The command center
for your smart telescope.
Smart telescopes made imaging easy. Your growing library was still a mess. Until now.
Your data is trapped in silos.
Every capture from your scope's own app, stranded in its own format, on its own device, with no way out.
Planning is manual.
Altitude, azimuth, and rise times worked out by hand or guessed at, session after session.
Forecasts are scattered.
Cloud cover in one app, seeing in another, moon phase in a third. None of it built for astronomy.
Nebulis is Mission Control
for your backyard observatory.
One system pulls in every capture, plans every session, and reads the sky, so you spend your nights observing, not organizing.
Five systems. One command deck.
Capture, plan, forecast, catalog, and history all live in one continuously synced place.
Every capture, organized itself.
Every frame from your SeeStar, ASIAIR, or Dwarf is thumbnailed and cataloged the moment it syncs. Filter by galaxy, nebula, cluster, date, or telescope. No manual sorting, ever.
- Automatic thumbnailing on import
- Filter by object type, telescope, or favorites
- Matched against Messier, NGC, IC, and Sharpless
- Star your favorites, add private notes
Know exactly what to shoot tonight.
The planner pulls your location and calculates live altitude curves for every object in the NGC, Messier, IC, and Sharpless catalogs, then ranks every target by peak altitude and visibility window.
- Altitude and azimuth curves for any date
- Drag and drop interactive night timeline
- Rank targets by peak altitude and window
- Catalog image preview for every object
Astronomy-specific weather, hourly.
Generic weather apps don't tell you about atmospheric seeing or moon phase. Nebulis combines cloud cover, humidity, seeing index, and moon illumination into a single 0–100 visibility score for every hour of the night.
- Per-hour cloud cover, seeing, and moon phase
- Composite 0–100 visibility score
- Sunset and astronomical twilight markers
- Automatic location detection
Work the classic lists.
Messier, Caldwell, Herschel 400, and Sharpless hold 860 unique objects between them. Every one ticks off by itself as your library grows, so you can see how far into each program you are and what's still missing.
- Messier, Caldwell, Herschel 400, Sharpless
- Objects check off as your library grows
- Filter a board by imaged, remaining, or type
- Plan tonight straight from what's left
Every session, cataloged.
Nebulis automatically organizes every capture into a per-object observation log. Stack counts, exposure totals, conditions, and the resulting frames, all in one place, ready to revisit or share.
- Auto-grouped by object and session
- Stack counts and total integration time
- Conditions snapshot for every session
- One-click access to the originals
And everything else it handles
Smaller tools, same local-first server. No extra setup, no extra apps.
Local-First Privacy
No Cloud. Ever.
Nebulis runs entirely on your own machine. Your images, your catalog, your plans. None of it ever touches a server you don't control.
FITS Viewer
See exactly what's in your raw frames before you stack. Inspect FITS headers and compare stacked vs. subframes.
Automatic Imports
Give each telescope its own check-in interval and Nebulis pulls new sessions in on its own, taking only the frames it has not seen. Switch it off per scope whenever you want.
Multi-telescope
Manage multiple telescopes from one interface. Each scope keeps its own library while sharing the same catalog and planner.
Satellite Trail Scan
A scan you run by hand over a session's subframes. It measures any streak it finds, then checks the time and your location against the satellite catalog to suggest what crossed.
iOS · tvOS · Android
Browse your full image library from your iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, or Android device. Same library, every screen.
One library.
Every screen you own.
The Nebulis server runs on a Mac, Windows PC, or Docker host on your network. Every other device just connects to it. No relay, no third party in between.
- One server, unlimited local devices
- Same library on phone, tablet, and TV
- Everything stays on your own Wi-Fi
From native smart scopes to organized folders
Nebulis can sync directly from supported telescopes, ingest USB storage, or watch a defined folder structure over your local network.
ASIAIR support is beta. Its folder layout is built from ZWO's transfer guide rather than a device on the bench, so tell me if yours imports wrong.
| Telescope | SMB / FTP | USB | Manual | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seestar S30 / S50 Native import over SMB or direct USB storage. | Auto | Auto | Yes | Native import over SMB or direct USB storage. |
| DWARFLAB Dwarf Automatic import over FTP, or from direct USB storage. | Auto | Auto | Yes | Automatic import over FTP, or from direct USB storage. |
| ZWO ASIAIR (Beta) Sub-frames from Autorun, Plan, and Live. Stacked results only if you shot in Live mode. | Auto | Auto | Yes | Sub-frames from Autorun, Plan, and Live. Stacked results only if you shot in Live mode. |
| Any scope folder Automatic SMB import from Nebulis defined folders. | Auto | No | Yes | Automatic SMB import from Nebulis defined folders. |
From download to first import, in minutes
No cloud account. No subscription. Just download, connect, and go.
Install Nebulis
Download the Mac or Windows installer and run it. Setup takes under two minutes.
Mac · WindowsConnect your telescope
Enter your telescope's IP address, or plug in via USB. Nebulis scans and imports automatically.
ZWO SeeStar · ZWO ASIAIR · DWARFLAB Dwarf II · Dwarf 3Import your sessions
Hit sync and Nebulis pulls in every session: JPEGs, FITS files, and subframes, matched against the NGC, Messier, and IC catalogs.
FITS · JPEG · SubframesExplore your universe
Browse your library, plan tomorrow's session, check tonight's forecast, and view raw FITS data. Everything in one window.
Library · Planner · Forecast · GalleryDownload Nebulis
Your telescope. Every screen.
Install the Nebulis server where your images live: macOS, Windows, or self-hosted on Linux via Docker. Then connect from any device on your local network.
Runs on your machine · access from any device
Browse your library from any device on your local network.
NO SUBSCRIPTION · NO CLOUD · YOUR DATA NEVER LEAVES YOUR NETWORK
About the Windows SmartScreen warning
When you download Nebulis for Windows, you may see a SmartScreen prompt saying "Windows protected your PC" or warning that the publisher is unknown. This is expected, and here's why.
Bypassing this warning requires an Extended Validation (EV) code-signing certificate, which costs several hundred dollars a year. Nebulis is built and maintained by a single independent developer, and that cost isn't feasible right now.
The app itself is not malware. It runs entirely on your local network, never sends your data anywhere, and does not phone home. To proceed, click More info in the SmartScreen dialog, then Run anyway.
Brent
CREATOR OF NEBULIS
Built by one person, on nights and weekends.
From a very young age, I have always loved astronomy and astrophotograhy. In 2023 I bought a SeeStar and hit a wall: getting images off the device and organized was a slog of manual file copying and guesswork. I wrote a few scripts to handle it for myself, and they kept growing until they turned into a full app.
Nebulis is that app. It's free, with no accounts, no subscriptions, and no ads. If it's saved you time under the stars, a coffee helps keep it going.
