ARGOS 0.4.1 / free software, GNU GPL v3

Put your smart telescope to scientific work.

A desktop workspace for variable-star observing with ZWO Seestar telescopes. Record a timed sequence, follow relative brightness as the frames arrive, and review each point against the image that produced it.

Its own software stops at the picture. ARGOS starts at the measurement.

Download 0.4.1 → Documentation

macOS and Debian · installers and release notes

ARGOS on a solved field of XX Cyg, with the differential-photometry window showing the light curve and the comparison-star panel — Live session, uncalibrated quick-look0.4.1

01 · The frame

Pixels alone are not photometry.

Flux comes from the array. Time, plate scale, gain and airmass come from the header — and a light curve needs all of them.

DATE-AVG

The midpoint, not the start. A 60-second sub is otherwise half a minute wrong.

BAYERPAT

GRBG, not RGGB. Debayer with the wrong one and the photometry is quietly wrong.

EGAIN RDNOISE

No error bar without them. The noise model works in electrons; the file stores ADU.

FOCALLEN XPIXSZ

3.74″ per pixel on an S30 Pro. An aperture measured in pixels means nothing without it.

AIRMASS

How much atmosphere the star sat behind — what you correct against as it sets.

IMAGETYP

Light, dark, flat or bias, in the folders Siril expects. Point it at the session and go.

65keywords per frame

16-bitlinear FITS, never stretched

0pixels modified on disk

Every keyword is listed in the FITS reference. Debayer, stretch or stack once and none of it comes back.

02 · The session

One night, one session folder.

Variable stars · Exoplanet transits · Knowing the night worked before you pack up

Before the night

Plan it indoors.

Type the star's name. ARGOS finds where it is, draws how high it climbs tonight, and points the telescope at it when you say go.

Then set the run: how many frames, how long each, and the darks, flats and bias to go with them. You see the total time before you commit to it. It shoots the rest on its own.

The ARGOS plan workspace: a four-step sequence of light, dark, flat and bias frames for RR Lyrae, beside the target's altitude curve for the coming night — RR Lyr resolved · peak 85.1° at 21:20 local · 17 m 10 s total

The ARGOS review workspace with a finished session reopened: the target light curve of XX Cyg over the per-comparison-star diagnostic panels — 22 frames · comparison diagnostics · every point links to its FITS

After the night

Read it back offline.

Reopen the session folder with no telescope connected, on any machine. The target's curve, each comparison star measured on its own, and the night's telemetry frame by frame — FWHM, HFD, star count, sky level, eccentricity, sensor temperature.

Click a point and it names the frame behind it, then opens that FITS. Export the curve in AAVSO Extended Format; the raw frames are already in the folder layout Siril reads.

03 · Field identification

Know what is in the frame.

Solve it with ASTAP, then let the catalogues do the naming — and the choosing.

Plate solving

ASTAP recovers the WCS from the frame. Every pixel becomes a coordinate, on every frame of the run.

Catalogues on the image

Gaia DR3 for the field stars, AAVSO VSX for the variables, SIMBAD for deep-sky and cross-IDs, the NASA archive for transit hosts. Cached, so the field still works with no signal.

The ensemble, chosen for you

ARGOS pulls the AAVSO VSP sequence, measures each candidate on a test frame, and proposes the comparison stars — on signal, brightness match and distance. Override any of it.

ARGOS field identification: catalogue overlays on a solved field, with the information card of the exoplanet host HD 189733 — Catalogue overlays, a per-field query budget and local caches

04 · One result

Raw data, calibrated for science.

ARGOS gives you the raw FITS frames. Siril — free image-processing software — calibrates and registers them, and the star_var_script extension turns them into a calibrated light curve. That is the scientifically valid measurement, and this is one.

RR Lyrae light curve folded on a period of 0.56674 days, the observed points tracing the rising branch of the Sesar 2010 published template — One night of frames, folded on the catalogue periodAAVSO Extended export

Star: RR Lyrae
Period: 0.56674 d
Observed: Rising branch, ≈2.5 h
Template: Sesar 2010, r-band

01 · ARGOSRecords

Timed FITS frames, a live differential curve, and the run-level uncertainty floor.

02 · SirilCalibrates and registers

Dark, flat and bias calibration, then registration of the untouched raw frames.

03 · star_var_scriptReduces

Final photometry and the AAVSO export. ARGOS applies the same systematic-floor model live, so both share one uncertainty contract.

The curve you watch during the night is a quick-look on uncalibrated subs: it tells you the run is working, not what the star did. The measurement comes out of the reduction — which is why ARGOS keeps every raw frame, and why that reduction stays independent and auditable.

05 · Requirements

What you need.

TelescopeSeestar S30 ProS30 and S50 unvalidated →

ComputermacOS on Apple silicon, or Debian x86-64Installers →

Plate solvingASTAP and a star database, installed separatelyASTAP ↗

ConnectionASCOM AlpacaDocumentation