Collaborative imaging · Free for Windows
Imaging together has never been this easy.
Start a project on any target — one field or a mosaic — and open it to everyone at the observatory. Everyone who joins shoots for the same image, progress counts up on its own, and every person's hours are on the board. It drops seamlessly into N.I.N.A., and it comes with a fully fledged control program of its own.
Windows 10/11 · ASCOM and Alpaca equipment · N.I.N.A. plugin or standalone
Live from Rockwood
What our telescopes are pointing at right now.
Collaborations
Image together. Starfront keeps score.
Pick a target, say which filters the project needs, and open it to the group. That's the whole job: the work splits itself across every telescope that joins, progress is tracked by filter, and each person's hours show next to their Discord picture.
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Anyone can start one. Anyone can join.
Draw a region in the planner — one field or a mosaic — and open it to the group. Joining someone else's project is a single click. -
Hours add up fast.
Every frame from every telescope pools into the same project, so together the group reaches integration depth no single scope could manage alone. -
Works with what you have.
A fixed-filter rig takes part in the filters it carries and leaves the rest to the others.
Tonight's plan
A collaboration goes in tonight's plan like any other target.
Auto-arrange fits it around the rest of your night, your telescope picks up its own panels and filters, and every frame you save is reported back and counted.
Community planetarium
Tonight's sky, with everyone on it.
The planetarium draws the observatory's whole night: stars, deep-sky objects, the Moon and planets, your camera's field on the sky, and a mark for every telescope that is checked in, with what it is shooting. Your own telescope stands out with your Discord picture. Scrub the clock forward to see how the night will go, click any object to frame it, and send a plate solve straight to the chart.
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Everyone's telescope, live.
Each one checks in every few minutes with its pointing and target. See who is on the Heart Nebula tonight before you are. -
Your own, unmistakable.
Your scope carries your Discord picture, a halo, its camera's field, and its target, so you never lose it among the others. -
The night ahead.
Step the clock forward an hour at a time and watch the horizon, the meridian and your target move.
In N.I.N.A., or on its own
Seamless in N.I.N.A. Complete on its own.
Already run N.I.N.A.? The Starfront Collaboration plugin drops collaborations straight into the Advanced Sequencer you already use, with a transit graph for each one so you can see at a glance how well placed the target is tonight. Prefer one program for everything? Starfront is also a fully fledged control program on its own: planning, sequencing, equipment control and the planetarium, with collaborations built in.
- The plugin lives in Starfront's own plugin repository, not the public list, so
tell N.I.N.A. where to look once: go to Options → General →
Plugin Repositories, press + and enter exactly
https://collab.starfront.space/nina - On the Plugins tab, open Available — Starfront Collaboration is listed. Press Install, then restart N.I.N.A. (plugins only load at start-up).
- Under Options → Plugins → Starfront Collaboration, press Sign in with Discord so your frames are credited to you. Any member of the Starfront Discord can sign in — there is no separate account.
- Join a collaboration from the Starfront panel on the Imaging tab, then drop the Starfront collaboration container into your Advanced Sequencer where a target would go. Your usual triggers — autofocus, meridian flip, dither — keep working around it.
Needs N.I.N.A. 3.2 or later and a working plate solver.
One target. Everyone's hours.
Start a collaboration or join one — imaging together has never been easier.
Windows 10/11 · ASCOM and Alpaca equipment · free
