Good luck with the project - it sounds interesting!

If you are porting it to javascript, does that mean the whole thing will run in a web browser?

Thanks Grant! Yes, the browser is in fact the main reason I chose javascript as it means it will work both on your desktop and mobile device - indoors or out - without requiring any downloads.

While I won't be able to achieve the beautiful visuals of other desktop based planetariums (Stellarium etc), the fact that it's online by default means that it is instantly accessible to 100% of people online vs only people with enough interest/privileges to download and install the software.

Interesting .. PI runs JS for the glue, however the portions that do each stage are C/C++ etc.

The main things are that people are looking for in AP:

* Explore

* Plane

* Capture (Execute)

* Process

* Publish

Now there's more people also interested in the non-beauty element which involves odd image processing so make it that one stage can feed into the next with a user's own processor between them.

Good luck, that's a considerable amount of work - it may be better to look at seeing if PI libraries could be used for open source..

What I've wanted to do for some time in SGL is hotlink/popup on object names e.g. M42 to bring up a planetarium type view of where that object is, based on the users local time and using geo tools on their IP - somewhere close to their location as well... If you achieve what you want to with this project, something like that should be reasonably trivial to achieve! :)

I'll be honest Nick, I'm not really sure what PI or AP stand for (AstroPhotography?). Can you tell I'm new to all this :p I'd definitely like to take a look at PI, although working out of the textbook helps me understand the what and whys...which is important considering how little know.

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Grant, that is an awesome idea! I was already planning on building a public API to allow people to create starcharts by appending their coordinates/object in the URL like:

example.com/skychart.png?obj=M42

And by altering obj you get a new image. But using the IP is an even better idea