STELLINA is fully automatized, but it requires some information in order to start photographing.
First, it needs to know its exact position (coordinates, time), this information is provided using your device’s GPS, when creating your Observatory on Singularity.
Then, STELLINA needs to know how it is oriented, the direction it is looking at. To do this, STELLINA takes a picture of the sky and looks for recognizable patterns to figure out which stars are in the picture, this process is called astrometry. This step will only work if STELLINA can find stars in the pictures, which is why the station won’t work if it is pointing at a wall, if it is used during daytime or if the weather is cloudy.
Finally, STELLINA will adjust its focus position using the same method: it takes pictures of the sky and finds the focus position in which the stars look the sharpest. If the astrometry or the focus steps fail, STELLINA will move to a different position and start over: it may fail if an object is obstructing its sight and may succeed in another position. If STELLINA cannot find a correct position after doing a full turn, then the initialization will fail and you will not be able to observe.
This initialization phase lasts only a few minutes.