Development

Sky360 is a citizen science endeavor to develop hard- and software for a comprehensive, yet low cost, sky observation platform. The people working in research and development are community members, who are professionals in their fields of software development, electronics engineering, structural engineering, astronomy, climatology etc. We all contribute our skills and knowledge to create a rigid and precise sensor platform for 24/7 sky situation awareness.

Sky360 station, Sep 2024

Creative Commons License - "CC BY-NC-ND-SA"

This license applies to all hardware development and design, including any documentation, papers and visuals, be it still images, or videos.

• credit must be given to the creator(s)
• only non-commercial uses of the work(s) are permitted
• no derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted
• adaptations (on request) must be shared under the same terms
  
  

MIT

This license applies to all software development and design, including associated documentation and visuals.

Permission is granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of the software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

To achieve the required resolution, a combination of an AllSkyCam (fisheye) and a PTF (pan-tilt-focus) camera is required. The ASC monitors the sky 24/7 and registers everything that moves in the sky as an event (aircraft, drone, bird, etc.). An initial rough analysis of each event determines whether to activate the PTF or other sensors. The PTF then focuses on the particular event, tracks it, and analyzes the now 30x more detailed event.

All hardware components we use, such as cameras, passive radar, temperature gauges, geophones, etc. must be available worldwide and off-the-shelf. At Sky360 we search, buy and test different options, currently for the combination of the ASC and the PTF. Our goal is to find the best price for the quality we need and to share our findings with the community.

Our curated list of recommended hardware products can be found here.

All future additions and developments from Sky360 will be compatible with existing hardware purchased on previous SkyHubs'  recommendation.

The software will cover various functionalities.

The core part is the tracker with image processing, a neural network (NN) with a machine learning (ML) based identifier and prioritizer, as well as a messaging system for all connected sensors.

For the connected sensors we first focus on the PTF for guiding, vector-ahead tracking and production of high resolution video data.

Currently all stations data is collected and stored locally. However, we plan to develop a software/AI for a cloud service that can aggregate event data from all active stations. The analysis will include additional external data such as air traffic, weather, etc.

The first version of our open source Sky360 software is scheduled for release in 2023.

Schematic of the Aloha version, Feb 2026