The Namibian winter

In the Namibian winter from May to September, the probability of a cloudless night sky is 85%. Especially at the new moon, the naked eye has a breathtaking view of the Milky Way and the infinity of the universe, which awakens in many a person the longing to reach for the stars, to explore and understand them. And so it is not surprising that Namibia, with its good conditions, offers ideal locations for star observatories. Year after year, amateur astronomers make a pilgrimage to specially equipped astro farms to observe and photograph the sky. A small contribution to getting closer to the stars is now being made by the development team around Oliver Heuser at the Namibian Tivoli Southern Sky Guest Farm.

A telescope in Namibia

There is a Hypergraph reflector telescope. It is mounted on a mount from Astro Systeme Austria and equipped with cameras and other equipment from  Finger Lakes Instrumentation. The interaction of the equipment makes it possible to reduce external disturbing factors, such as wind movements, to a minimum for the photography of celestial objects. In this way, astro-photographers produce razor-sharp photos even with several hours of exposure.

What is Astro software and if so, how many?

For controlling the system and taking professional photos, software is usually used that runs on commercially available computer systems. There is only one problem: the market for astronomy software is very diverse and is developing rapidly. But this also makes it confusing. Many an astronomer has developed his own application for sky observation as an end in itself and made it available to the community. Thus, there are numerous applications for every device, for every eventuality. Most of them run only on Windows, more rarely on a Mac or under Linux.

In order to get a grip on this confusion of applications, a solution is needed. It should be easy to use and offer the same possibilities that were previously realised by many different programmes.