Eureka! Institutional Repository

For every astro-observer – either beginner or advanced – there are some necessary tools. Some of them are the telescope’s motion, the analysis of the position of the planets, the phase of the moon, the photography and the editing of those images. Without these, we need to observe every single bright object in the night sky, in order to find the object we wish to observe (the Moon is of course excluded). The application was implemented in C# programming language named and contains all the useful tools for an effective observation. More specifically, we now have the opportunity to know the phase of the Moon for any particular day and the location of the planets of our Solar System also for any day and time we choose. Furthermore, it presents us the planets that we have the ability to observe for a given time and the time it takes to direct the telescope to the object. The last step is photography. On our computer’s screen we can see the point the telescope is pointing at, and we have the ability to save the snapshot and edit it. This thesis is divided in four parts. The first part consists of the telescope's historical retrospection and the types of telescopes in detail, as well as some basic knowledge about stars and planets. In the second section steps taken to create the application (electronic components, pieces of code are presented) are shown. The third part constitutes a user manual and shows the capabilities of the application. Finally, in the fourth part the conclusions and the utility of the application are listed.