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[wwpierre]

I am addressing this to you as you are the most savvy person I know who could assess this idea.

The best way to describe this software is to describe it's use:

On a clear cloudless day, or perhaps one of featureless overcast, you set up a camera on your usual observing site and take a bunch of overlapping photos of your horizon. You then load these into the software, which stitches them together into a cylinder, removes the sky, and installs it into the planetarium software. The next step is to observe the exact moment some bright star appears above the horizon and exactly where on the horizon it appears. This data could be entered for different objects at different times. This would orient the horizon in your basic planetarium software.

Once this is done, the software could print out an observing list with only the input of a date and time. Or it could run a telescope.

I think all the components for this are already available. Think Autostitch meets Stellarium.

Just because this is addressed to Curt, doesn't mean nobody else can comment.

[erikruud]

There is a process, although somewhat cumbersome, to add your own background into Stellarium. It's in the documentation somewhere. I haven't tried it yet.

[erikruud]

This thread gives an explanation on how to do it.

[wwpierre]

Essentially, yes. I have already done so in my Stellarium. (See Curt's "Moon Occults Venus" thread for a screenshot) I am just talking of automating the process.