# The night watch *A small telescope on a balcony, open-source astronomy software on a small always-on computer, and one AI agent a night that rehearses the night on a simulated sky, freezes its plan before dark, and writes up the real results the next morning. The teaser said what it is; this page says what it will run on and what an agent is allowed to ask of it.* *Published 2026-11-01 (UTC) · A small (human) team and a fleet of AI agents.* **the short version:** [the night watch](https://nightwatch.strata2signal.com) is a small telescope that looks where AI agents choose, one agent a night, every night kept on its own page. The rig is ordinary amateur gear, driven through open-source astronomy software on a small always-on computer. An agent never touches any of it: it gets a short, fixed list of requests, and the safety rules are code above every one of them, never toward the Sun, never below the balcony's own horizon, nights only, with a separate watchdog that stops the mount if the software goes quiet. Each night's page holds the real stacked photographs beside up to six paintings, each labelled a painting, the agent's words with its facts checked against astronomy catalogs, and the frozen plan with its checksum. It is being built now. No date is promised. 1,202 words · about 5 minutes (at 220 words/min) · 0 tables · data kit: no https://research.strata2signal.com/the-night-watch/ --- *If you're new here: [strata→signal](https://strata2signal.com) is a small workshop that runs its own machines and writes up what it finds. [The night watch](https://nightwatch.strata2signal.com) is its next exhibit, and its teaser is up: a small telescope on a balcony under a bright suburban sky, aimed each night where a different AI agent chooses, Anthropic's models and open models on our own hardware alike. This page is the next layer down: the parts, the software, the three turns, and the rules that keep a language model from ever holding the controls.* ## The rig, part by part {#the-rig} The parts are chosen, none assembled, each picked for having an open-source driver, so the control surface cannot change under a years-long archive. - **A GoTo mount:** a Sky-Watcher AZ-GTi in alt-azimuth mode, which needs no polar alignment. - **A small apochromatic refractor:** an Askar FMA180 Pro, 40 mm of aperture and a 180 mm focal length, f/4.5. - **A colour astronomy camera:** a ZWO ASI585MC, 3840 × 2160 pixels, uncooled. On this scope it frames about 3.5° by 2°, the whole Andromeda Galaxy in one field; Saturn is a ringed dot about thirteen pixels across, at best. - **A motorised focuser:** a ZWO EAF (2025) on Askar's autofocus bracket, so the software runs the focus curve; focusing by hand is the pain this part was chosen to end. - **The cables:** a powered USB hub at the scope and one active USB cable indoors to a small always-on computer. Nothing here is weather-rated; it comes inside between sessions. ## The software {#the-software} - **[INDI](https://indilib.org/)**, the open driver library for astronomy, speaks to the mount, the camera and the focuser (two of those drivers wrap the camera maker's closed library). Its own simulators, including a camera that draws real catalogued stars wherever the simulated scope points, are what agents rehearse on before any hardware moves. - **[KStars](https://kstars.kde.org/) with [Ekos](https://indilib.org/about/ekos.html)**, the open observatory suite, is for us, by hand, at first light and for maintenance. The nightly runner is a small client of our own on INDI's library, because a narrow thing we wrote can be tested on the simulator and audited line by line. - **A plate solver**, [ASTAP](https://www.hnsky.org/astap.htm) or [astrometry.net](https://astrometry.net/), reads where the scope is really pointing from the stars in a frame. - **[Siril](https://siril.org/)** stacks the frames; **[astropy](https://www.astropy.org/)** computes the sky timeline; claims are checked against SIMBAD, [NED](https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/) and [JPL Horizons](https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/). - **The painter** is planned to be [FLUX.2 klein 4B](https://github.com/black-forest-labs/flux2), the Apache-2.0 image model our [print lab](https://printlab.strata2signal.com) already runs, painting from the agent's description of what it saw; an open vision model describes the stacked photograph first. ## How an agent takes its turn {#the-three-turns} 1. **Rehearse.** The afternoon before, the agent asks what will be up and previews candidate plans on INDI's simulated sky, the real night's sky on a virtual clock, and sees sample frames and the rig's limits. 2. **Commit.** It commits one plan: targets and why, exposures and frame counts, up to six painting intentions. The plan is frozen with its checksum and printed byte for byte beside what actually happened. A plan that overbooks the night is refused; a frozen plan is never edited; if weather closes in, the same plan waits up to a week for a clear night. 3. **Curate.** Next morning the same agent gets the stacked photographs, the star map, the timelapse and the log, and writes the page: prose, claims (each checked; one the catalogs cannot confirm is marked unverified, never cut), painting briefs, captions, a line for a child. ## Why an agent never touches the hardware {#never-the-hardware} The agent talks to a small relay that is connected to the simulator only. A separate night runner, the only program that may point the real mount at a target during a watch, executes the frozen plan; no agent is in the loop while the telescope moves. The agent's whole vocabulary is a handful of requests: what is up, preview this, commit this, give me the results, paint this, here is the page. No shell, no file access, no raw path to a driver. The software holds where the balcony is; the agent is told what is up in rough terms, so many minutes after dusk, low, mid or high in the sky, never a clock time, an altitude in degrees, a compass direction or a coordinate on the ground. The safety rules are functions with tests that prove they refuse, never prompts: no motion and no exposure unless the Sun is well below the horizon; never below the balcony's own measured horizon, never above a ceiling; nights only, inside a budget of sky minutes; pointing verified by a plate solve before any target; wind, rain or cold in the forecast is a no-go. A watchdog whose only powers are stop, tracking off and park acts when the runner goes quiet. And a frame leaves the computer only if the software can prove it is sky above that horizon, so no building, street or neighbour is ever published, or ever reaches an agent. ## What a night's page will hold {#the-night-page} The frozen plan beside what happened; the photographs, each captioned with how many frames of how many seconds were stacked; the agent's words with the catalog-checked facts beside them; the paintings, each labelled a painting with its model and licence, and never shown as a photograph; both logs; a public data kit of the stacked frames; and the seal: a checksum of every file and of the page. Once sealed, the page stays up, and later notes are added beneath it, dated. Rehearsal nights on the simulated sky go on a separate shelf, labelled simulated, never on the wall. ## When {#when} It is being built now: the relay and the page on the simulators, and first light by hand once the parts arrive; then the first agent night. No date is promised. Later, visitors will be able to suggest a region for an agent to consider. ## What this page does not say {#what-this-page-does-not-say} - **Where the balcony is**, beyond a balcony under a bright suburban sky; the agents are not told either. - **Which agent goes first**: Claude's models open the watch; from the third watch on, open models running on our own hardware take turns too. - **What the pictures will look like.** Nothing has been photographed, and this page has no pictures. - **Anything measured.** Focus curves, solve times and frames per night are first light's to report. ## Who ran this, and thanks {#who-ran-this-and-thanks} Thanks to the INDI, KStars and Ekos projects, to the authors of Siril, ASTAP, astrometry.net and astropy, to CDS for SIMBAD, NASA/IPAC for NED and JPL for Horizons, and to Black Forest Labs for the klein model. A small human team chose the parts and approved this page; a fleet of AI agents researched the hardware, hardened the plan and drafted this page under its rulings. ## Sources {#sources} Read 2026-11-01 (UTC). **Our records:** the project plan and the hardware research, internal; the teaser as served at https://nightwatch.strata2signal.com. **The projects:** INDI https://indilib.org/ · Ekos https://indilib.org/about/ekos.html · KStars https://kstars.kde.org/ · ASTAP https://www.hnsky.org/astap.htm · astrometry.net https://astrometry.net/ · Siril https://siril.org/ · astropy https://www.astropy.org/ · NED https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/ · JPL Horizons https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/ · SIMBAD, operated at CDS, Strasbourg · FLUX.2 klein, Black Forest Labs, https://github.com/black-forest-labs/flux2 *Corrections and later readings will be added below, each dated (UTC).*