Ekos
The observatory control and astrophotography suite in KStars, built on INDI.
Guides
RequirementsEkos can run on PCs, laptops, and embedded computers.Setup and optionsEkos is shipped with KStars.Capture ModuleThe CCD Module is your primary image and video acquisition module in Ekos.Focus ModuleIn order to focus an image, Ekos needs to establish a numerical method for gauging how good your focus is.Guide ModuleEkos Guide Module enables autoguiding capability using either the powerful built-in guider, or at your option, external guiding via PHD2 or lnguider.Alignment ModuleEkos Alignment Module enables highly accurate GOTOs to within sub-arcseconds accuracy and can measure and correct polar alignment errors.Robotic Observatory with Ekos SchedulerA Robotic observatory is an observatory composed of several subsystems that are orchestrated together to achieve a set of scientific objectives without human…Video tutorialsWatch Ekos and INDI in action.
Ekos is an advanced cross-platform (Windows, macOS, Linux) observatory control and automation tool with particular focus on Astrophotography. It is based on a modular extensible framework to perform common astrophotography tasks. This includes highly accurate GOTOs using astrometry solver, ability to measure and correct polar alignment errors , auto-focus & auto-guide capabilities, and capture of single or stack of images with filter wheel support. Ekos is shipped with KStars.
Features:
- Control your telescope, CCD (& DSLRs), filter wheel, focuser, guider, adaptive optics unit, and any INDI-compatible auxiliary device from Ekos.
- Built-in native Auto Guiding with support for automatic dithering between exposures and support for Adaptive Optics devices in addition to traditional guiders.
- Extremely accurate GOTOs using astrometry.net solver (both Online and Offline solvers supported).
- Load & Slew: Load a FITS image, slew to solved coordinates, and center the mount on the exact image coordinates in order to get the same desired frame.
- Measure & Correct Polar Alignment errors using astrometry.net solver.
- Easy to use Polar Alignment Assistant tool. A very quick and reliable tool to polar align your German Equatorial Mount!
- Capture and record video streams in SER format.
- Completely automated scheduler to control all your observatory equipment, select the best targets for imaging given current conditions and constraints, monitor weather conditions, and capture your data while you are away!
- Smart Dark Library: All your dark frames with different binning/temperature/frame settings are saved for future use. Ekos re-uses dark frames intelligently without taking unnecessary captures. You can configure how long you want to reuse all the dark frames.
- Define multiple driver profiles for local and remote setups. Switch among them easily.
- Auto and manual focus modes using Half-Flux-Radius (HFR) method.
- Automated unattended meridian flip. Ekos performs post meridian flip alignment, calibration, focusing, and guiding to resume the capture session.
- Automatic focus between exposures when a user-configurable HFR limit is exceeded.
- Powerful sequence queue for batch capture of images with optional prefixes, timestamps, filter wheel selection, and much more!
- Export and import sequence queue sets as Ekos Sequence Queue (.esq) files.
- Center the telescope anywhere in a captured FITS image or any FITS with World Coordinate System (WCS) header.
- Automatic flat field capture, just set the desired ADU and let Ekos do the rest!
- Automatic abort and resumption of exposure tasks if guiding errors exceed a user-configurable value.
- Support for dome slaving.
- Complete integration with KStars Observation Planner and SkyMap
- Fully scriptable via DBus.
- Integrate with all INDI native devices.