GoQat

GoQat operates any CCD camera from Quantum Scientific Imaging (QSI) on the Linux platform. It can guide mounts via a serial/USB port, parallel port or autoguider port using the LX200 protocol. Any cameras supported by the Unicap library can be used for autoguiding, including the popular astronomy cameras from The Imaging Source. Low-light video cameras such as Mintron or Watec can be used via the Imaging Source video-to-firewire converter. GoQat also supports Video-for-Linux devices such as webcams and implements some features of the Losmandy Gemini system. Focusing via Robofocus is fully supported.

GoQat user interface

 

You can:

  • Set the CCD temperature and filter for your CCD exposures, capture sub-frames and use binning.
  • Display real-time scrolling graphs of your CCD camera cooler power and temperature.
  • Calibrate the autoguider with the camera at any angle with a single mouse-click.
  • Autoguide your exposures using the fully integrated autoguiding functions: CCD exposures automatically wait until the autoguider is ready.
  • Show real-time scrolling strip charts of star positions for periodic error analysis.
  • Focus your telescope automatically, including 'V-curve' calibration for point sources (stars), temperature compensated focusing and the ability to adjust focus according to defined offsets for each filter change.
  • Record real-time or time-lapse video from any of the supported video cameras.
  • Play back recorded video and automatically perform photometry and astrometry on each frame - ideal for asteroid occultations and other transient events.
  • Use task lists to control the operation of your telescope, CCD camera, autoguider and focuser completely unattended.
  • Execute arbitrary scripts in the language of your choice, to perform any external operations that you can do with a script (e.g. live upload of images to a website) and to interact with and control GoQat.
  • Load and save Losmandy Gemini pointing model parameters and PEC data, and more.

Please see the documentation or the screenshots for more information.

GoQat can be downloaded for free under the terms of the General Public License. See www.gnu.org/licenses/ for further details.