KStars

KStars is a planetarium from the KDE project that doubles as a control desk for astrophotography. The sky map shows stars from catalogues that can be extended by download, the planets, the Moon, comets and asteroids and deep-sky objects, for any date and any observing site. Objects are found by name or catalogue designation, and the display can be run forwards or backwards through time.

Around the map sit planning tools: an observation list collecting targets for a session, altitude-against-time graphs showing when an object stands high enough to be worth pointing at, and a calendar of sky events. A FITS viewer opens captured frames with histogram and stretch controls.

The Ekos module turns KStars into an imaging controller. Through INDI drivers it operates mounts, cameras, focusers, filter wheels and rotators; it plate-solves an exposure to determine where the telescope is actually pointing, runs autofocus and autoguiding, and executes capture sequences under a scheduler. That side depends on INDI, a stack aimed at Unix-like systems, and on hardware with a driver.