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The technology behind Skyshot

Our own engine. An open foundation. Meet Skyshot Solver.

We built Skyshot Solver to match a photo to the sky quickly and precisely. The engine is open source. Skyshot brings it together with our own exploration tools in a product for discovering and sharing what you capture.

Explore the source See benchmarks

Skyshot Solver: Apache 2.0. The Skyshot application and hosted services are separate products with their own terms.

Illustration rendered from the star catalogue

From image to coordinates

Built for discovery. Open to new ideas.

Recognize the star field

The solver matches patterns in detected stars to a sky index. It can identify a field without prior coordinates, camera settings or telescope pointing information.

Build on precise coordinates

A WCS solution connects image pixels with positions in the sky. Skyshot uses it for object labels and exploration; developers can use the open-source engine in their own projects.

Moon recognition · in development

We are developing a separate solver for recognizing craters and other features in photos of the Moon. It is not available yet. The current engine identifies star fields.

Benchmarks

Head-to-head with astrometry.net and ASTAP.

Median time per frame

Frames identified within a time limit

Dedicated configuration: phone cameras

An index and settings built for one application solve faster still.

Solver time from a star list, warm process, Apple M5 Max (load average about 15), synthetic phone-camera frames; star detection not included. The general index measured the same way on the 96 reference frames (89 real, 7 synthetic): median 4.1 ms. Measurements on the iPhone are pending.

Video

Plate solving at video frame rates.

A solve in milliseconds is fast enough to identify the sky in every frame of a video, not just in a still. That opens new work: coordinate grids, constellation figures and object labels that stay on the sky through pans and zooms; annotated timelapses and meteor-camera footage; live overlays on telescope, all-sky and broadcast streams.

Video in preparation
Explore saved video examples in the web app. Processing your own video and live streams requires the desktop workflow, currently in pilot development.

Applications

Applications of blind calibration.

Availability is stated for each application.

  • Astrophotography and astronomy

    Browser · available

    Blind solving of every frame in a session; WCS export for stacking, mosaics, photometry and astrometry; catalogue annotation; overlay comparison with DSS2, Pan-STARRS and 2MASS.

  • Image verification and OSINT

    Browser · available

    Sky coordinates and orientation of night-sky photographs and video frames. Combined with horizon geometry and a claimed time or location, a consistency check on the material.

  • Video, timelapse and live streams

    Desktop · in preparationmacOS · Windows · Linux

    Persistent RA/Dec grid, constellation figures and object annotation on recorded and live video, including meteor and all-sky cameras.

  • Outreach, planetaria and sky shows

    Desktop · in preparationmacOS · Windows · Linux

    Live identification of the sky seen by the camera, in place of a simulated sky.

  • Mobile AR

    iPhone · in preparation

    Overlay anchored to the solved star field rather than to the magnetometer and gyroscope heading, which is typically off by several degrees or more.

  • Celestial navigation without GNSS

    In development

    Position from star-derived attitude and the device’s inertial sensors, for GNSS-denied or jammed environments at sea and on land. Simulations on synthetic data put the target accuracy below 1 km, about 200 m in the optimistic case; field trials are in preparation.

  • Defence and security

    With partners

    A passive attitude and position reference from the star field, with no RF emission and nothing to jam or spoof: backup navigation for vessels, land vehicles and UAVs in GNSS-denied environments; boresight calibration and pointing verification for EO/IR sensors and optical turrets; time and orientation checks on recovered imagery. Requires sky visibility.

  • Star trackers: satellites, balloons, UAVs

    With partners

    Lost-in-space attitude from a single frame, followed by frame-to-frame tracking, on commercial cameras and processors. For research and prototyping; not flight-qualified.

  • Telescopes, binoculars and AR optics

    With partners

    Embedded pointing determination for finders, smart telescopes and AR binoculars.

Validation

Validation results.

In FITS header form: reference hardware and date of measurement, limitations as comments.

Availability

Use the engine. Build with us.

Open source · available

Rust library & CLI

macOS · Windows · Linux

The free, Apache 2.0 solver engine is on GitHub, with source, examples, tests and research papers. Build it and solve your own images locally, offline, without an account or API key.

Ready-to-use sky indexes are available separately: Full learned is recommended, with DEEP optional for narrow fields. Each bundle includes its matching coder, provenance and checksums; data terms are separate from the code license.

Get the source on GitHubDownload sky indexes

Persistent JSONL requests, a small C ABI and C++/.NET examples are planned. The repository already includes a Python subprocess example.

Available

Web app

Discover the sky in your own photos. Image decoding and star detection happen in your browser; only star lists reach the hosted solver. Explore objects and export your annotated image or WCS.

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macOS · pilot

Desktop application

A separate application for queues, watched folders and capture-software integrations. The macOS pilot is in testing; Windows and Linux apps are planned. Its access and licensing are separate from the open-source engine.

Desktop & integrations
In preparation

iPhone application

A live sky overlay anchored to the solved star field. A separate application in development.

Hosted service

Solver API

Star lists in, WCS out over HTTP. Contact us about hosted access for applications, observatories and hardware. You can use the open-source library and CLI locally without this service.

Ask about hosted access

Integration

OEM and research integration.

Telescopes, binoculars, cameras, observatories, broadcast tools and research payloads: the solver can run on the device or behind the API. Please include the field of view, sensor, target platform and required time to lock.

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