Sky Map

An Aladin sky map to explore the sky, overlay catalogs and your captured frames, and plan new frames

The Sky Map is a full-page Aladin view of the sky. It is the most free-form screen in DeepSkyLog: you can browse the whole sky, search for any object, jump to one of your projects, and plot what you have already captured around it.

Sky map with catalog overlays, captured-frame rectangles, and a target’s imaging window

Overlays you can toggle

A vertical bar of toggle buttons on the right controls what is drawn on top of the sky, so you can keep the view as simple or as busy as you want.

  • Grid - show or hide the coordinate grid.
  • Catalog annotations - overlay objects from several deep-sky catalogs, including Messier (M), NGC, IC, Sharpless (Sh2), and dark/emission nebulae (LBN, LDN, vdB).
  • Captured frames - display the frames you have already photographed as rectangles on the sky, so you can see at a glance what is covered and where the gaps are.
  • Equipment overlay - draw the field of view of your selected telescope and camera.
  • Color and opacity - adjust how the overlays are tinted so they stay readable against the background survey.

Click any catalog object or a captured frame to open a side panel with its details, including the reference frame and its imaging window.

Planning a new frame or mosaic

The field-of-view preview lets you lay out a new frame on the sky. Choose an equipment profile and DeepSkyLog uses its focal length and camera pixel scale to size the rectangle to your real field of view. You can rotate it, set rows, columns, and overlap to plan a mosaic, then save the result to an observation list.

Sharing

The Share button creates a link to the exact sky position, field of view, and overlay settings, so you can pass the view to someone else without screenshots. A shared link opens the map read-only at that spot.

  • Mosaics for turning planned panels into an actual mosaic project.