Thank you for joining us; we’re excited to have you here! This guide should help you quickly get started with our services.
Data Access
Our data is stored on our cloud instance at https://nebula.sadrastro.com. If you are a subscribed member, You should have received a welcome email asking you to create your account and password. If you wish to join our imaging team, please subscribe https://sadrastro.com/observatory.
When you first login to nebula.sadrastro.com you may see a dashboard like this:
You can customize what you see on this screen – but the important bits are the menu options at top.
The Files tab is where the observatory subs and master files are, and all of our data that is collected is put into group folders that are structured to be descriptive. These group folders don’t count against your personal storage quota and can be synced or downloaded individually.
Once in the files section, you will see a menu like this:
2600MC OSC Data – Some previous data I’ve had from a remote site that I’m sharing for use. This will mostly be integrated masters vs raw data.
Calibration Data – Raw calibration files such as darks, bias, flats. I will try and make associations with the grouped images for associated flats to make flat management easier.
Documents – These are your personal documents – if you want to save any notes/tasks/files
Photos – Your personal photos. You can upload/share from here. This section is like a personal photo gallery and isn’t meant for raw image data, but rather processed gif/png/tiff/jpg.
RCS User Share – this is a group you have read/write access to in order to share anything you want to share with all users in our imaging group. This can be handy to upload your own data, upload masters you may be working on or share processed images or anything related to astrophotography.
Redcat 51 Widefield – this is the current scope/configuration running and will contain all data being collected in the immediate term. Once we add another scope or facility, it will be another folder. We may have to re-organize the calibration data sets too as we expand.
Clicking on the Red Cat 51 Widefield folder will reveal image sets that have been shared, as well as those still in the imaging process, which may be labeled with (WIP) for Work in Progress. You are welcome to integrate them as you deem appropriate, but please be aware that data collection is ongoing.
Synchronizing your data
You can synchronize with observing data by installing the appropriate nextcloud synchronization app for your OS at https://nextcloud.com/install
Click on Netxcloud Files
Choose the appropriate OS for your platform and save the Installer.
When you launch the installer, you should see a screen like this, click Next
Now you can verify the version and location of install.
Click Next to confirm options.
Now we’ll click install. In Windows you may see an elevated permission prompt to confirm.
Choose “Yes” to confirm administrative permissions. This grants integration into file explorer so you can sync files through Windows.
Click “Launch Nextcloud” so we can configure it on first start.
You may see this warning. I typically will select “NO” – restart later. I’m less concerned about file explorer integration – want to make sure to set things up.
Now we will see the Login screen. Click the “Log in” button.
You will now be prompted for server address
For the server’s name, use https://nebula.sadrastro.com
Click Next
Your default web browser should pop open a tab to authorize the client to connect to our cloud instance.
Click Log in
Be sure to log in with your nextcloud account – this is a separate account than the account used to subscribe to our service.
Once logged in, you need to grant access.
And finally you will see authorization granted.
Now we can configure the sync
I like to use virtual files so it doesn’t sync everything. We’re approaching 1 TB of data online and virtual files are tiny. Make sure the folder selection above reflects a storage folder you use for data. I have an NVMe drive labelled “F:” that I will set mine up to so my source files are on a fast disk to speed up integration time.
You can configure the sync to be on demand or specific folders or all folders. Please beware that we may image up to 15gb of data per night (especially in those long winter nights). You can be selective downloading over the web or use synchronization to share to your own files, so they download while you sleep.
Now that you set the folder location, click the connect button.
Nextcloud will create a virtual file system and integrate that with your file explorer.
The empty cloud icon shows that the files are still on the cloud. If you wish to download a directory from here, you can right click on the directory and select “Always keep on this device” and it will sync a local copy to the save file path that you set up.
Once done processing that image set, you can select to only store on cloud and it will remove the local copy.
Reminder – doing a full sync could require 10-20GB of data each night we observe!
Sharing your own data
With the base account, each user is allocated 100 GB of storage, which can be used to share images with the world or to save master files and projects in progress.
If you want to share data with all users on our platform, you can write to the RCS User Share.
Please do not share anything that isn’t related to astronomy, astrophotography, image editing, processing or associated tools, services and plugins. Please do not post any commercial or copyrighted information online in any of our group shares or public shares.
Join us on Discord
Discord allows is to live-chat and interact with people. Our automation tools also report to channels so you can see what is going on in real-time. Join or discord server by following the invite link in your welcome email or account center.
Discord is free to use and available for every OS and platform.
More coming soon
Next cloud affords us lots of opportunities to add new services that make sense for our community. We’re experimenting with using the calendar, tasks and notes to keep people up to date and we’re looking at adding services and capabilities to make the service as streamlined as can be. Leave us feedback on our discord server if you have any comments or suggestions!