A Family Day Out

Sky Log didn't start in a code editor. It started with a family visit.

My dad was in town from Toronto, and I was looking for something memorable to do with him and my two daughters in Victoria. The Dominion Astrophysical Observatory seemed like the perfect day trip — a mix of science, history, and a chance to stand under a real dome.

Walking through the facility, I noticed how much of the public experience was volunteer-run, and how deeply the staff and volunteers cared about sharing the craft of astronomy. As an XR developer, the space gave me an idea — but the community gave me a different one: the hobby of astrophotography is built around working through lists, completing challenges, and logging what you've seen and captured. There was nowhere online that reflected that.

Time in the Dome

A few months after that visit, I went through security clearance and training to operate the Plaskett telescope at the DAO for Saturday night public star parties. That access changed how I understood the hobby.

Being in the dome as an operator — not just a visitor — showed me how deliberate and structured real observing is: how targets are selected, how sessions are planned, how the same objects get revisited season after season as skills and equipment improve. The best astrophotographers aren't just shooting whatever looks good. They're working through catalogs. Building collections. Logging journeys.

The Platform

Sky Log is the platform that grew from that understanding.

Every image in Sky Log lives inside a catalog — Messier, NGC, Caldwell — not just a folder. Progress through a challenge updates automatically as you upload. Coming back to the same target a year later with better gear is tracked, side by side, as a record of how far you've come.

The community in The Field reflects that same mindset: people sharing work they've earned, with the context that makes it meaningful — the gear, the conditions, the number of attempts it took.

The Connection

The same fieldwork that shaped Sky Log also led to Night Simulator — a VR experience built on a digital twin of the DAO. Night Simulator and Sky Log are designed to work together: your Sky Log collection syncs to the headset, letting you browse your images pinned to their precise coordinates in an immersive virtual sky.

They're two separate products, built around the same idea: the sky is worth taking seriously.