Skyhopper - a newish astronomy navigation tool

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The Happy Parrot
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Skyhopper - a newish astronomy navigation tool

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Post by The Happy Parrot »


I recently learned of a new open source smart phone web app called SkyHopper created by Artiom Beilis mostly on his own, though I believe there are others helping with improvements nowadays. It is intended as a star hopping aid, not a Stellarium or Cartes du Ciel replacement, and it relies on your smart phone's gyro, compass and sensors to find a fairly large catalogue of objects in real time.

Essentially, it is a replacement for digital setting circles without the cables, batteries and external sensors. To date I've only had a couple of chances to take it out, but below are my initial impressions.

Compatibility: IPhone and Android platforms with Safari or Google Chrome (FireFox apparently has some issues in Azimuth). Access to WiFi or data is only needed initially to open the web-app and the object database is cached in your phone browser. After that you can be in the field as access to data is not needed. I am using it on an iPhone SE2.

Getting started: To begin, you need to set permissions on your smart phone to allow location and compass access in settings. I didn't realize these are two different settings at first, and the web-app did not have my geolocation, so it thought I was elsewhere on our planet. Once it figured my location it was ready for alignment with a known star.
Initial screen requesting permission to access location services. Click on image for higher resolution.
Initial screen requesting permission to access location services. Click on image for higher resolution.
Alignment: All I had to do was affix my phone parallel to the OTA and press the Align button. As it happens, I already have a phone cradle on my Z8 Dobson that I use with Celestron's excellent SSE software. You could literally just tape or Velcro the phone to the OTA and SkyHopper will likely work. It seems more forgiving about phone position on the OTA than Celestron's SSE since it doesn't require a special cradle with a mirror.

Aim at a known star (Arcturus in this case but it could be a planet or even a DSO), and press the Align button. The app waits three seconds to allow for some vibration damping and that's it. You are notified the OTA is aligned and you are ready to star hop. Watch for error messages like "No Geolocation" which I didn't notice the first time around.
Arcturus as starting point reference star
Arcturus as starting point reference star
In this case I picked Arcturus as my reference star and Vindemiatrix as the destination. I manually moved the telescope following the green indicator line until I got to Vindemiatrix as seen on the images below.
Follow the green line to Vindamiatrix, the destination star.
Follow the green line to Vindamiatrix, the destination star.
Looked through my eyepiece and voila, there it was. Simple.
Arrival at Vindemiatrix.
Arrival at Vindemiatrix.
Well, yes simple, but it is a work in progress. It is amazing a single person came up with this and there is much merit for that alone. It is however, not yet as polished as Celestron's Star Sense Explorer software and lacks the nice explanations for each object. On the other hand, the database of objects is reported to be much larger. Furthermore, it is quicker to align as it doesn't have to wait for plate solving to occur, and setting your phone on the OTA should be easier than with Celestron's SSE which requires a cradle with mirror.

The downside is that picking the initial reference and target stars is tricky on a small phone screen, and if by chance you poke the screen off target, you have to go into settings and refresh the webpage to start over. All this, however, takes mere seconds.

In this example I chose two nearby stars for illustrative images and it worked perfectly. I tried wider swings back and forth between Saturn and Jupiter and it mostly worked with each in the eyepiece as expected, though I found it was best to use the current view as a new reference object to re-calibrate before navigating to the next target with greater precision. Again, done in mere seconds.

Sadly, clouds rolled in before I could try it out on a few DSO's, so that will have to wait for the next outing. I expect it will work fine once I get used to poking the phone screen objects accurately with my fingers. Also untested is the ability to enter a desired watch list of targets to navigate from one to another, which might ease screen navigation.

Overall, it does the job of replacing digital circles with an easy learning curve as you figure out the commands. The manual and trouble shooting tips are pretty good (see link below). Not certain of this, but I believe they intend to add new features such as searching for specific objects.

Being an open source web-app, no purchase or massive software download is required. I expect newer phones with sensors designed for virtual reality applications are likely to work best. Recommended and well worth a try.

From developer Artiom Beilis' Github page:

"SkyHopper is a web application that helps to find objects across the night sky by hopping from a well known and easily identifiable star to other fainter stars or DSO by measuring changes in angles of the cell phone using built in gyroscope and gravity sensors. It is similar to Digital Setting Circles implemented in a smart phone.
The smart phone has to have gyro, gravity sensors and preferably compass.
It is a web based application that contains a single HTML page and JavaScript objects database that will continue working even offline as long as it is cached by a browser."

Source: https://github.com/artyom-beilis/skyhopper
Last edited by The Happy Parrot on Tue Oct 05, 2021 2:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Skyhopper - a newish astronomy navigation tool

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Post by SpyderwerX »


Very interesting indeed. I'll have to look that one up. Thanks for the overview.
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Re: Skyhopper - a newish astronomy navigation tool

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Post by JayTee »


I don't see it on Google Play... So I assume you invoke it in your web browser on your smartphone. I currently have it running on my laptop using Google Chrome.

Will investigate.

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Re: Skyhopper - a newish astronomy navigation tool

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Post by Ylem »


Sounds interesting, while I have an SE mount, this might be neat to use with my Porta Mount ll, which is by far my most used mount.
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Re: Skyhopper - a newish astronomy navigation tool

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Post by The Happy Parrot »


JayTee wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 11:23 pm I don't see it on Google Play... So I assume you invoke it in your web browser on your smartphone. I currently have it running on my laptop using Google Chrome.

Will investigate.

Cheers
That’s right. It is a website, not an app you download. Just go the the GitHub page and click on the web app link and you are there. One is the actual app and the other is the user manual: https://github.com/artyom-beilis/skyhopper
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Re: Skyhopper - a newish astronomy navigation tool

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Post by The Happy Parrot »


Ylem wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 11:31 pm Sounds interesting, while I have an SE mount, this might be neat to use with my Porta Mount ll, which is by far my most used mount.
That sounds like a perfect application. Just affix the phone parallel to the ota and you are ready to align.
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