[Tool] Lightbucket Astro Planner — free, open-source NINA-companion session planner (macOS/Windows)

Processing

Hi r/astrophotography,

Sharing a free tool I've built and have been using on my own imaging nights for the last few months. It's reached a state where it's genuinely useful and I'd like to put it in front of more imagers.

Lightbucket Astro Planner is a desktop app that handles the planning side of an imaging night and exports the result as a .ninaTargetSet file you load directly into NINA. macOS and Windows. No account, no cloud, no telemetry. Source is on GitHub.

Repo and downloads: https://github.com/LightbucketAstro/lightbucket-astro-planner

Currently 1.0.0. The builds aren't code-signed yet (Apple/Microsoft cost money I don't currently have) so there's a one-time warning to bypass on first launch — instructions are in the README.

Bug reports and feature requests very welcome

Clear skies,

LBA

Posted May 7, 2026, 12:43 PM UTC

20
Loading comments…