Scope report
Look up your scope
Type the serial number of your telescope or camera to see how SkyCruncher has measured that scope. Every scope gets the same report, in the same four sections.
No report for this serial yet
Scope reports are new, and we're building the first ones now. The answer reads the same for a scope we haven't measured yet and for a serial with a typo, so check it's typed exactly as written.
A report fills from the nights people share. Each shared night adds measurements of the optics, brightness and color, depth and sensor, and each section shows once it has enough nights. If you'd like numbers on your scope today, a profile run measures it from your own frames and sends the result to you alone.
The standard report
Every scope's report has these four sections, in this order. Anything without enough data yet says "not yet measured", and a section that needs more nights says roughly how many.
Optics
How sharp and true the optics are across the field. Pooled over every camera used on the telescope.
- Star sharpness by zonenot yet measured
Star width (FWHM: a star image's width at half its peak brightness) in nine zones across the field.
- Lens curvenot yet measured
How far stars land from where a perfect lens would put them, center to corner (distortion).
- Pixel scalenot yet measured
How much sky one pixel covers, in arcseconds.
- Sensor tiltnot yet measured
Whether the sensor sits square to the light, read from how star width changes across the field.
- Corner darkeningnot yet measured
How much dimmer the corners are than the center (vignetting).
- Color fringingnot yet measured
How far apart a star's red, green and blue images sit toward the edges (lateral chromatic aberration).
Brightness and color
How the scope's brightness and colors line up with Gaia, the European Space Agency's star catalog. Split per camera.
- Zero point per bandnot yet measured
The magnitude (astronomers' brightness scale, where bigger is fainter) of a star that gives one count per second, in each color channel: the scope's sensitivity.
- Color term against Gaianot yet measured
How the scope's colors differ from Gaia's, as a slope against each star's color.
- Scatter against Gaianot yet measured
How far a single star's measured brightness typically lands from Gaia's value.
Depth and position
How faint it reaches, and how precisely it places stars on the sky.
- Depthnot yet measured
The faintest magnitude at which it still finds most of the stars Gaia lists (its completeness limit).
- Position precisionnot yet measured
How closely measured star positions match Gaia's, in arcseconds.
Sensor and tracking
The camera's sensor, and how steadily the mount follows the sky. Split per camera.
- Gainnot yet measured
Electrons per count: how the camera turns light into numbers.
- Read noisenot yet measured
The noise the camera adds each time it reads the sensor, in electrons.
- Hot pixelsnot yet measured
Pixels that read bright with no light falling on them.
- Saturation levelnot yet measured
The count at which a pixel stops responding to more light.
- Trackingnot yet measured
How steadily the mount follows the sky during an exposure.
This page never shows
Who owns a scope, where it was used, when it was used, or a list of its nights. It never names or links another scope. It shows only how the scope itself measures. Where a number is placed against others, it's against scopes of the same model, all unnamed.
What a lookup sends and keeps is on the privacy page. The data file's layout is published here.
Star catalog: ESA Gaia DR3, processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC).