Two side panels turn the sky canvas into a planning instrument: Sky Overlays (green tab) draws reference lines, your horizon, and your project fleet on the sky; Sky Catalogs (purple tab) controls twelve deep-sky object catalogs.
Project Overlays #
Every project can appear on the sky as its FOV rectangle, color-coded by status – each status individually toggleable: Planning (gray), Active (blue), Draft, Favorites (gold), Unfinished (orange), Completed (green). Click any rectangle for a popup with the project name, coordinates, thumbnail, and a Go to Project button. This is your fleet’s sky map: see at a glance where this season’s work is concentrated and what sky you have not touched.
Coordinate Overlays #
- Equatorial Grid – RA/Dec gridlines.
- Alt/Az Grid – altitude/azimuth lines that stay level with your site’s horizon.
- Ecliptic – the solar path (also where planets and zodiacal light live).
- Galactic Plane – the Milky Way equator, useful when hunting low-extinction sky.
Observer Overlays #
- Horizon – the flat 0° altitude line.
- Custom Horizon (.hrz) – the site’s real obstruction profile from Equipment → Observatory, drawn in orange. See Custom Horizons.
- Horizon panorama – beyond the line, you can load a 360° panorama image of your actual horizon (2048×1024 PNG with transparent sky). Three sliders align it: BG Rotate (0-360° azimuth), BG Shift (±20° vertical), and BG Darkness (0-0.9). Your real trees, on the real sky.
- Meridian Line and Zenith Marker (both on by default) – see at a glance when a target transits (and when a flip would happen).
- Heatmap – shades the sky green-to-red by observability, with an Altitude threshold slider (0-60°, default 30°). A fast visual answer to “where is the good sky right now?”
Solar System Overlays #
- Sun Position and Moon Position markers (moon on by default, with phase).
- Planet Positions – Mercury through Saturn, labeled.
- Daylight Sky – tints the sky blue in daytime, fading through twilight to dark. Scrub the timeline with this on and you can see when the sky gets dark enough to image.
The Twelve Catalogs #
Each catalog row has a checkbox, a color/shape swatch, and a density slider (0-100%) that filters how many of its objects draw – keeping dense catalogs readable at wide zooms:
| Catalog | Contents | Default density |
|---|---|---|
| Popular Objects | ~200 hand-curated showpieces | 100% |
| Messier | the 110 Messier objects | 100% |
| NGC | 7,840 galaxies, nebulae, clusters | 45% |
| IC | 5,386 fainter objects | 40% |
| Caldwell | 109 bright favorites | 70% |
| Sharpless | 312 H-II emission regions | 70% |
| Barnard | 348 dark nebulae | 25% |
| LBN | 1,445 bright nebulae | 55% |
| LDN | 1,602 dark nebulae | 55% |
| Supernova Remnants | 294 SNRs | 60% |
| Planetary Nebula | 3,000+ PNe | 70% |
| Mandel-Wilson | the “unexplored nebulae” collection | 100% |
All catalogs are embedded – no internet needed. Clicking any object selects it and opens the target HUD with Web / Astrobin / SIMBAD research buttons.
Names & Angular-Size Circles #
Show Names labels objects (M31, NGC 7000…). Angular-Size Circles draws each object as a circle scaled to its true size on the sky – so you instantly see whether a nebula fills your FOV rectangle or drowns in it. A companion slider (FOV ≤ 1-25°, default 5°) hides the circles when zoomed out too far for sizes to be meaningful.