Astra

Astra (Automated Survey observaTory Robotised with Alpaca) is an open-source observatory control software for automating and managing robotic observatories. It integrates seamlessly with ASCOM Alpaca for hardware control.

Features

• Fully Robotic — Schedule once, observe automatically with error and bad weather handling
• ASCOM Alpaca — Compatible with your existing ASCOM equipment
• Cross-Platform — Python based, runs on Windows, Linux, macOS
• Moving Targets — Non-sidereal tracking of planets, comets, asteroids, and satellites from TLEs
• Web Interface — Manage your observatory from any browser, use cloudflared or similar to access outside your network
• Comprehensive Docs — Setup, usage, and module reference

Screenshots

Observatory overview

System logs

Weather monitoring

Controls tab

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md or the contributing guide.

License

Released under the GNU GPL v3.

Support

• Documentation
• Issue Tracker

Citation

If you use Astra in published research, please cite it as:

@misc{https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18890151,
  doi = {10.5281/ZENODO.18890151},
  url = {https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.18890151},
  author = {Pedersen,  Peter P. and Degen,  David and Garcia,  Lionel and Zúñiga-Fernández,  Sebastián and Sebastian,  Daniel and Schroffenegger,  Urs and Queloz,  Didier},
  keywords = {observatory control software,  ocs,  astronomy,  control software,  ground-based,  telescope,  camera,  ascom,  survey telescope,  photometry,  imaging},
  title = {Astra},
  publisher = {Zenodo},
  year = {2026},
  copyright = {GNU General Public License v3.0 only}
}

and

@inproceedings{10.1117/12.3105437,
  author = {Peter P. Pedersen and David Degen and Lionel Garcia and Urs Schroffenegger and Daniel Sebastian and Sebasti{\'a}n Z{\'u}{\~n}iga-Fern{\'a}ndez and Brice-Olivier Demory and Elsa Ducrot and Micha{\"e}l Gillon and Matthew J. Hooton and Cl{\`a}udia Jan{\'o}-Mu{\~n}oz and James McCormac and Mathilde Timmermans and Amaury H. M. J. Triaud and Didier Queloz},
  title = {{Astra: an open-source fully autonomous robotic observatory control software}},
  volume = {14155},
  booktitle = {Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy IX},
  editor = {Jorge Ibsen and Valentina Alberti},
  organization = {International Society for Optics and Photonics},
  publisher = {SPIE},
  pages = {141552U},
  keywords = {observatory control software, robotic, ground-based, observatory, robotic astronomy, plate solving, autoguiding, autofocus},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1117/12.3105437},
  URL = {https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3105437}
}

Zenodo DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18890151, Proceedings DOI: 10.1117/12.3105437, Arxiv DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2607.12898