StellarSolver is a tool that helps you align stars and solve plates in astrophotography. It uses smart algorithms to find stars in images, making it easier to align and stack them for great results. Additionally, whether you’re photographing galaxies, nebulae, or planets, StellarSolver is a must-have for any astrophotographer. In this guide, we will show you how to install StellarSolver on your Raspberry Pi 5. Then, you can start capturing the universe with precision.
This article describes a procedure to install software on a Raspberry Pi 5 with 8G RAM running Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit) (Debian v.12 bookworm) booted directly from a 1TB NVMe SSD PCIe drive. This procedure may work for other configurations, so please do let us know if it does, or tell us about any issues you faced and your configuration. Thanks!
Prerequisites
- Raspberry Pi 5 board with Raspberry Pi OS (or any other compatible operating system) installed and configured.
- For the best possible performance, check out how to Turbocharge Your Raspberry Pi 5: Booting from NVMe SSD.
- Stable internet connection for downloading software packages.
- Basic familiarity with the Raspberry Pi environment, including how to open a terminal and run commands.
Step 1: Prepare Your Raspberry Pi 5
Begin by ensuring that your Raspberry Pi 5 is up to date. Open a terminal or SSH session and run the following commands:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
This will update the package lists and upgrade any installed packages to their latest versions.
Step 2: Build StellaSolver from Source Code
To start the StellarSolver build process, we first need to install some prerequisites:
sudo apt install git cmake qtbase5-dev libcfitsio-dev libgsl-dev wcslib-dev
Create a project directory into which the source will be downloaded:
mkdir ~/Projects
cd ~/Projects
Download the source code from the StellarSolver repository on GitHub. We will use a shallow clone to speed things up and save space:
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/rlancaste/stellarsolver.git
Build the code:
cd ~/Projects/stellarsolver
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo -DBUILD_TESTER=ON ../
make -j $(expr $(nproc) + 2)
sudo make install
Step 3: Verify Installation
To verify that StellaSolver has been successfully installed, you can launch it from the desktop environment menu or from a terminal by typing:
StellarSolverTester
This should launch the StellaSolver application:
Conclusion:
Congratulations! You’ve installed StellarSolver on your Raspberry Pi 5! Now you can easily align stars and solve plates for your astrophotography. Whether you’re taking pictures of galaxies or enjoying the Milky Way, StellarSolver will help you make the most of your astronomy adventures. So, grab your Raspberry Pi and start exploring the stars. Happy stargazing!