Welcome to another Electronic Assisted Astronomy session from the South Coast of the UK. It has been a little time since I last managed to get out and observe.

As usual, out the on the decking, we are using a Celestron CPC800 telescope and Altair Astro 294c colour camera. The software is the latest version of SharpCap 4.1, AstroPlanner and for tonight Starry Night Pro 8.

In this session we are going to look at various deepsky and solarsystem objects as well as use Starry Night Pro 8 and the new inbuilt SharpCap feature, SharpSolve for our plate solving requirements.

Starry Night Pro 8 suffers from not being able to be controlled remotely unlike other astronomy applications such as TheSky Pro, Stellarium, CdC or AstroPlanner to name but a few. However, it is possible to “roll” your own remote plugin using the Starry Night SDK (link below). I will make the remote plugin I created available for general ridicule on GitHub when it is complete.

As well as viewing the comet 12P PonsBrooks we are also going to use Starry Night Pro 8 to take us on a journey through the Solar System with the comet. Along the way we will look at the globular cluster M92, The open cluster NGC188 ( Caldwell 1), The Dumbbell Nebula ( M27 ) and The Ring Nebula ( M57 ).

Starry Night Plugin SDK is available here https://support.simulationcurriculum....

The source and release code for the Starry Night 8 Plugin.
GitHub: https://github.com/Xio1996/SNRemoteCo...

There is also an “award winning” YouTube video :) which takes you through the simple installation process and demonstrates its features using the test client.

YouTube:    • Starry Night Remote Control Plugin  

Graphics courtesy of Starry Night® Starry Night Pro 8.1 / Simulation Curriculum Corp

Have fun.
Pete