I’ve been a computer geek for some time. I pretty much live and die by the computer and software that runs my scope. I currently have a pair of laptops and a pile of free or inexpensive software.<\/p>\n
Everyone needs a planetarium program. I started out with My Stars when I had my Dob, but now that I run a Celestron C11 and Star Master, I use Cartes du Ceil and Sky Tools 4 so I can control my scope and log observations from the same program. With a Dobsoinian mounted scope I needed something that could easily get me real time Alt Az coordinates for an object. And preferably track it in the sky. I found nothing that did this to my satisfaction, so I wrote Astro Helper.<\/p>\n
I have several other programs for session planning and to help me decide what to look at next. \u00a0These include many free programs like NexStar Observers List, RTGUI, and What’s Up.<\/p>\n
A few other essential programs are NexRemote to allow multiple programs to communicate with the telescope at the same time and Jupiter 2 to track that pesky red spot and the moons of Jupiter.<\/p>\n
For astrophotography, I use NINA, PHD2, and ASTAP. These three provide all I need for image acquisition. I do all my image processing with PixInsight.<\/p>\n
In 2025 I am starting the transition form Windows to Linux and I’m getting familiar with KStars & EKOS. They are not impressing me so far, but new is never comfortable at first.<\/p>\n
You can find links to each site on my links page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/content-sidebar.php","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-159","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casazza.net\/Home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casazza.net\/Home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casazza.net\/Home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casazza.net\/Home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casazza.net\/Home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/casazza.net\/Home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":745,"href":"https:\/\/casazza.net\/Home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/159\/revisions\/745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casazza.net\/Home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}