PicoStar vs AstroVitals

Calibrate any telescope using true-to-scale planetary images.

Your telescope is imaging all night. AstroVitals puts its vital signs on your iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch — so you can check on the session from the couch, the tent, or your wrist at 3 AM. AstroVitals connects to N.I.N.A. (Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy) over your local network through the Advanced API plugin, and turns the numbers into a dark, glanceable night-vision dashboard. GUIDING AT A GLANCE • Flowing RA/Dec guide graph, just like your guiding software • Live total RMS plus session best, worst and stability score • Peak-error and pixel-scale readouts, adjustable time window FOCUS & IMAGE QUALITY • Watch autofocus V-curves build point by point, live • Best-focus position and HFR marked when the run completes • HFR and star-count trends across every sub of the session YOUR WHOLE SEQUENCE • The full Advanced Sequencer tree — instructions, triggers, loop conditions • The running step highlighted with live progress (87/250 exposures…) • Values shown inline: exposure length, filter, wait-until times and more THE STATS DASHBOARD • A live 3D model of your mount showing exactly where it points, with meridian-flip warning colors and flat-panel cover state • Target altitude path with transit time and astronomical darkness • Camera cooling, ambient temperature, power draw and input voltage • Rearrangeable tiles — drag them into your preferred layout ON YOUR WRIST • The full dashboard as a native Apple Watch app • Watch-face complications: meridian-flip countdown and subs done • iPhone home-screen and lock-screen widgets with a live flip timer SIMPLE SETUP • Auto-discovers your NINA machine on the local network • Demo mode simulates a full session — try every screen without a telescope SMART ALERTS & CONFIRMED CONTROL • Optional alerts for worsening or recovering image quality, lost guiding and meridian-flip progress while AstroVitals is active • Start, pause and stop the running sequence when Allow Control is enabled • A configurable panic plan can stop activity, park or home the mount, close a detected flat-panel cover and disable selected power outputs • Siri opens the review-and-slide confirmation screen; it never sends a command by itself Requires N.I.N.A. with the free Advanced API plugin (v2) on the same network. AstroVitals starts in Read-only mode. Control requires explicit opt-in and confirmation, and remains on the user's local network. No accounts, no analytics, no data leaves your network.