Ever wanted to get a better view of the stars in the night sky or, if you live an area with northern lights, a great photo of the aurora borealis? This Raspberry Pi project comes to us from a maker known as Jani. Using just a couple of Raspberry Pis and the HQ camera, they were able to capture time-lapsed images of the night sky with a beautiful end result.
According to Jani, the goal was to automate a night sky camera with temperature control to withstand more serious weather conditions. The setup uses a Raspberry Pi along with a 180° lens for the camera module.
(Image credit: Jani / jippo12)
The second Raspberry Pi is a 3 B+ using a V2 color camera with a relay controller HAT and temperature sensor module. The relays are used to activate heat resistors if the temperature gets too low—all controlled via Python.
The Raspberry Pis are running Raspberry Pi OS Lite with Meteotux Pi scheduled to run between sunset and sunrise. The setup snaps an image at pre-programmed intervals and stacks them into a single file. This can be used to create some impressive visual effects as demonstrated in the video above.
(Image credit: Jani / jippo12)
If you want to read more about this project, visit the showcase on Hackaday for more details and pictures.
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Ash Hill is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware with a wealth of experience in the hobby electronics, 3D printing and PCs. She manages the Pi projects of the month and much of our daily Raspberry Pi reporting while also finding the best coupons and deals on all tech.
