AstroSession SheetBy BenchSprout
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Review an AstroBin acquisition CSV

AstroSession Sheet exports a narrow long-exposure CSV using four fields from AstroBin's official schema, checked October 31, 2026: date, filter, number and duration. Only number and duration are mandatory upstream. This sheet also requires a valid date for every retained frame so that date grouping is explicit.

A worked output

Two retained Ha frames from September 12, 2026 at 300 seconds each, with the optional filter field deliberately omitted, produce:

date,filter,number,duration
2026-09-12,,2,300

The empty cell between the consecutive commas is intentional. Duration is the length of each exposure. It is 300 here, not the 600-second group total. The source label Ha remains available in the preview and audit but is not placed in AstroBin's numeric filter field.

The exact grouping rule

Each unique recorded calendar date, source filter label and exposure duration gets a row. Two 180-second frames and one 300-second frame on the same date with the same source filter produce two rows. They do not become a single averaged-duration row. Source filter labels remain separate even when mapped to the same ID.

The CSV has a header line, no padding around commas and CRLF row endings. Duration must be between 0.0001 and 999999.9999 seconds with at most four decimal places. Unsupported precision blocks export until you correct or exclude the frame; it is not silently rounded.

What is deliberately absent

The export does not infer ISO, gain, binning, chip cooling, calibration-frame counts, f-number, Bortle scale or seeing. The supported four-column CSV is a compact acquisition handoff, not a complete equipment or processing record.

Verify the handoff

  1. Download the CSV and audit JSON as new files.
  2. Open the CSV in a text editor and confirm date, frame count and per-frame duration.
  3. Use the CSV import in AstroBin's acquisition editor.
  4. Check every imported group and filter association before saving. AstroBin warns that invalid values may be ignored, so an apparently accepted paste is not proof of correctness.

No AstroBin account connection, submission or upload is performed by this tool. Live account import acceptance has not been tested here. See filter mapping and date and exposure policy.