Community tools and Hobby projects

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Salvatore Iovene avatar

This thread is for individual members who would like to share small, non-commercial astronomy or astrophotography tools they’ve built as hobby projects.

To keep the forum organized and focused, standalone promotional topics for external apps, platforms, or services are not allowed. Please use this thread instead.

What qualifies

  • An individual hobby project.

  • Astronomy or astrophotography related.

  • Free to use at the time of posting.

  • Not operated by a company, startup, or commercial entity.

  • Not selling products, subscriptions, access, or services.

  • Not used to promote, funnel users to, or build awareness for another commercial product, service, or brand.

  • Not collecting users for a launch campaign, waitlist, or growth marketing effort.

Rules

  • One post per project (responding to specific questions is allowed).

  • Keep the description concise.

  • No affiliate or referral links.

  • No repeated bumps or promotional updates.

  • If the project later becomes commercial, do not create new promotional posts.

Moderators may remove posts that do not align with the spirit of this thread, and posts that don’t meet these criteria may be removed without prior notice.

If your project has already been announced on AstroBin, please do not repost it here. We keep a single announcement per project to avoid duplication.

Discussion and constructive feedback are welcome.

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Łukasz Pożarlik avatar

Hi everyone 👋

I’d like to share a hobby project I’ve been building: stargazer.earth.

It actually started as a simple tool to notify me about good observing weather - because, as many of you probably know, clear nights are rare… especially when you’re a busy dad trying to plan ahead 😉

Over time, it evolved into a more complete platform for planning and tracking astronomical observations. With 120+ users across all continents, it’s both exciting and slightly overwhelming. I’m doing my best to make sure it’s truly useful in practice.

What it currently offers:

  • 🔭 Smart weather notifications (fully customizable - cloud cover, precipitation, visibility, even azimuth limits if you observe from a balcony)

  • 🗂 Equipment management (scopes, eyepieces, filters, cameras)

  • 📊 Observation session tracking with duration logs & statistics

  • 🌌 Built-in Messier, NGC & Solar System catalogs

  • 🤖 AI assistant (Nova) for planning help and potential session summaries

The app is completely free and will remain so as long as I can cover the hosting costs. I may consider optional donations or small support tiers in the future, but for now it’s just a side project built by one astronomy enthusiast for fellow enthusiasts.

I’d love to hear your thoughts - especially from astrophotographers here on AstroBin.

Clear skies to everyone (and greetings to all busy dads out there!)


Łukasz

Stellar Nomads avatar

Great idea, Salvatore.

Well, I made a small project to make it easier for astronomers to visualize their field of view, I added the most common equipment, and I can continue adding if there are any requests.

Enjoy!

it is here: https://www.stellarnomads.com/fov/

📷 image.pngimage.png

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Eduardo Piñas avatar

Hi everyone!

A few months ago I launched CelestView, an Android app that lets you open and view FITS, XISF, and TIFF files right on your phone or tablet.

Sometimes someone shares a FITS file with you and you can’t check it until you get back home to your PC. That used to happen to me all the time, and whenever I searched Google Play I couldn’t find an app that did what I needed—so I decided to build one.

Key features

  • Astronomical image viewer: Open and inspect your captures with high fidelity directly on your mobile device

  • FITS support: Easily open FITS (Flexible Image Transport System), the standard format in astrophotography

  • TIFF support: Open stretched or unstretched TIFF files

  • New: Open PixInsight XISF files (including files with multiple attachments)

  • Quick export: Convert to common formats like PNG or JPG without using desktop software—great for sharing results instantly

Upcoming updates

I’m committed to continuously improving CelestView. Future updates (besides quality and performance improvements) will include:

  • Support for viewing DSLR RAW images

If you’d like to try it out, I’d love to hear your feedback (features you miss, devices it works/doesn’t work on, etc.).

Download link

chvvkumar avatar

I made a Tempermonkey script to open targets from Astrobin in Stellarium.

This adds buttons to Astrobin page’s identified objects list at the top clicking which takes you to the target, zoom in to the target and lock on to it in the view (either with or with Oculars enabled).

To work it needs Tempermonkey and Remote Control Stellarium plugin enabled.

https://github.com/chvvkumar/cloudynights_customization/blob/main/astrobin-stellarium.js

image.png

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