wpdrost69/nina-uas-object-chooser

A NINA plugin: browse the Under African Skies deep-sky catalogue, planets, and the ideal telescope focal length — inside NINA. # UAS Object Chooser — NINA plugin (v0.2 starter) A native NINA plugin that brings the **Under African Skies** object catalogue directly into NINA. It adds a dockable panel — **"UAS Object Chooser"** — that mirrors the website tool: same 675 objects, same options (search, type filter, hemisphere, sort), the same **preview images from Wikipedia**, and **Set in Framing** / **Slew & center** actions — all inside NINA, no browser, no copied coordinates. ## Answers to your three questions **1. "UAS Object Chooser" as the name** — done. That's the panel title and the plugin's display name in NINA. (The internal assembly is `UnderAfricanSkies.ObjectChooser`.) **2. "Must work everywhere in the world, like the website" — yes, genuinely possible, and it's actually cleaner here than on the website.** NINA already knows the observer's latitude/longitude (from the active profile's Astrometry settings). The plugin reads that and computes each object's altitude/visibility for wherever you actually are — Namibia, Chile, Spain, Australia — with **no location picker needed**. The catalogue itself is global (both hemispheres). See `Services/Visibility.cs`, which is a direct C# port of the website's altitude maths, and `ComputeVisibility()` in the panel. **3. "Show the pictures like it does now" — yes, same source, and now built — AND it works offline.** The website pulls its images from the **Wikipedia REST summary API** by article name. The plugin does the same (`Services/AstroImageService.cs`), but with a **persistent local cache**: images and descriptions are stored under `%localappdata%\NINA\Plugins\UASObjectChooser\images\`. A **"Download images for offline use"** button bulk-downloads every object's picture once (while online); after that the tool needs **no internet at the telescope**. We deliberately do NOT bundle the images into the product: Wikipedia/Commons images have mixed licences (many CC-BY-SA, some non-free), so bundling would be a redistribution with per-image o …