Free Astronomy Tools Website

[FLO]

It is remarkable how many astronomy resources, tools and calculators are freely available online. Here at FLO we routinely use a number of them when answering questions regarding magnification, field of view, sensor size, focal length, f-ratio, exit pupil, etc. Also for more general questions like 'what is in the sky tonight' and ‘where will I find it'. 

 

With this in mind we decided to build our own in-house collection of astronomy tools and calculators. We reasoned having our own together in one place would save time and we would be able to develop and improve them, or at least build them so they best suited our needs. 

 

The project is going well and a number of the tools and calculators have been built and, in the spirit of other online resources and calculators, we are making them available free of charge   

 

Astronomy Tools 

 

The project is a work in progress so you will find the paint is still wet in places and there will be some typos but we will continue to build, develop and polish the site. We might even design a logo! 

 

If you find a bug please let us know so we can squish it. Please also let us know if you have any suggestions or would like something included. 

 

We hope you find it a useful resource. 

 

Regards, 

 

The FLO team  

 

[Grotemobile]

Thanks for that.I bet it took a bit of

time to put all of that together.

Very good.

Steve

[emadmoussa]

Very nice. Are you in the process of adding more scopes to the FOV calculator?

[FLO]

A quick note and a thank-you

We have intentionally designed the site for use with the latest versions of browsers. This enables us to use a number of advanced web technologies that might not work in older versions of some browsers. I.e. we are using ‘Canvas' for the FOV calculator that enables us to create drawings dynamically within the website. This would not be possible if we built something compatible with older browsers. 

Also with the FOV calculator in mind we would like to say a special thank-you to the team behind Cartes du Ciel for making such an impressive open-source application. It has enabled us to draw sky charts for our FOV calculator which includes data from many catalogues of stars, galaxies and nebulae. 

Steve

[FLO]

Very nice. Are you in the process of adding more scopes to the FOV calculator?

Yes  

Over time we will enter details for all our telescopes, eyepieces and cameras. We have also included a button that enables you to add your own equipment. It doesn't need to be equipment available at FLO, we have made it a non-commercial stand-alone website so please feel free to add whatever equipment you like. 

Steve 

[Joseki]

Thanks for another great freebie!

Seperate to saying thankyou for that, I did have one request though.  If it's no trouble to do so, could you add either the option to use a non-standard barlow strength, or add x4.2 as an option? - which is the strength of the Daystar Quark eyepiece.

[michaelmorris]

Another set of great resources, thanks.

[baggywrinkle]

Excellent! many thanks. Heres a virtual beer...   LP

[Grant_FLO]

Thanks for another great freebie!

Seperate to saying thankyou for that, I did have one request though.  If it's no trouble to do so, could you add either the option to use a non-standard barlow strength, or add x4.2 as an option? - which is the strength of the Daystar Quark eyepiece.

No problem 4.2x barlow now available in the drop down

[FLO]

Thanks for that.I bet it took a bit of

time to put all of that together.

Very good.

Thank-you

Our weather forecast for astronomers website took longer.

We are all astronomers here at FLO (except the ladies in dispatch) so it has been a joint effort but Grant (our IT Manager) is the man behind the technical wizardry 

And Steve Richards (aka Steppenwolf) kindly agreed to kick it's tires during development. Thank-you Steve

[Joseki]

No problem 4.2x barlow now available in the drop down

That's great, thanks

[Dubhar]

It's always a good sign when you can use something without thinking much about it. The site seams to work well.

[FLO]

Over time we will enter details for all our telescopes, eyepieces and cameras. We have also included a button that enables you to add your own equipment. It doesn't need to be equipment available at FLO, we have made it a non-commercial stand-alone website so please feel free to add whatever equipment you like. 

We launched it only an hour ago and already 10x new telescopes, 4x new cameras and 2x new eyepieces have been submitted. 

Thank-you  

Steve

[FLO]

We have just added Limiting Magnitude and Light Grasp calculators to the Telescope Capabilities page

The Light Grasp calculator is fun. You can use it to compare two telescopes of different apertures, a telescope vs binocular or even a telescope vs your eye. For example the Skywatcher Skyliner 200p Dobsonian gathers approx 6.44x more light than an Evostar 80ED, 16.48x more than a 10x50 binocular and 841x more than the human eye! 

[avtaram]

This is going to be very useful, thank you.

Can you add a 2.25 Barlow.

Avtar

[Grant_FLO]

This is going to be very useful, thank you.

Can you add a 2.25 Barlow.

Avtar

No problem - it should be there now

[FLO]

For the imagers we have just added a CCD Calculators page with a CCD Resolution calculator, CCD Pixel Size calculator and a CCD Chip Size Calculator. The latter not only provides vertical and horizontal measurements but also the diagonal measurement often missed from manufacturer's product descriptions - useful when considering a telescope's imaging circle and when choosing filters. 

[swag72]

Is there any plans to add something other than Messier objects to the FOV calculator. In others they seem to link up to the DSS so you can put in any object designation that you want to look at.

[FLO]

Is there any plans to add something other than Messier objects to the FOV calculator. In others they seem to link up to the DSS so you can put in any object designation that you want to look at.

Hi Sara 

We can add whatever you like but this is only day one and we were confident the Messier objects would be most popular so launched with those. We will add more over time. 

I'm not sure what you mean by "In others they seem to link up to the DSS"? 

Please keep in mind we are not competing with other sites. The Astronomy Tools website is non-commercial so if it proves popular our reward will be only the personal satisfaction of knowing we contributed. 

Steve

[swag72]

....I'm not sure what you mean by "In others they seem to link up to the DSS"? ...

I'm thinking of 12Dstring FOV calculator, where you can search for any target and it is linked into the Digitalised Sky Survey (DSS) and it will give you the fov of whatever you want, including some mighty obscure things too.

[FLO]

I'm thinking of 12Dstring FOV calculator, where you can search for any target and it is linked into the Digitalised Sky Survey (DSS) and it will give you the fov of whatever you want, including some mighty obscure things too.

Ah, we tried using live DSS images but had reservations because they can be quite slow loading. We will look into it again sometime but for now our preference is to add our own catalogue images to ensure they load quickly. 

What catalogues would you most like us to include Sara?

I am also a fan of David Campbell's 12Dstring FOV calculator having found it useful a number of times over the years 

Steve

[FLO]

Ah, we tried using live DSS images but had reservations because they can be quite slow loading. We will look into it again sometime but for now our preference is to add our own catalogue images to ensure they load quickly. 

What catalogues would you most like us to include Sara?

Sara, we dismissed the idea in an earlier stage of development, mostly because the images were slow to load, but I have asked Grant to put the function back so you can try it

If you go to the FOV calculator page you will find a new search box (top-right) that loads images from the Digitized Sky Survey. Loading images will be slower but you now have access to the entire NGC, IC, Caldwell and Messier catalogues. Please try it then let us know what you think. 

HTH, 

Steve 

[avtaram]

Focal length and aperture are not displaying for the Revelation 12" f5 Dob.

Focal length = 1520

Aperture = 304

[swag72]

Sara, we dismissed the idea in an earlier stage of development, mostly because the images were slow to load, but I have asked Grant to put the function back so you can try it

If you go to the FOV calculator page you will find a new search box (top-right) that loads images from the Digitized Sky Survey. Loading images will be slower but you now have access to the entire NGC, IC, Caldwell and Messier catalogues. Please try it then let us know what you think. 

That works really well Steve - Any chance of the obscure PK, HH and Sharpless catalogues on there? It seemed to load quicker than 12Dstring.

[Jim Steele]

Awesome thank you Steve! Only disadvantage with the fov calculator that I can see is the cost incured from all the ethos' eyepieces I wish I had