The star-hopping path is the part worth having: coordinates tell you where a faint object is, but the route from a bright star you can already identify is what gets it into the eyepiece.
An astronomy server built on the astronomy-engine library with local star and deep-sky catalogues. Calculations are made for a configured observer location and the current system time, covering solar system objects, stars from the HYG database, and Messier, NGC and IC objects.
- An object's position both ways - equatorial coordinates, and altitude and azimuth from where you are
- Whether it is up, and its rise, transit and set times
- Distance for solar system objects, illumination for the Moon and planets, and the coming lunar phases
- The catalogues browsed by category, so you can see what is available rather than guess at names
- A star-hopping path from a bright starting star to the target - the route through the eyepiece, not only the coordinates
Node 18.19.0 or newer. Run the catalogue fetch after installing to pull the HYG star database and the OpenNGC deep sky catalogue - without it the server falls back to a much smaller built-in set. The observer location is configured in the project and defaults to Vancouver, Canada; change it before the rise and set times mean anything where you are.