Best Tonight and Saved Framings

The BEST TONIGHT strip on the Plan screen ranks targets for the active rig and tonight’s sky. Saved framings keep a target’s exact composition, and the framing lock has a rig return to it on later nights.

The Best tonight strip

The header reads BEST TONIGHT · and the active rig’s name, with a one-line verdict on the night. Best ▾ sorts the list by Best, Most hours, Earliest or Name. Tonight ▸ opens the Tonight panel.

The pills filter the list: Best, Saved, Nebula, Galaxy, Cluster and All. The type pills also filter the sky atlas.

Each card shows:

the target’s photo, name, designation and type, and a heart to save it;
how long it is up tonight, how it fits your frame (as a percentage of the frame, a tight fit, a mosaic, or small in frame), and its peak altitude and time;
a bar of its usable window, with the time the Moon is up hatched;
chips for what you have already shot: so far under 10 hours, done at 10 hours or more, or new, and other catalog objects that share the frame;
Locate, which centres the sky atlas on the target and follows it, and GoTo.

Tap a card to locate the target and open its details.

If the list is empty, the strip says why: Set the site location to plan the night, or nothing clears your horizon for an hour tonight.

How the list is ranked

A target counts only while the Sun is below −18° and the target is above your horizon profile. It needs at least one hour of that.
Each target is scored on its altitude, the cloud forecast, the Moon, how it fits the rig’s frame, and how interesting it is. Narrowband filters ease the Moon penalty for emission targets.
A target you have started (under 10 hours) moves up a little, one with 10 hours or more moves down a little, and saved targets move up.
Each rig gets its own list of up to 40 targets. Before dawn, “tonight” is still the night that began the evening before.

The Tonight panel

Tonight ▸ opens the panel: a side panel on a large screen, a bottom sheet on a phone. It has Tonight and Saved tabs.

The night describes tonight. Next nights sets tonight beside the next three nights, with no forecast yet past the forecast.
Suggested order puts broadband targets before moonrise and emission targets after it, with Add to sequence.
With more than one rig, a section lists each rig’s pick for tonight, with Send to both or Send to all. Only the active rig’s target is added. For each other rig, ARIS tells you to make that rig active, open Tonight and tap Add to sequence.
Ranked for and the rig’s name lists the ranked targets. Tap one to see its frame, altitude chart and facts, with Add to sequence, Frame it (opens Framing) and Save.

To plan another night, pick a date in Plan the night of. Back to tonight returns. If you move the Plan screen to another night, the panel follows.

Saved targets

Tap the heart on any target to save it. Saved targets are kept with your account, or on this device when you are signed out. The Saved pill and tab list them, and the Saved tab shows each target’s best months.

Saved targets are not the same as saved framings.

Saved framings

In Framing, Use This Framing saves the composition with the target: its centre, rotation, survey and field of view. The rig keeps a copy with the target’s project.

On the Sequencing screen, each target card has a FRAMING row. It reads Frame this target until a framing is saved, then shows the framing’s name and angle with a SAVED badge. The row is locked while a sequence runs.

Tap the FRAMING row. The picker shows the target’s saved framings on a coverage view, each with its frame count, nights, last shot and hours. With no framing saved yet, it goes straight to Framing.
Pick a framing to reopen it. Framing shows a SAVED FRAMING banner with Revert.
To change it, move the frame. MOVED FROM SAVED shows how far it has moved, over a ghost of the saved frame. Replace Framing saves the change in place.
To keep both, use + New framing in the picker. It adds a separate target in the same project.

In the picker, CURRENT marks the framing of the target you opened it from, freeform one you composed yourself rather than from a suggestion, and derived one the rig rebuilt from a light frame’s header. Rename framing renames one. When you open Framing from the Plan screen, Your framings lists the object’s saved framings; tap one to go to it.

Framing lock

The framing lock has a rig return to the same framing for each target on every night. Turn it on in Settings, in the Multi-Night Framing Lock section, with Multi-night framing lock. It is a setting of the active rig.

The first run that centres a target saves a reference: where the rig actually centred, and the sky angle. It is separate from the framing you saved in Framing.
Later runs centre on that reference instead of the catalog position, and match its angle with the rotator.
A saved reference does not change. To let the next run save a new one, use Clear framing reference… and pick the project and target.

Where the lock cannot apply, the night goes on with ordinary centring and a warning: with no project, with a camera or telescope that differs from the reference’s, or with a simulated plate solver. Without a rotator, the lock matches the centre only.