Do you own an observatory or telescopes?
Liberate yourself from clunky remote desktop connections
AUTOMATED, SELF-ORGANISING AND NETWORKED OBSERVATORY CONTROL SYSTEM
Through a combination of telescope control software, weather monitoring, orchestration, scheduling, data archival, and data processing systems, the NextAstro Control Suite (NACS) has been developed from the ground up, drawing on decades of professional astronomy and computational technology experience.
NACS has been developed independently and is not based on, or derived from, commonly used open-source observatory control code. As such, it provides a step change beyond older COM-centric, linear scripting technologies, delivering a next-generation observatory control platform for professional and pro-am observatories and observatory networks.
NACS is not just the best observatory control software available. A subscription also includes installation, commission and active continuing management by human beings while providing the capacity to share your telescope seamlessly with friends, family, the public – even your own customers – as well as set up your own robotic telescope networks. All orchestrated fluidly and with high security through the browser for scheduling, requesting, data access and analysis.
NACS is not just a piece of software,
The NextAstro team manages your observatory while you sleep
Pricing
- EUR 1120 /year
- AUD$ 1999 /year
Pricing
- EUR 110 /month
- AUD$ 199 /month
FEATURES:
Click the features to read more
NACS INTRODUCTION
What does NACS do? The NACS system is not just software, it is a management plan of which the software is just an agent.
NEXTASTRO WEATHER SYSTEM
Brief Overview of the NextAstro Weather System
OBSERVATORY REQUIREMENTS
This is a list of broadly the minimum requirements to get on the network. Every observatory is unique and may have different requirements…. but thats more than half the fun! So if you are unsure, just check in with us, we are happy to answer questions! But here is a good rough guide.
PLEASE ask us for advice before purchasing a computer! It is a key element that can make your rig fly if appropriately purchased and with guidance can be cheaper per unit power than what you might have been intending to spend. As our code is thoroughly multiprocessed, older computers with slower i5 CPUs that have more cores and that have slower RAM but more of it can outperform more modern i7 CPUs and faster RAM.
Preferably an i7 or better CPU with 4 or more cores for a >50Mpx camera. It does run on i5 CPUs though, although it is not as optimal but runs fine with <50 Mpx camera. Having said that, having a CPU with 12 i5 cores will likely run the system not quite twice as fast, but getting there, as a CPU with 6 i7 cores.
24GB/32GB RAM is optimal for larger cameras (>50Mpx camera), it can run fine on 16GB RAM for smaller cameras (and has with QHY600s before just not as optimally). It isn’t that it uses so much memory persay, but you do want a lot spare for Windows to use it for diskcaching. It isn’t quite a straightforward equation either, because the more CPU cores you have, the more RAM it uses to support each core to end up going faster.
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Windows 10 or 11 64-bit
Diskspace:
The code automatically manages your data storage, but you will need a lot of it, but it is also proportional to your camera size. At the same time, you may use a lot less than you usually do as the code automatically trims the directories and uploads your fits files. Here is a rough guide:
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Base installation: about 100GB, most of the space is astrometry indices and photometry catalogues.
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The calibration library created is extensive and robust. Allocate about 5GB per megapixel for this (e.g. for a QHY600, a calibration library can be about 300GB)
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Above this, there are a variety of settings to keep the datastore as trim as possible. For instance you don’t actually to store files at all on the disk, they can just sit on the disk until they are sent up to NextAstro… in that case you’d only need maybe 10GB. But if you wanted to keep a copy of all your fits files for a couple of nights on the disk, a >50Mpx camera can easily generate 500GB per night of data. Generally we recommend keeping a night or so of data, so allocate perhaps 10 GB per megapixel if you want to do that.
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So if you have a >50Mpx camera, you’d probably want something with about 1-1.5TB of space, although you could get away with maybe 500GB if you did not store any files locally.
It doesn’t actually need to be that great to be responsive to use, the instruction packets are quite small. It does need to be fast enough to upload your nights images (compressed about 4x) over the span of less than 24 hours. Most internet connections can handle this easily nowadays.
Really the minimum is an OTA on a mount with a camera and a focuser, that is basically it. It doesn’t even have to be a particularly good version of any of them, our software will do the best it can with what it is given. A poorly tracking mount can actually be beneficial to track’n’stack out bad pixels with drift. A poorly pointing mount is not a big deal as frequent platesolving is central to the system. As long as you have those four things, you are ready to roll. Obviously that would be an entirely mono or one-shot-colour telescope – we support filter wheels and rotators and guide cameras and other equipment as well.
A remotely controllable observatory. This can be a synchronised dome, a roll-off-roof, a clamshell or even a roll off building, as long as it can be controlled with software.
Well…. It isn’t entirely a make or break issue to not have a weather system. Our system actually does an excellent, world-leading, job of forecasting the weather and reacting to it….. So you could potentially forego this and rely purely on the forecast… but we wouldn’t recommend it. We suggest incorporating any equipment that makes three types of measurements: (1) Sky temperature, (2) Ambient Temperature and (3) Rain. The first two give reliable local estimates of low level and medium cloud (sky temperature doesn’t track high cloud — but satellite forecasts that we use do) and the third is essential to keeping equipment dry and safe from unexpected rain (or sprinkler… or….. pressure washing……speaking from experience! ) events. Other elements can be incorporated – such as wind, humidity, dewpoint, etc. – but these tend to be fairly reliably measured from the forecast anyway but if they are on your weather system, we can use them.
Switching over from ACP?
ACP led the way in observatory control for decades and has proven to be a stable robust system. While we acknowledge the seminal role of ACP in observatory control, we provide a modern multi-processed, multi-agent approach to observatory control with perspectives drawn from professional astronomy research experience. You can do all that you used to do with ACP with NACS but much much more.
NACS is not an ACP equivalent. ACP automated the Windows astronomy desktop. NACS automates the observatory as a distributed system. It uses native drivers first, ASCOM only where useful, and exposes the entire observatory through modern APIs, worker isolation, real-time status, and independent safety agents. That makes it faster to adapt, safer to operate remotely, easier to customise for any given desire (ask us!) and better suited to both single observatory installations and multi-telescope robotic networks. It also provides the capacity to share your observatory with others as well as make your own independent telescope networks with friends and colleagues. Unlike most other astronomy software – where you purchase or download the software and need to spend months tweaking it getting it to work – we take the lead and get it working on your system and make sure it is working before you pay a cent!
Frequently Asked Questions for Observatory Owners (& ACP) Considering NACS
Got a feature you want but it seems to be missing?
Let us know! As long as it isn’t system-breaking, we will endeavour to include it.
