NightScribe: user guide
NightScribe is a desktop application for amateur astronomical observatories that covers the full life cycle of an observing project:
Plan the night: it suggests the best targets visible from your observatory tonight (NEOs, comets, PCCP candidates, supernovae, variable stars, exoplanet transits), each with a 0-100 score and the reason behind the suggestion.
Understand each object: it translates orbital and physical parameters into clear explanations, so you know what you are looking at and why it matters.
Capture and reduce: it talks to CCDciel or NINA/PINS to launch your captures and, in its FITS editor, it calibrates, stacks and measures your images: photometry (variables, exoplanets, supernovae) and MPC-ready astrometry of minor bodies.
Report it: it drafts bilingual (ES/EN) posts and tweets, with charts ready for social media.
Why does NightScribe exist? The bottleneck of an amateur observatory is not the telescope: it is deciding what to observe, reducing the data without fighting five different programs, and publishing the results. NightScribe joins those three parts in one place, with scientific judgement.
How to read this guide
The chapters follow the natural order of an observing night, so you can read them start to finish or jump to the one you need:
| Chapter | What you will find |
|---|---|
| 00. Concepts | The mental model: project, visit, run, series, report |
| 01. First steps | Installation, initial wizard and observatory settings |
| 02. Planning the night | The Tonight view, the score, the sky calendar |
| 03. Projects | Creating and tracking projects: from the card to publication |
| 04. Campaigns and vigils | Follow-up campaigns and variable star vigils |
| 05. Capture | CCDciel or NINA/PINS, sequences and image calibration |
| 06. Photometry | Measuring brightness, series, light curves and periods |
| 07. Astrometry | Positions of asteroids and comets, and the MPC report |
| 08. Reporting it | Posts, tweets and charts |
| 09. The command line | Appendix: all of the above from the terminal |
| 10. Settings | Reference appendix: every Settings section, what it decides and when to touch it |
| 11. The assistant | Ask about the object, the app or the editor |
| 12. The graphics card | What it accelerates, how to turn it on, OpenCL against CUDA |
| 13. Understanding an object | The object card: parameters explained, charts, capture chips |
| 14. When something goes wrong | No network, the solver, the MPC report, where the log is |
Conventions:
Button, tab and menu names appear in bold, exactly as you will see them in the application.
The "Why?" boxes explain the physics or observing practice behind an option, so you can choose with judgement. You can skip them without losing the thread.
Command examples are shown in
code.
This guide does not aim to be exhaustive: it aims to get you observing sooner and better. If you miss something, open an issue in the repository.