Mobile Phone based Plate Solving Polar Alignment with SkEye Cam

Polar alignment in the Southern Hemisphere has always being a bit of a game of patience and persistence. The immensely convenient laser pointer alignment method using the North Star and popularised with the MSM tracker are simply not available to use down south where we use the faint Octans constellation for alignment.
The mobile phone has emerged as a valuable tool for astro over the past half a decade, however in terms of alignment it has never been super accurate due to electronic interference and the limitation of its sensors. That is until SkEye Cam which utilises the tried and tested Plate Solving method using your mobile phones camera. Super accurate and after the updates to the app over the past year is now reliable to boot.
SkEye Cam is free to use which is a great gift to the astrophotography community given the expense of similar competing solutions such as the QHY Polemaster or iOptron iPolar. Feel free to ask any question below, however would also really encourage you to engage with the developer so they have the feedback to improve the app.
skeye.rocks/apps/skeye/
/ skeye
play.google.com/store/apps/de...
Website: astroroad.com.au
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[@nightscapeimages.richard]

Beautiful work Dominic. Looks like a really well thought out system for polar aligning. Love the timelapse . .especially all the satellites .. !!! Also the final image is wonderful.

[@AstroRoad]

Thanks Richard, really appreciate it. Yeah, it is great for a 1 man development. You can even use telephoto lenses for your phone to get the solving even more accurate.
Yeah, really happy with the final image. Loads of air glow that night.

[@GrowPhotography]

Great information here Domenic, I wasn't aware of this technique (I just use the compass and clino currently) but will definitely try it out next time. Love the resulting images, those timelapses are super clean 👌, and so many satellites - I've noticed the same in my own timelapses at this time of the year when shooting near the zodiacal light.

[@AstroRoad]

Thanks Greg! Crazy how many satellites are in the sky now, I do wonder what our skies are going to look like in 10 years time 😬. Plate solving is generally the domain of deep sky stuff as landscape astro doesn't need the precision. Definitely a great tool to have at your disposal though for when wanting to venture into longer focal lengths.

[@GrowPhotography]

@@AstroRoad Yes, I had heard of plate solving for telescopes connected to laptops but awesome that there are now phone apps as well. I do like to use 35mm and even 85mm at times. Might try it out on Orion over the summer months

[@paramasivamsaravanakumar7542]

Thanks very much. It will solve the headache in the Southern hemisphere polar alignment. Do you need a network or wifi connection to plate solve?

[@AstroRoad]

No problem at all, I hope you find it useful. For live plate solving I believe you do need a network connection as the app uses neural networks for this. Would be worth asking the developer about this though, I find the SkEye subreddit is usually pretty good (although a bit quiet of late).
www.reddit.com/r/skeye/s/xyfWuwmNgD

[@skeye-rocks]

Developer here. Sorry for the late reply, saw this comment just now.
Network / WiFi is not required, the image solving happens entirely locally on device.
@AstroRoad the term Neural Network is not related to Internet / connectivity. It's just a different way of programming that is inspired by our biological neural networks

[@paramasivamsaravanakumar7542]

Thank you very much. Good to know.