The moon does not ruin every filter equally: 3nm Ha shrugs off moonlight that makes a Luminance sub worthless. Astro PM models this per filter, so a bright-moon night is automatically spent on narrowband instead of being wasted.
How a Profile Works #
A moon avoidance profile assigns each filter its tolerance for the moon – how much separation and how dark a moon it needs before subs count as safe. During scheduling, each moment of the night is evaluated per filter: a slot can be moon-safe for SII yet unsafe for RGB, and the engine allocates accordingly.
Project Default vs. Named Profiles #
Two kinds:
- Project Default – a per-project profile, editable inline, affecting only that project.
- Named profiles – global, reusable across all projects (“Narrowband Standard”, “Broadband Strict”). Edit a named profile once and every project using it follows.
Effect on Scheduling and Charts #
Profiles shape everything downstream: the nightly simulator plans narrowband into moonlit hours and protects dark hours for broadband, the target charts’ green bands reflect per-filter moon reality, and NINA executes the same rules at the observatory. If a moonlit night ends up all-Ha, that is the profile doing its job.