Plan Your Night.
Capture the Universe.
The free, open-source planner for deep-sky astrophotographers. Live altitudes, moon conditions and imaging windows, plus a journal and gallery for every session you shoot.
Straight from Nova’s Gallery tab, with real targets and the total integration logged for each project.
Three ways to run Nova
Same app, same features. Pick whichever suits you. Export and import move your data between all three.
In your browser
Register and start planning at app.nova-tracker.com. Nothing to install or maintain.
Nova for Mac
A native desktop app with everything built in. Download the .dmg, drag Nova to Applications and open it.
Self-host
Run Nova on your own computer, server or NAS with Docker. One compose file, one command, and your data stays with you.
Nova, now a native Mac app.
Nova for Mac bundles everything it needs. There’s no Docker Desktop to install and no terminal to open. Download it, drag it to Applications, and it’s ready.
Intel Mac, Windows or Linux? Use the browser version or self-host with Docker.
Your night at a glance
Every object on your list, sorted live by altitude. See what’s rising, what’s peaking and what you’re about to miss.
For each target Nova tells you how many minutes it stays observable tonight, above your altitude limit and during darkness. So you know whether you have one hour on it or six before you set up.
Every session, logged and shown off
Log each night with your rig, filter, exposures and guiding, then group nights into projects. Nova adds up the integration, so a target like the Cygnus Loop shows its 39 h 45 min across a whole summer of short nights.
Attach the final image and it lands in your gallery with the full story of how it was made.
See what happened while you slept
Drop in your NINA, ASIAIR or PHD2 logs and Nova charts the night: guiding RMS over time, every guide pulse, dithers, autofocus runs and meridian flips.
Spot a guiding spike or a focus drift after midnight, and know which subs to keep before you start stacking.
Built by an imager, for imagers
Dusk-to-dawn plots
Altitude, moon track and your horizon mask, hour by hour.
Best nights, scored
Upcoming nights rated by altitude, duration and moon, weeks ahead.
Framing assistant
Overlay your rig’s field of view on an Aladin sky chart, with rotation.
AI target advice
Ranked suggestions for tonight, plus session summaries and object notes.
Light-pollution horizon
See where skyglow sits around your site, from NASA VIIRS data.
Session planner
Build a night’s target sequence and keep projects moving across seasons.
Trusted by the community
“A comprehensive assistant for any astrophotographer who wants to maximize both imaging time and data quality. The planning features are genuinely unmatched.”
“Anything that can reduce the amount of time spent looking for objects and increasing the amount of time looking at them is a welcome addition to any astrophotographer’s toolkit.”
Ready for your next clear night?
Start in your browser in seconds, or download Nova for Mac and run it locally.
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