recovery run automatically, so the photographer can watch the eclipse instead of the camera.
EclipseStack
Planning · Rust · Full Details →
Alignment for eclipse-totality image stacks. Totality yields hundreds of frames but no background stars to align against, and tracker drift defeats a naive overlay. EclipseStack detects the solar disk, models the drift rate from EXIF timestamps, and uses solar flares as sub-pixel anchors — exporting aligned frames ready for HDR stacking in PixInsight.
ASIAIR Import Tool
Complete · Python · Full Details →
Post-session file organization for astrophotography. It scans ASIAIR backups, groups frames by target, night, and filter, matches the corresponding darks, flats, and bias frames, and lays out a directory ready for PixInsight’s Weighted Batch Preprocessing.
Field Photography
Photo Tour
Active · Swift · Full Details →
A field photography assistant for iPhone. It shows a live camera preview with composition overlays — horizon level, rule of thirds, compass — and automates repeatable workflows such as bracketing and focus stacking. Planned scene analysis will suggest capture timing.
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