Dashboard Widgets
Understanding the dashboard widgets and quality analysis features
Dashboard Widgets
DeepSkyLog’s dashboard is built from configurable widgets that provide different views into your imaging data. You can add, remove, and rearrange widgets to create a dashboard tailored to your workflow.
Session Summary
The Session Summary widget provides an at-a-glance overview of each observing night. Use the arrow buttons to navigate between nights.
What’s Displayed
- Date and day of week with navigation arrows
- Location, total exposure time, frame count, and session time span
- Project names imaged during the night (clickable, with mosaic panels collapsed)
- Quality metric cards: HFR, Eccentricity, Guiding RMS, Usable %
- Filter breakdown with user-defined filter colors
- Details button opening per-project quality breakdown
- Quality warnings when sustained degradation is detected
Understanding the Metrics
Each metric card shows:
- The median value — more robust than the average because it’s not skewed by a few bad frames
- Standard deviation (σ) — shown for HFR, Eccentricity, and Guiding RMS where consistency matters. A low σ means stable conditions; a high σ indicates variability
Note: FWHM is not shown separately because it is linearly correlated with HFR (~1.7× ratio for Gaussian profiles). They measure the same thing — star size.
Frame Quality Score
Every frame in DeepSkyLog receives a quality score from 0 to 100. This score is visible in the Session Summary details dialog, the Project Activity log, and the Project Details session insights.
How the Score is Calculated
The score combines two independent assessments. A frame must pass both to be considered usable:
Final Score = minimum(Relative Score, Absolute Score)
This design ensures that a frame cannot pass just because it’s “consistent with tonight’s session” if tonight’s conditions were objectively terrible.
Relative Score (vs Session Baseline)
The relative score measures how a frame compares to the best frames captured in the same session and project. It uses the median of the best-performing half of frames as the baseline for each metric.
| Metric | Weight | What it measures | Scoring |
|---|---|---|---|
| HFR | 40% | Focus quality (star tightness) | 100 at baseline, drops 2 points per 1% above baseline |
| Guiding RMS | 30% | Tracking accuracy (arcseconds) | 100 at baseline, drops 1.5 points per 1% above baseline |
| Eccentricity | 20% | Star roundness (0=round, 1=elongated) | 100 at baseline, drops 2 points per 1% above baseline |
| Star Count | 10% | Transparency (clouds/fog) | 100 at baseline, drops linearly below baseline |
The relative score is a weighted average of these individual metric scores.
Per-Project Baselines
Each project is scored independently. Different targets at different altitudes, with different equipment, naturally produce different metric values. Comparing an Ha narrowband session to a broadband session would be unfair.
Per-Filter Star Count
Star count baselines are computed per filter. An Ha frame naturally detects far fewer stars than a Luminance frame through the same telescope. Comparing across filters would incorrectly flag narrowband frames as cloudy.
Absolute Score (Seeing in Arcseconds)
The absolute score rates the frame against universal seeing quality standards, regardless of how other frames in the session performed. It converts the measured FWHM from pixels to arcseconds using the equipment’s pixel scale:
Pixel Scale (arcsec/px) = (Pixel Size µm / Focal Length mm) × 206.265
FWHM (arcsec) = FWHM (pixels) × Pixel Scale
| Seeing (FWHM) | Absolute Score | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| ≤ 2.0" | 100 | Excellent |
| 2.0" – 3.0" | 75 – 100 | Good |
| 3.0" – 4.0" | 50 – 75 | Average |
| 4.0" – 6.0" | 20 – 50 | Poor |
| > 6.0" | 0 – 20 | Very poor |
When equipment pixel scale is not available (no equipment configured), the absolute score defaults to 100 and only the relative score is used.
Score Thresholds
| Score | Color | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| ≥ 70 | White | Good quality — use for stacking |
| 50 – 69 | Yellow | Marginal — may be usable depending on total integration time |
| < 50 | Red | Poor quality — likely degraded by focus, clouds, or tracking issues |
A frame is counted as “usable” when its score is ≥ 50.
Example: Good Night
A session with 95 frames, 0.91"/px pixel scale, two targets:
- IC 2169 Panel 2 (43 frames): Best HFR 1.98px (FWHM ~3.2"), but frames 28-43 degraded to HFR 2.7-3.8px. Absolute scores drop to 40-55%, relative scores drop due to deviation from baseline → 28/43 usable (65%)
- NGC 4168 (52 frames): Consistent HFR ~2.6px (FWHM ~4.4"), slightly poor seeing. Absolute scores ~45-50%, a few frames with elevated guiding rejected → 48/52 usable (92%)
Example: Poor Night
A session with 59 frames, 0.91"/px pixel scale, FWHM 5.2-7.0px (seeing 4.7-6.4"):
- Every frame has FWHM > 4.7", giving absolute scores of 19-39%
- Even the “best” frames are objectively poor → 0/59 usable (0%)
- The relative score is high (frames are consistent with each other), but the absolute score correctly identifies this as unusable data
Where Scores Appear
- Session Summary widget — Usable % card on dashboard, with Details button for per-project breakdown
- Session Details dialog — Per-project usable counts, individual frame scores via “View Frames”
- Project Activity log — “Q” column on individual frames (expanded view), “Seeing” column on sessions with star rating
- Project Details — Quality summary widget in Session Insights showing overall usable percentage and best seeing achieved
Degradation Warnings
The Session Summary widget detects when quality degrades partway through a session — a common situation caused by clouds rolling in, dew forming on optics, or focus drift.
How Detection Works
- Uses the first half of each session as a quality reference
- Computes the IQR (Interquartile Range) and sets a statistical fence
- Flags when 5 or more consecutive frames exceed the fence
This distinguishes sustained degradation (real problem) from occasional one-off spikes (normal variation).
What Triggers a Warning
- HFR degradation: Focus drift, dew, seeing deterioration
- Eccentricity degradation: Tracking issues, wind, flexure
Example warning:
⚠ HFR degraded from frame #28 (16 consecutive frames affected)
Seeing Column
The Project Activity log shows a Seeing column for each session, converting mean FWHM to arcseconds:
| Seeing | Rating |
|---|---|
| ≤ 2.0" | ★★★ (Excellent) |
| 2.0" – 3.0" | ★★ (Good) |
| 3.0" – 4.0" | ★ (Average) |
| > 4.0" | No stars (Poor) |
RMS vs Pixel Scale Warning
In the per-project details dialog, if the median guiding RMS exceeds the equipment’s pixel scale, a warning is shown:
⚠ Median guiding RMS (2.35") exceeds pixel scale (1.15"/px) — stars will be elongated
This means the mount’s tracking error is larger than a single pixel, which directly causes star trails in the image.
Night Grouping
Sessions are grouped by the FrameGroup date, which represents the observing night rather than the UTC calendar date. Frames captured after midnight are correctly attributed to the session that started the evening before.
Metrics Chart
The Metrics Chart widget displays HFR, FWHM, Eccentricity, Guiding RMS, and other per-frame metrics over time. Features include:
- Multi-metric overlay with independent Y-axes and color coding
- Auto-scaling Y-axis that adjusts to the actual data range
- Scroll to zoom, drag to select a range, and arrow buttons to pan
- Per-filter coloring in single-metric mode
- Expand button to view the chart in a full-screen dialog
Other Widgets
DeepSkyLog includes 40+ dashboard widgets across categories:
- Statistics: Session Summary, Metrics Chart, Project Statistics, Good/Bad Nights
- Projects: Recent Projects, Projects Nearing Completion, Active Projects
- Activity: Activity Heatmap, Recent Frames, Cloud Cover History
- Astronomy: Moon Phases, Target Tracking, Weather Forecast