Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex: blue, red and golden nebulae among the stars — image by Boris Solomin

Asteroids · comets · variable stars

Find what moves among the stars

Drift finds asteroids and comets in a series of your FITS images — including those too faint to see on a single frame. It identifies known objects with the JPL database and helps confirm new ones and report them to the Minor Planet Center.

Download Drift How it works

Windows · Linux · macOS · English and Russian interface

Background: Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex · © Boris Solomin, author of Drift

1–2ᵐfainter than the single-frame limit: frames are stacked along the motion

×10+faster on an NVIDIA GPU with CUDA 12 installed

JPLidentification of known asteroids and comets for your observing site

MPCready ADES report and checks against the ZTF and ATLAS surveys

Drift results page: field overview, candidate animation and the candidate table

Everything runs in the browser: a local web interface, steps on the left, the log at the bottom. There is also a command line and a PixInsight script.

Sections

Everything about Drift

FeaturesHow the search works: calibration, alignment, synthetic tracking, comets, astrometry, identification.→ ConfirmationFound something new? Forecast, MPC Checker, ZTF and ATLAS archives and a report for the MPC.→ DownloadReady-to-run program for Windows, Linux and macOS; GPU requirements; all versions.→ READMEThe full manual with screenshots: installation, step-by-step work, command line, tips.→ AuthorThe program grew out of the author’s own nights at the telescope — see his images.→ SupportDrift is free. Help it grow — and tell about bugs and ideas.→

Get Drift

Free. Unpack and run — no Python needed.

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