In Namibia you are particularly close to heaven. Astronomers in particular know and appreciate this, because the night sky over the South African country is clear and full of stars. There is no light pollution in this sparsely populated region of the world.
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, you can see with the naked eye a breathtaking view of the Milky Way and the infinity of the universe, which awakens in many people the longing to reach for the stars, explore them 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. The development team around Oliver Heuser is now making a small contribution to getting closer to the stars on the Namibian one Tivoli Southern Sky Guest Farm.
A telescope in Namibia
There is a hypergraph reflecting telescope there. It is mounted on a mount from the company Astro Systeme Austria and has cameras and more Equipment from the company Finger Lakes Instrumentation. The interaction of the devices makes it possible to reduce external disruptive factors, such as wind movements, to a minimum when photographing celestial objects. This means that astrophotographers can take razor-sharp photos even after exposure for several hours.
What is Astro software and if so, how many?
To control the system and take professional photos, software that is used on standard computer systems is usually used. There's just one problem: the astronomy software market is very diverse and developing rapidly. But this also makes it confusing. Many astronomers have developed their own sky observation application for its own sake and made it available to the community. There are numerous applications for every device and every eventuality. Most of them only run on Windows, rarely on a Mac or Linux.
In order to deal with this application confusion, a solution is needed. It should be easy to use and offer the same options that have previously been implemented by many different programs.