Equipment Profiles

The Equipment tab lets you catalogue all your astronomy gear. Profiles pre-fill fields across Astrodex, the Exposure Calculator, and the SkyTonight target scorer.

Module: backend/equipment/equipment_profiles.py

Gear types

Data is stored in the database: equipment_items (one row per telescope, camera, mount, filter or accessory), equipment_combinations and combination_equipment (the filters and accessories of each combination); equipments/<user_id>_<type>.json inside a backup ZIP.

Equipment combinations

A combination is a named configuration that groups a telescope, camera, mount, filters, and accessories. It is the unit used by:

• The FOV Calculator (computes field of view for that telescope + camera pair)
• SkyTonight (“Best Equipment For This Target” rates all your enabled and valid combinations)
• Astrodex picture metadata (which setup was used for an image session)
• Plan My Night combination selector (see PLAN_MY_NIGHT.md)

At least one of telescope or camera is required; both are single-value fields (max one telescope, max one imaging camera per combination). Two additional fields cover setups the base telescope+camera model doesn’t:

A combination is flagged Shared only when every component in it is individually shared. If one component is later made private, the combination shows a ⚠ warning.

Photo badges

Each combination card carries two badges sourced from Astrodex:

• Photo count - number of Astrodex pictures linking to this combination. Click it to open the same slideshow used elsewhere in Astrodex, showing every one of those pictures.
• Average rating - mean of the 0-5 star ratings across those pictures (unrated pictures don’t count toward the average, though they do count toward the photo count).

Both respect the same visibility as the rest of Astrodex: with config['astrodex']['private'] off (default), they aggregate every visible user’s pictures for that combination; with it on, only your own.

Deletion

A combination can’t be deleted while it’s still referenced by any Astrodex picture (any user), pinned to any Plan My Night plan (any user), or referenced by any Observation Log session (any user) - the delete-guard mirrors the one on individual equipment items. This is checked in addition to the component-level guard: deleting the equipment inside a combination is blocked separately (see Disabling equipment) while deleting the combination itself is blocked by its pictures, plans or sessions (see OBSERVATION_LOG.md).

Field of View calculator

Sub-tab: Equipment -> FOV

Endpoint: POST /api/equipment/fov-calculator

Formulas

Image scale (arcsec/pixel)

The constant 206 265 arcsec ≈ 1 radian.

Field of view (degrees)

The constant 57.3° ≈ 1 radian (small-angle approximation valid for typical FOV values).

Sampling classification (Nyquist criterion)

The optimal sampling range is 2-3 pixels per FWHM of the seeing disk:

Default seeing used for the classification: 2.0 arcsec (typical suburban sky). You can override this in the calculator UI.

Equipment sharing

Any telescope, camera, mount, filter, or accessory can be marked “Share with all users” in its edit form. Shared items are immediately visible to every user on the instance:

• Shared items appear under a “Shared by Others” section labelled with the owner’s name.
• Non-owners can read but not edit or delete.
• Your own shared items show a Shared badge.

Shared equipment flows through the whole app:

Disabling equipment

Every gear type (Telescope, Camera, Mount, Filter, Accessory) and every Combination has an is_disabled flag, set from its own edit form.

• Deletion is blocked while an item is still referenced by a combination (your own, or another user’s if the item is shared) - the delete request returns the combination name(s) so you know what to unlink first. Disabling is the alternative when you don’t want to fully delete something that’s still tied to a combination.
• Disabled items are excluded from every combination editor’s dropdowns/checkboxes, unless they are already selected on the combination currently being edited - an existing combination never silently loses a component from the editor UI just because that component got disabled later.
• Disabled items are hidden from their list tab by default. A “Show hidden (N)” toggle at the top of each tab (Telescopes, Cameras, Mounts, Filters, Accessories, Combinations) reveals them, tagged with a “Hidden” badge.
• A combination that references a disabled (or no longer resolvable) piece of equipment is automatically flagged invalid - a computed status, independent of the combination’s own is_disabled toggle - and shown with a warning badge in the Equipment tab. Invalid/disabled combinations are not hidden or blocked from further use here; other features (SkyTonight, Plan My Night, Astrodex) are expected to start filtering on this status as each becomes combination-aware.

SkyTonight integration

For each DSO, POST /api/skytonight/combination-recommendations rates every enabled and valid equipment combination (own + shared) on a 1-5 scale:

1. Resolves each combination’s effective optics - a telescope’s aperture/focal length/f-ratio, or for a camera-only combination (no telescope), its lens_focal_length_mm/lens_focal_ratio.
2. Scores focal length against an ideal range derived from the target’s apparent size/type, and aperture against the target’s magnitude.
3. When the combination’s camera has sensor dimensions, blends in a real field-of-view match (via the FOV Calculator’s formulas) against the target’s apparent size, instead of relying on the focal-length heuristic alone.

Disabled or invalid combinations (see Disabling equipment) never appear in recommendations. See SKYTONIGHT.md for the full scoring model.

Presets

File: static/data/equipment_presets.json (static asset, no backend involvement - fetched directly by the frontend)

A curated list of real-world gear (telescopes, cameras, mounts, filters, accessories) that lets users skip manual data entry for common models. Each entry has an id, a label, a manufacturer, a source_url for provenance, a suggests_experience (beginner / intermediate / advanced) used to sort the closest match to the user’s own experience level to the top, and type-specific spec fields matching the corresponding gear type table above one-to-one (e.g. a telescope preset’s type maps to telescope_type, a filter preset’s filter_type must be one of the enum values listed under Filters, etc.).

Consumed in two places:

• The guided setup wizard’s equipment step (static/js/first_run.js) - offered alongside a manual-entry option.
• The Equipment tab’s “New Telescope / Camera / Mount / Filter / Accessory” modals (static/js/equipment.js) - a “Start from a preset” dropdown prefills the form, which remains fully editable afterward. Only shown when adding a new item, not when editing an existing one.

To add a preset, append an entry to the relevant array in the JSON file - no code change or restart needed (it’s fetched fresh by the browser). Keep enum-like fields (type, sensor_type, mount_type, filter_type) consistent with the values each form’s <select> accepts, or the preset will silently fail to prefill that field.

Bundles (smart telescopes)

A telescope preset can declare a bundle: an array of sibling equipment items that ship built into the same physical unit - most commonly an all-in-one “smart telescope” (Seestar, Dwarf, Vespera, …) whose fixed built-in camera sensor has no other way to be represented, since a plain telescope preset only carries optical specs (aperture/focal length), not sensor data.

{
  "id": "seestar_s50",
  "...": "... normal telescope fields ...",
  "auto_combination": true,
  "bundle": [
    { "kind": "camera", "label": "Seestar S50 built-in camera (Sony IMX462)", "sensor_width_mm": 5.6, "...": "..." },
    { "kind": "mount", "label": "Seestar S50 built-in AZ mount/tripod", "mount_type": "Alt-Azimuth", "...": "..." },
    { "kind": "filter", "label": "Seestar S50 Solar Filter", "filter_type": "Solar", "...": "..." }
  ]
}

• kind is one of camera / mount / filter / accessory; the rest of each bundle entry’s fields match that kind’s normal preset shape one-to-one (same as a standalone entry in the cameras/mounts/ filters/accessories arrays above).
• Set weight_kg: 0 on every bundle entry - the parent telescope’s own weight_kg already represents the whole fused unit’s mass; giving bundle items their own non-zero weight would multiply-count it in a combination card’s total payload calculation.
• auto_combination: true on the parent tells the guided setup wizard (static/js/first_run.js) to create every bundle item alongside the telescope and link them all into one auto-created combination - this is what makes “every time the wizard creates equipment, a combination is created” true even for a single-preset pick. When a bundling preset is selected, the wizard’s separate camera picker is hidden (a combination can only have one imaging camera, and the bundle already supplies it).
• Bundle items are never independently selectable elsewhere (no separate preset dropdown entry) - they only ever get created as part of their parent telescope’s wizard flow.

Telescopes

Cameras

Mounts

The last three feed the Plan My Night meridian flip indicator - see PLAN_MY_NIGHT.md. Absent on older mount files, they are backfilled to these defaults on every read (equipment_profiles.normalize_mount_flip_fields, applied by get_mount, the mounts list endpoint and plan_my_night._resolve_plan_mount); the stored file is not rewritten.

Filters

Accessories

Generic category for any optical or mechanical accessory not covered above: field flatteners, focusers, filter wheels, OAGs, etc.

API endpoints

Last updated 2026-11-13