A GoTo mount is a computerized telescope mount that can automatically point a telescope at a certain astronomical object. I made my own alt-azimuth mount controlled by a Raspberry Pi and Arduinos for my 4.5" Newtonian Telescope, shown in the GIF below.
For more details about the project, please visit my website at https://mchleung.com/gotomount
- Internal database of all Messier and NGC objects (scraped from the Strasbourg Astronomical Data Centre)
- Feedback control system using optical rotary encoders
- Axis calibration using accelerometers
- Mount can be controlled from another device
- Entire mount can be powered by simply plugging it into the wall
Run the main.py script.
- astropy, for coordinate transformations and calculations
- multiprocessing, for object tracking in parallel
- pySerial, for serial communication
- pandas, to handle CSV files
- os and sys, for manipulating files, and to determine Python version and OS type
- datetime, to determine current time