Picastro is an easy-to-use astrophotography planning program.

In order to run Picastro (as it is mainly written in C++), you need a c++ compiler (like GCC or LCC) pre-installed. Then, build and run the file main.cpp.

For now, it is able to

• Predict preferable focal length for a given angle
• Calculate the "sight angle" of your sensor
• Predict preferable exposure time
• Calculate sampling

Picastro will ask you some questions to calculate as many things as he can about your photo settings, such as exposure time, prefereable focal lenght ...

But be aware that Picastro will not teach you astrophotography, it is just here to help 😉 !

For all the formulas, the book Astrophotography, by Thierry Legault was used. And thanks to Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash for the front repo picture.

Attention ! The results that will appear in the program (such as sensor sight angle or preferable focal length) may be wrong. Please try to cross sources 😉 !