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Sidralune manual

Welcome to the Sidralune manual. Sidralune is a free, offline-first astronomy suite for Windows that covers planning, telescope control, deep-sky and planetary imaging, image processing, and amateur science such as photometry, spectroscopy, astrometry and radio astronomy.

If you are new, start with Getting started, then read The user interface. After that, jump to the workspace you need.

Getting going

Page	What it covers
Getting started	Installing or building, first run, setting your site, downloading data, trying the simulator
The user interface	Window layout, navigation rail, command palette, time controls, night vision, notifications, background tasks
Settings	Sites, equipment, observer details, appearance, data manager, about
Data and catalogues	Built-in data, downloadable datasets, where files are stored, ephemeris sources

Planning and observing

Page	What it covers
Tonight	The nightly dashboard
Sky chart	Planetarium and atlas modes, layers, fields of view, object information, printing
Observation planning	Observing lists, visibility predictions, the altitude graph, the logbook
Observatory and devices	Connecting equipment, imaging, focusing, guiding, dome and weather, polar alignment
Sequencer	Automated imaging sessions with instructions, loops and triggers

Imaging and processing

Page	What it covers
Deep-sky stacking	Calibration, registration, stacking, drizzle, comets, mosaics
Image processing	Stretching, background extraction, deconvolution, wavelets, noise reduction, stars, colour, PixelMath
Planetary, lunar and solar imaging	Pre-processing videos, lucky stacking, sharpening, derotation, solar and lunar tools

Science

Page	What it covers
Astrometry and framing	Plate solving, annotation, framing and mosaic planning, exposure planning
Photometry and exoplanets	Differential photometry, light curves, period searches, minima timing, transit fitting and predictions
Spectroscopy	Reducing 2D spectra, wavelength calibration, line measurement, radial velocity, BeSS export
Solar system	Ephemerides, comets and asteroids, planets and moons, occultations, meteors, satellites, MPC reports
Radio astronomy	Hydrogen-line spectroscopy, the radio telescope calculator, Jupiter, time-domain tools
Databases and citizen science	Local catalogue search, SIMBAD, VizieR, AAVSO, exoplanet archive, ADQL, citizen-science projects
Scripting and data analysis	C# scripts, the script API, the CSV analysis workbench

Reference

Page	What it covers
File formats	Every format Sidralune reads and writes
Command-line options	Screenshot mode and scripted runs
Keyboard shortcuts	All shortcuts in one place
Algorithms and accuracy	The methods behind each calculation, with references
Troubleshooting and FAQ	Common problems and their solutions
Glossary	Astronomy and imaging terms used in Sidralune

Conventions in this manual

• Names of workspaces, tabs, buttons and fields are in bold, exactly as they appear in the program. An arrow shows navigation: Settings → Data means the Data tab of the Settings workspace.
• Coordinates are J2000 (ICRS) unless the text says "apparent" (of date, including precession, nutation and aberration).
• Times are shown in your site's local time zone in tables and charts, and in UTC where a file format or service requires it.

Never point a telescope, finder or camera at the Sun without a certified solar filter covering the front of the instrument.