One telescope · 5 targets up tonight
One real telescope on a Tbilisi rooftop, run by the observatory's own software. You reserve the time; it does the moving.
An observation is in progress
Small, well understood and honest about what it can show: the Moon, the planets, double stars and the brighter clusters and nebulae, live.
Tbilisi, Georgia · Schmidt-Cassegrain · Computerised alt-azimuth
Uncooled, one-shot colour. Each frame arrives in colour; there are no filter passes. Short exposures, stacked as you watch. Not long-exposure astrophotography.
Book a slotEach target is observed in one of three configurations, chosen for it in the catalogue.
Targets the telescope can reach tonight.
Reserve time on the telescope, choose what it points at, and keep what you capture.
Open the session that is running now, or the one you booked. Signed-in observers only.
Everything the telescope can reach tonight, with how high it climbs and when.
Every command is checked in the cloud and checked again beside the telescope. A command the observatory considers unsafe is refused, whoever sent it.
The observatory software starts on a simulated telescope and camera. Pages fed by the simulator say so.
Switching to the real telescope takes a deliberate action by an operator who is physically present.
Directions near the Sun are refused before the telescope moves, on every path, with no override from a booking.
Slews stay between a minimum altitude and a maximum measured on the real optical train, and clear of the rooftop's surveyed obstructions. Until that maximum is measured, every slew is refused.
Only the session's current owner can command the telescope. Expired and repeated commands are rejected.
On an operator's abort, a lost connection or a device fault, capture stops, motion halts and the telescope parks.
It accepts no inbound connection from the internet. Its only link is one authenticated connection it opens itself, and no browser ever addresses the telescope or camera.
The telescope is installed on a rooftop in Tbilisi, Georgia, on mains power.
Stellar is built so that more observatories could join later. Today there is exactly one, and it is this one.