New to TAC (and Astrophotography) + Vibe coding my way through it

[Dave Bullock]

Hello All,

I’m new to TAC and astrophotography in general (started my journey with my current setup in January).  I posted this to reddit/astrobin and figured you all may have some feedback for me.  Here’s a gallery of my work so far on my blog:

https://eecue.com/collections/albums_2026-astrophotography

As well as my astrobin:

https://app.astrobin.com/u/eecue

I just recently picked up an Edge HD 8”, G11 and a dual saddle, so looking forward to some clear skies and getting some galaxy detail! 

Here’s the post:

This is going to be controversial as I know you all have dedicated a ton of time to this hobby and been in the trenches learning PI/Siril/etc. That is hard work and I appreciate you all and don’t want this post or my workflow to lessen the value of that.

That being said: I have cheated my way into the hobby and this is my story.

I have been a huge fan of astronomy since I was a kid. I remember going to the planetarium and being mesmerized by the cosmos. In high school in Santa Fe a teacher of mine did a star party at a friends house with his 10” reflector and I was blown away but what we could see. 20 years ago I bought myself a telescope, a mount and some eyepieces. I used it once or twice and it sat in my garage in a bunch of pelican cases.

Fast forward to a few months ago, my friend and neighbor (who’s fairly prolific on here, but I’ll let him decide if he wants to comment) asked if I wanted to see C/2025 A6 (Lemmon). He pulled out his telescope and it was really cool. I thought: hey I have one of those things, I should take it out and set it up. So I did and put my Canon on it with a t-mount and took some (really bad) photos.

It sparked some insane thing in me. I decided I wanted to do this for reals. I did some research and figured out my best bang for my buck would be to buy some cement and build a pier. I found this great article https://tucsonastronomy.org/astronomy/backyard-pier/ and convinced my boss (wife) to let me build it on our backyard hill. (photos here: https://eecue.com/collections/albums_2026-astrophotography)

I decided I needed a real camera, I was going to buy a color one but my aforementioned friend set me straight and sent me a link to a camera + filter wheel combo on Astromart which I procured. I also picked up a guide scope and camera, focuser, and power box all used and negotiated down because i’m cheap. I bought a fanless computer and ran power and ethernet up to my pier.

I noted that I’m cheap, I’m also not a fan of Windows, I have been a software engineer for over 30 years so I wanted everything to be on Linux and/or Mac. Here’s where it gets controversial.

I have two young children (1.5 and 3.5 year olds) and I have very very limited free time. I do not have the time required to learn a whole new workflow and complicated (and dare I say, not great UI/UX) software applications to process my photos. I am also a big fan of agentic coding and use it extensively so I decided to vibe code my way through astrophotography.

I used Claude to help dial in Kstars/Indi/Ekos. Once I started getting subs I had Claude write me a python processing script that drove Siril as well as some ML models directly to handle the stacking and processing. My workflow is currently as follows:

1) Select targets in Kstars (I also vibe coded an macOS app that shows me all the targets available with nice photos/etc so I can make good decisions on what I want to capture)

2) Go to sleep

3) Wake up

4) Run an rsync command to get my new subs onto my M1 Macbook Pro

5) Tell Claude about what I captured

6) Claude runs the scripts and opens up the processed photos in Preview

7) If i’m happy (which for the last few captures I have been) I copy them to Photos which uploads them to my website (via another vibe coded workflow)

8) I tell Claude to upload them to Astrobin

9) Sometimes I post to reddit too

That’s it, it’s roughly 1-2 minutes of my time total.

I’m shocked at what I’ve been able to capture in my bortle 9 (according to the site but I think i’m likely a bit closer to an 8) … i’ve been having a ton of fun with this, recently added an all sky camera and bought a new mount (Losmandy G11 which I got for a steal with all the nice upgrades) … next up is getting a bigger scope so I can enjoy galaxies.

I do want to remind folks that this hobby should be fun, so please be gentle to a noob.

Happy to answer any questions. I am unable to open source my code though since my work prohibits that.

Clear skies!

Dave

[Aris Pope]

Most of these guys in this group are visual astronomers. I will look at joining SJAA. They have a pretty good Astro imaging group. They have an email list and discord where they share images and knowledge. In the past I have received direct negative feedback regarding posting pictures in this group. 

Aris

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[Hy Murveit]

Great work! I'm impressed. 

Don't let people discourage you from posting, there are plenty of images posted here, but sure, join the SJAA group as well.
https://groups.google.com/a/sjaa.net/g/astroimaging

Ping me directly if you ever have a KStars question that Claude can't answer.

Hy

[Richard Navarrete]

It’s cool to share your images, the list just doesn’t want long discussions about AP gear and processes . 

Beautiful images !

Richard

Sent from the all new AOL app for iOS

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sf-bay-tac/CA%2BB1P8veLqWj8m1XTrK5Ro0QbOsX82gYoY5kdhB0CL0B3k744w%40mail.gmail.com.

[Rajah]

Dave, Hy is ‘THE’ guy for kstars, he contributes regularly to kstars. 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sf-bay-tac/CA%2BB1P8veLqWj8m1XTrK5Ro0QbOsX82gYoY5kdhB0CL0B3k744w%40mail.gmail.com.