Ekos is an advanced cross-platform (Windows, OSX, 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 astromety.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 does 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.

  • Setup

    Setup

    Start out by creating your equipment profile and connecting to your devices. Read More
  • Capture

    Capture

    Capture images, record videos, and create batch sequences. Read More
  • Focus

    Focus

    Learn about Framing, Manual, & Automatic HFR-based Focusing. Read More
  • Guide

    Guide

    Calibrate and Guide with Internal and External Guiders. Fine-tune guiding performance. Read More
  • Align

    Align

    Capture & Solve, Load & Slew, Polar Align GEM mounts. Build Mount Pointing model. Read More
  • Scheduler

    Scheduler

    Create mosaic jobs and automate observatory workflow from startup to shutdown. Read More
  • FITS Viewer

    FITS Viewer

    Apply filters, generate 3D data profiles, and examine multi-channel histograms. Read More
  • Observatory

    Observatory

    Control your Dome, check the weather status, and control your shutter. Read More
  • Mount

    Mount

    Control your Mount, Create configurations, and Specify Limits. Read More
  • Analyze

    Analyze

    Analyze Module records and displays what happened in an imaging session Read More
  • Meridian Flip

    Meridian Flip

    Modern equatorial mounts are capable of automatically performing a Meridian Flip (MF). Read More
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