MaxIm DL has a built-in mini planetarium; however, you may wish to run a program with more extensive capabilities. If the planetarium program has an ASCOM interface, it is possible to connect MaxIm DL to the planetarium. This has several advantages:
The approximate Right Ascension and Declination from the telescope are automatically entered into the FITS Header. This is helpful for determining where an image was taken, running PinPoint astrometric analysis, etc.
MaxIm DL’s Auto-Center function is available. You can slew to an object catalog position using the planetarium, and then take a quick binned exposure. Right-click on the object in the image, and select Point telescope here. The object is automatically centered in the CCD image.
You can monitor the telescope position inside MaxIm DL, abort slews if a problem develops while the Planetarium is minimized, use the Nudge controls, etc.
Usually both the planetarium and MaxIm DL are configured to connect to an ASCOM Hub, such as POTH (included with ASCOM) or MaxPoint (for pointing corrections).
In some cases, it may be necessary to hook MaxIm DL directly into the planetarium. An example is the situation where a telescope can only be controlled directly from the planetarium itself (e.g. Paramount). For TheSky you can connect directly to it using the ”TheSky controlled telescope” driver.
Other planetarium and catalog programs known at the time of writing to have ASCOM support include Desktop Universe, Easy Sky Pro, Hallo Northern Sky, NGC View, Power Age Sky Simulator, Ricerca(Search), SkyMap Pro, SkyTools 2, Star Atlas: Pro, SkyObserver, and Starry Night Pro. For a complete list see http://ascom-standards.org