PLAY is the astrophotography software that allows you to record beautiful pictures of the night sky in the simplest way, with the telescope, mount and camera you prefer! Connect all your telescope devices to PLAY and start your exploration of the Universe: check the Planetarium sky chart to find astrophotography targets, visualise your field of view, and automatically point to the target you select (also with Auto Alignment); focus your image (also with AutoFocus) and rotate your camera sensor; capture Dark, Flat, and Bias calibration files to optimise your image processing; control your camera to preview images or to record a sequence (also with AutoStacking).
PLAY allows you to configurate your telescope by selecting OTA, EQ or Alt-Az mount provided with ASCOM drivers, astronomy camera and filter wheels provided with ASCOM drivers, ESATTO focuser or SESTO SENSO 2 focusing motor, ARCO rotator, GIOTTO flat field generator, ALTO telescope cover motor and ScopeDome observatory domes!
In order to use PLAY you have to have at least ESATTO focuser, SESTO SENSO 2 focusing motor, GIOTTO flat field generator or ALTO telescope cover motor. PLAY is free and you can can download it from the DOWNLOAD section of our website!
PLAY is the software for Windows 10/11 and EAGLE computers that PrimaLuceLab developed in order to provide the easiest solution for astrophotography with telescope, camera and other accessories you want to use in your setup. PLAY is not a replacement for great automation astrophotography softwares like Sequence Generator Pro, NINA, Voyager, MaximDL, Prism and others that provide the most advanced features but that are designed for experts. PLAY is the straightforward way for advanced astrophotography allowing you to record great pictures of galaxies, nebulas, star clusters, planets, and Moon without complexity!
- Connect to PrimaLuceLab devices
- Connect to ASCOM equatorial or Alt-Azi mounts (with ASCOM driver updated for 6.6 platform)
- Connect to ASCOM cameras (tested with QHYCCD, ZWO, Player One, Atik and QSI cameras with ASCOM driver updated for 6.6 platform)
- Connect to ScopeDome observatory domes provided with ASCOM (tested with ScopeDome Arduino Card ver. 5.5.24)
- PLANETARIUM tab to easily control mount position, find targets and check Field of View
- FOCUS & ROTATE tab to control SESTO SENSO 2 or ESATTO focusing solutions and ARCO rotator
- CALIBRATE tab to control GIOTTO flat field generator and/or ALTO telescope cover motor
- PREVIEW tab to view real time picture, set capture settings and capture images and calibration files
- AutoFocus to automatically focus your images
- Auto Alignment to automatically align your telescope
- AutoStacking to automatically stack images during a sequence acquisition
- Dual telescope mode to control setups with dual focusers, dual rotators, dual flat field generators and dual telescope cover motor
- Sequencer to let you record image sets with different filter, exposure time, binning and number of shots
- Multi-language support: English, Italian, German, Spanish, French and Japanese
Instead of requiring you to use many different softwares to control all your devices or a complicated software to make it all work together, PLAY offers an easy to use interface that simplify the capture process of astrophotography images. PLAY offers many features like focus control, mount alignment and goto, target preview, camera rotation, and much more!
Not only PLAY allows you to control EQ mounts through their ASCOM driver but it also automates Alt-Az deep-sky astrophotography by taking control of selected Alt-Az mounts (tested with SkyWatcher AZ-EQ5/AZ-EQ6 and Track The Stars TTS-160 Panther) and using ARCO rotator as high resolution field de-rotator! This opens new possibilities in deep-sky objects astrophotography since an Alt-Az mount doesn’t require polar alignment, is not limited by the meridian flip and allows to install multiple parallel telescopes and removing counterweights!
The Planetarium draws night sky charts to let you easily identify stars, planets, constellations, and deep-sky objects and easily point the telescope at them. If you also connected a camera to PLAY, Planetarium plots the field of view (FoV) on the sky chart based on your telescope’s focal length and camera specifications to help you easily check if your desired target can be fully framed. And, if you don’t know the objects that are present on the sky chart, the Suggested Targets feature will show you the objects you could take a picture of, with a preview image by famous astrophotographers!
Not only PLAY allows you to connect to PrimaLuceLab devices, but you can also control astronomy cameras provided with ASCOM drivers (compatible with cameras provided with ASCOM driver updated for ASCOM platform 6.6). This way you can decide your acquisition settings, preview the image, stretch the histogram and capture a sequence of images that you can later stack with a dedicated astrophotography processing software.
PLAY allows you to configurate your telescope by selecting OTA and mount type by connecting to ASCOM drivers (tested with ASCOM platform 6.6). In order to use PLAY you have to have at least an ESATTO focuser, a SESTO SENSO 2 focusing motor, a GIOTTO flat field generator or an ALTO telescope cover motor and it natively supports ARCO rotator!
PLAY moves the telescope's focuser with a precise step number and, at each step, it captures an image and analyzes sharpness of the stars. As the focuser moves from a position out of focus towards the point of optimal focus, the measured sharpness improves, reaches its peak, and then begins to worsen again as the focuser moves past the point of optimal focus. Plotting the sharpness metric against the focuser position creates a graph that ideally looks like a "V". PLAY automatically detects the bottom of the "V" that indicates the position of optimal focus and automatically moves the focuser to the optimal focus position.
“Auto Alignment” allows you to automatically align your telescope to the sky by finding coordinates of your image center with arcsecond accuracy. This way you can precisely point your telescope to your desired target, even if difficult to detect with short exposure times. This feature make use of ASTAP software (ASTAP is free, https://www.hnsky.org/astap.htm by Han Kleijn) to analyse pictures captured by PLAY and detect alignment stars.
Stacking in astrophotography improves the quality of images by combining multiple images of the same object into a single, final image. When you launch a sequence acquisition with several images of the same object, because of the Earth's rotation and slight variations in positioning due to normal tracking errors of mount, each image might not be perfectly aligned with the others. In order to correct this, PLAY is able to automatically align every image with the previous one. Then it combines the captures to produce a single image with improved visibility of the object and reduced noise. This way you have a pre-processed image during your sequence acquisition and you will also have the FITS files available for later processing.
PLAY allows you to control also setups composed by 2 telescopes on a single mount: now you can control 2 optical tubes (OTA1 and OTA2) that have dual focusers, dual rotators, dual flat field generators and dual telescope cover motors! Also the "Connect All" feature allows you to connect to dual telescope setups with just a click of a button.
PLAY is available in different languages so it's even easier to use. With a simple selector you can select different languages: English, Italian, German, Spanish, French and Japanese. We're also working to add new languages and, if you want to help us to translate in another language, please write us to support@primalucelab.com.
Q: What PLAY features are available in latest version PLAY 1.9?
A: PLAY 1.9 includes the configurator with ASCOM interface, ESATTO and SESTO SENSO 2 support (with ARCO integration - also with AutoFocus), EQ and Alt-Az mounts support with alignment and target pointing (also with Auto Alignment), GIOTTO flat field generator control, ALTO telescope cover motor control, astronomy camera control with sequence acquisition (also with AutoStacking) and ScopeDome observatory domes provided with ASCOM (tested with ScopeDome Arduino Card ver. 5.5.24).
Q: How much does PLAY cost?
A: PLAY is free.
Q: Does PLAY work only with the EAGLE computer?
A: PLAY is designed for Windows (tested and developed with Windows 10/11 64bit) so you can install it also in standard computers, not only in the EAGLEs.
Q: Can I use my third party focuser or rotator with PLAY? Can I use PLAY without ESATTO, SESTO SENSO 2, GIOTTO or ALTO?
A: No, PLAY doesn’t support third party focusers or rotators and it requires the use of ESATTO focuser, SESTO SENSO 2 focusing motor, GIOTTO flat field generator or ALTO telescope cover motor.
Q: What Alt-Az mounts can I use for Alt-Az astrophotography with PLAY?
A: Alt-Az deep-sky astrophotography feature in PLAY has been tested with SkyWatcher AZ-EQ5/AZ-EQ6 and Track The Stars TTS-160 Panther mounts and it requires the use of the ARCO rotator.
Q: Does PLAY replace astrophotography automation softwares?
A: Astrophotography automation suites offer more advanced features and are designed for expert users. PLAY offers an easier solution for beginners or for astronomers searching for an easier way for astrophotography.
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