Complete Feature Reference
MyAstroBoard combines an autonomous sky-planning engine, a real observing logbook, weather intelligence and space-tracking data into one self-hosted application. Everything below ships in the standard Docker image.
Your personal sky scheduler, powered by Astropy, Astroplan and Skyfield.
SkyTonight runs one hour after astronomical dawn and one hour before astronomical dusk, every day, in-process - no external container, no manual trigger. A six-hour fallback cycle keeps it reliable when the system clock cannot be trusted.
OpenNGC and OpenIC via PyOngc, Messier, Caldwell, Herschel 400, Pensack 500, LBN, Arp, Sharpless, Barnard, vdB, Abell planetaries and clusters - plus comets from the Minor Planet Center and every solar-system body from Skyfield ephemeris.
Each target is ranked with a dimensionless quality score: visibility (40%), sky quality (25%), object brightness (25%), viewing comfort (10%). Bonuses for planetary opposition (+0.20) and Messier objects (+0.05).
Polar azimuth/altitude projection with the full trajectory arc of every target for the night. Click any target to inspect it. Colour-coded by object type - DSO, planet, comet.
Per-target interactive charts: the exact observability window, the astronomical night band, your altitude and airmass constraints, and your own horizon profile if you have drawn one.
When is this object worth your time? Twelve months of dark hours above your altitude limit for any target, from your site - so a season is planned in one look rather than night by night.
Narrow the deep-sky table by angular size, surface brightness, an altitude window in the hours you can actually observe, whether it fits your camera's field of view, and how much integration it needs. Applied server-side, before the results are cut down.
Define your limits: minimum and maximum altitude, airmass threshold, object angular size, Moon separation angle, observability fraction. SkyTonight filters and ranks accordingly.
Fresh comet orbital data from the MPC, enriched from JPL. Comets go through the same AstroScore pipeline as DSOs, so the comparison is apples to apples.
From target selection to a printed plan - the whole night, before it happens.
Build a timeline from SkyTonight results. Add targets, set the order and durations, check field-of-view fit, and follow along live as the night progresses with a progress bar over your dark window.
Every timeline entry shows when its target crosses the meridian and how many minutes the flip will cost, so a long exposure is not scheduled straight across it.
Export your timeline to CSV for a spreadsheet or PDF for a field print. Take the plan to the eyepiece without a screen.
Up to five observing sites, managed by an admin and attributed per user. One-tap switching, and every site keeps its own forecasts, SkyTonight results and cache - a dark-sky trip is one click away from home.
Telescopes, cameras, mounts and accessories, combined into the setups you actually use. The field-of-view calculator matches each combination against SkyTonight targets. Combinations can be shared, so club gear lives in one place.
A multi-day Moon planner for new-Moon windows and best imaging periods, and a monthly phase calendar to schedule deep-sky sessions weeks ahead.
Draw your local horizon - trees, buildings, that hill to the south - and SkyTonight filters targets against the real obstructions, not a flat line.
What you actually did, what it adds up to, and what is still on the list.
A session is a trip: a site, an equipment combination, and one or more nights, each with its own times and measured conditions - SQM, seeing, transparency, Moon illumination. One entry per target records frames, sub-exposure, integration, a 0-5 rating and your notes.
A three-night dark-sky trip is one session, not three. Each target is attributed to the night it was captured on, and can carry its own equipment when you switched scopes halfway through.
The log, read back. Light collected over your whole logbook, this year and this month; hours per month; object types, constellations and equipment breakdowns; and your ratings against the conditions you recorded, with sample counts, never dressed up as a prediction.
Every capture placed on a sky chart against the Milky Way and the ecliptic, with the band that never rises from your site shaded out. Each dot grows with the integration behind it, and the top axis reads as the month that part of the sky is at its best.
Available darkness and moonless dark hours per month, computed from the Sun and the Moon at your site, next to the hours you actually logged. Useful from day one - it does not wait for your log to fill.
What you still want to capture, with priority and notes, sorted by upcoming visibility. Whether a wish has been fulfilled is recomputed from your log on every read, never stored - so it can never go stale.
Every object you have imaged, with your own pictures and notes. Browse it as a collection, on a map of where each capture was taken, or through the Catalogue Collection to see how much of Messier or Caldwell you have covered. Private per user, or shared across the household.
Import tonight's plan straight into a new session. Export any session as a print-friendly PDF. The log, the gallery and the wishlist all travel in the admin backup archive.
The observation log is permanently private: no shared mode, no admin-wide view, even where the Astrodex gallery is shared.
Serious tools, without the cliff. Nothing is hidden behind a mode switch.
A fresh install asks for your location and your level, then gets out of the way. SkyTonight runs its first calculation on its own; results appear within minutes.
A shortlist at the top of the deep-sky tab, matched to your skill level and your gear - the handful of targets that will actually work tonight, before the full table.
Every target carries a difficulty rating, so a faint galaxy and a bright open cluster are not presented as the same kind of evening.
A curated set of objects that reward a small telescope and a first camera, with the same visibility, scoring and planning tools as everything else.
Astronomy-specific weather analysis and sky condition monitoring.
Open-Meteo forecasts with imaging-specific overlays: cloud cover, transparency, wind speed and direction, humidity, and dew-risk alerts for your exact coordinates.
Atmospheric seeing and transparency predictions through the night, so the most demanding high-resolution sessions land on the nights that deserve them.
Current phase, illumination, rise and set times, and the precise dark window between astronomical twilight and moonrise - exactly how much dark time you have.
Civil, nautical and astronomical twilight for your location. Accurate sunrise, sunset and golden-hour data for solar imaging and outdoor planning.
The next eclipses with interactive altitude-vs-time charts for your specific location, phases and contact times included.
Geomagnetic activity and aurora visibility for mid-to-high latitudes, with the best viewing windows relative to your local night.
Everything happening in space - from your backyard.
Real-time International Space Station ground track. Know exactly where it is at any moment and when it passes over your location.
Upcoming visible passes with exact times, maximum elevation, approach and departure directions and duration - and the rare solar and lunar transits from your site, for the ISS and the Chinese space station.
Upcoming and past launches with countdown timers, mission details and video stream links. Powered by Launch Library 2.
Current ISS crew and every human currently in orbit. Mission, launch date, time in space and role - updated automatically.
Upcoming spacewalks, dockings, undockings and other spaceflight milestones from aggregated event feeds.
Oppositions, conjunctions, elongations, meteor showers and other significant sky events for the coming weeks - with multi-day events shown as active, not just counted down to a peak.
A single self-hosted container, built to be lived in.
One Docker Compose command. Pre-built images on Docker Hub, persistent data in a volume mount. Zero-config start: secrets are generated on first run, and anything that needs a value is set from the UI.
Admin, user and read-only roles. Session-based auth with bcrypt-hashed passwords. Each user keeps independent preferences - language, theme, density, start tab, notifications.
Your plan is about to start, the next target is up, darkness begins, an ISS transit or an eclipse is minutes away, the aurora index crossed your threshold, a meteor shower peaks. Each trigger has its own lead time, per user and per site.
Bring an AllSky camera in - live image, keogram, startrails, timelapse and sensor data on a dedicated Observatory tab. Hand a capture to MyAstroShine and get the processed picture back into your Astrodex.
English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, with browser auto-detection. A new language is one JSON file.
A documented REST API for every feature, behind authentication. For scripting, home automation, or a dashboard of your own.
Progressive Web App with a service worker and manifest. Install on desktop or phone for a native-like experience, with an offline fallback page.
Light, dark, auto, and a dedicated red night-vision mode that reaches into the charts - no blue or green dot on a red page. Comfortable or compact density, per user.
One archive with your configuration, users, equipment, gallery, observation log and wishlist, downloadable from the admin panel and restorable on any other instance.
Cache job status, last execution times, TTLs, scheduler state and application health - all in the admin panel.
No Docker socket access. Input validation on every API route. Role-based access control, secure session cookies, and regular GitHub Actions security scanning.
All Features, Zero Cost
MyAstroBoard is free and open source under AGPL-3.0. Every feature listed here is available in the standard Docker image with no premium tier or paywall.
