This astronomical portal is a self-made automatic remote astronomical observatory with a convenient interface for managing and monitoring its operation. The portal provides an opportunity to view data received by the telescope and processed photographs. The server part ensures the stable operation of the portal and the receipt of data from the observatory controller, as well as the loading of FITS frames. The Arduino controller has firmware that allows you to manage the power of devices, collect information from temperature and humidity sensors, as well as other telemetry parameters that are transmitted to this portal.
The site is made on a microservice architecture; there is a separate client application (site) and a server that processes data from the observatory, uploads it to the database and allows visualization on the site. Thus, all data that has ever been received by the observatory is stored on the site. You can see what objects were photographed, at what time, what filters were used, what the moon phase was, the weather and much more.
General statistics of the observatory, random processed photos and an event calendar displaying the total weather for the night, sunrise and sunset, and footage for the night.
Materials from the telegram channel are automatically duplicated here for ease of reading.
Interactive map of objects photographed by the observatory.
This section stores all processed photos. Photo processing is done manually and takes time. On the page of each photo there is detailed information about the photo, parameters and, of course, the ability to download it in full resolution.
A list of all objects that the observatory records. The table shows the total number of frames captured, shutter speed in general and for each filter. When you go to the page of each object, you will see deviation graphs, a table of frames and a list of processed photographs of the object.
All information in real time from the telescope equipment - online cameras, power status of devices, current weather data and graphs of sensors inside the observatory.
This is an amateur and completely homemade astronomical observatory project. The goal of the project is to teach the skills of building objects offline, writing drivers in C++, scripts in Python to automate the process of equipment operation. In addition, obtaining good astrophotography of deep-sky objects, observing comets, asteroids and searching for supernovae and variable stars.
The observatory controller is based on Ardunio (AVR) and connects to the observatory network. The controller is controlled by means of HTTP requests, which send commands to switch the state of the relay and other elements of the power load. The controller's WEB client sends statistics to a remote server (API) at a specified time interval. The web interface in this repository displays statistics from the backend server and sends commands to the observatory controller through it.
- Arduino Mega 2560
- INA219 I2C sensor
- Relay shield 16 channel
- DHT22
- DS18B20
The response format is JSON, the response structure is always the same, only payload will change in different APIs
{
"status": true,
"payload": []
}Statistic: Frames, photos, exposure and data volume
/api/get/statistic/summary
{
"photos": 63,
"objects": 89,
"frames": 5987,
"exposure": 1785611,
"filesize": 196289
}Statistic: List days in a month (ex: 2022-05) when the observatory worked (stat)
/api/get/statistic/month?date=${string}
[
{
"date": "2022-05-06",
"exposure": 4500,
"frames": 15,
"objects": [
"M_51"
]
},
{
"date": "2022-05-07",
"exposure": 13800,
"frames": 46,
"objects": [
"M_51"
]
}
]Catalog: List of directory objects
/api/get/catalog/list
[
{
"name": "V1405_Cas",
"title": "Новая Кассиопеи (V1405 Cas)",
"text": "Вспышка классической новой звезды, представляющая собой взрыв на поверхности белого карлика.",
"category": "Сверхновые",
"ra": 351.147,
"dec": 61.1585
}
]Catalog: Item directory object by name
/api/get/catalog/item?object=${string}
{
"name": "V1405_Cas",
"title": "Новая Кассиопеи (V1405 Cas)",
"text": "Вспышка классической новой звезды, представляющая собой взрыв на поверхности белого карлика.",
"category": "Сверхновые",
"ra": 351.147,
"dec": 61.1585
}Photo: List of all photos (without photo params)
/api/get/photo/list
[
{
"object": "NGC_896",
"date": "2022-02-09",
"file": "NGC_896-710m-2022.02.09",
"ext": "jpg",
"author": {
"name": "Author name",
"link": ""
}
}
]Photo: list of all photos of one object (by obj name)
/api/get/photo/list?object=${string}
[
{
"object": "M_33",
"date": "2020-12-25",
"file": "M33-630m-2020.12.25",
"ext": "jpg",
"author": {
"name": "Author name",
"link": ""
},
"parameters": {
"date": "2020-08-26 23:10:55",
"exposure": 45367,
"frames": 214,
"filesizes": 7016,
"filters": {
"Luminance": {
"exposure": 13203,
"frames": 45
},
"Red": {
"exposure": 11138,
"frames": 75
},
"Green": {
"exposure": 8722,
"frames": 51
},
"Blue": {
"exposure": 7500,
"frames": 25
},
"Ha": {
"exposure": 4804,
"frames": 18
},
"OIII": {
"exposure": 0,
"frames": 0
},
"SII": {
"exposure": 0,
"frames": 0
}
}
}
}
]Object: list of all captured objects
/api/get/object/list
[
{
"name": "NGC_925",
"date": "2021-10-10 00:51:07",
"exposure": 51300,
"frames": 171,
"Luminance": 12900,
"Red": 14700,
"Green": 13500,
"Blue": 10200,
"Ha": 0,
"OIII": 0,
"SII": 0
}
]Object: list of only the names of all captured objects
/api/get/object/names
[
"Vesta_A807_FA",
"V1405_Cas",
"UGC_6930",
"Sh2_132",
"Sh2_109",
"Sh2_103",
"Sh2-168"
]Object: Get the params of the captured object (by name)
/api/get/object/item?object=${string}
{
"date": "2020-08-26 23:10:55",
"exposure": 45367,
"frames": 214,
"filesizes": 7016,
"filters": {
"Luminance": {
"exposure": 13203,
"frames": 45
},
"Red": {
"exposure": 11138,
"frames": 75
},
"Green": {
"exposure": 8722,
"frames": 51
},
"Blue": {
"exposure": 7500,
"frames": 25
},
"Ha": {
"exposure": 4804,
"frames": 18
},
"OIII": {
"exposure": 0,
"frames": 0
},
"SII": {
"exposure": 0,
"frames": 0
}
}
}File: List of all object files (by name)
/api/get/file/list?object=${string}
[
{
"id": "fe03bc1c2cfd97de1f97edbdd57e3acb",
"name": "M33_Light_Red_300_secs_2020-08-27T03-45-00_010.fits",
"date": "2020-08-26 22:39:59",
"filter": "Red",
"exposure": 300,
"temp": -10,
"offset": 10,
"gain": 120,
"dec": 30.5457,
"ra": 23.4641
}
]This project consists of 3 main sections:
- [ firmware ] Firmware for Arduino microcontroller (AVR), observatory controller control unit.
- [ server ] Backend server.
- [ client ] Observatory control interface. Written in ReactJS + Redux (use Node and NPM). To debug an application on a local server, you must first install the required dependencies:
yarn installInstalling dependencies.
The portal requires hosting with PHP and MySQL support.
- In the root directory on the hosting, create a folder
api. Upload files to it from thebackendrepository directory. - Install dependencies for PHP (CodeIgniter v4 framework), to do this, run the command in the
apiroot directory (where the backend was loaded and where thecomposer.jsonfile is located):
php composer.phar installIf the hosting does not support composer, then this can be done on the local computer, and after installation, upload all files to the server, to the api directory.
3. Create a database, upload the MySQL dump there from the MySQL_dump_DD.MM.YYY.sql file, which is in the root of the backend repository. Don't forget to delete the dump from the hosting!
4. In the hosting api root directory, rename the env file to .env. Then edit it and configure the database connection and other parameters:
Observatory location data (for calculating the Moon and Sun):
app.appTimezone = Asia/Yekaterinburg
app.timezone = 5
app.latitude = 51.7727
app.longitude = 55.0988
The URL of the Arduino controller (relay control) and a link to a static image from the observatory's camera (the section will be described later).
app.observatory.controller = http://observatory.local/
app.observatory.webcam_1 = http://observatory.local:8010/webcamphoto/image.jpg
app.observatory.webcam_2 = http://observatory.local:8020/webcamphoto/image.jpg
For the news section, integration with the social network VK is used. For it to work, you need to generate an application key, a token.
app.vkapi.token =
app.vkapi.domain =
app.vkapi.version = 5.145
Login and password for authorization on the portal (keep it secret) and session lifetime in seconds:
app.user_username = login
app.user_password = password
app.user_session_time = 120
Set up a MySQL database connection:
database.default.hostname = localhost
database.default.database = your_DB
database.default.username = your_USER
database.default.password = your_PASSWORD
database.default.DBDriver = MySQLi
- Installation and configuration of the Portal API is now complete. Now you need to configure and install the interface. On your local computer, in the frontend directory of the repository, rename the
envfile to.env. Edit it:
NEXT_PUBLIC_API_HOST = 'https://YOUR_API_HOST/api/'
NEXT_PUBLIC_LAT = 51.7
NEXT_PUBLIC_LON = 55.2
The NEXT_PUBLIC_API_HOST parameter is responsible for determining the URL to the backend server API. If, following the instructions above, you placed the source code in the api directory on the server, then the value of this parameter will be: https://your_domain.com/api/. For example, you can use my API to test your portal.
6. Now we need to copy the interface. To do this, you must have nodeJS installed. In the frontend directory run the following commands (after exiting the previous one)
yarn install
yarn export- After the last command completes, a ready-made portal will be created in the
frontend/build directory. All files can be packed and uploaded to the root directory (theapidirectory should already be there) of your site. Happy use :)