Capture
Laminar
Catch the steady seconds.
Planetary, lunar and solar capture with live frame quality. Runs filter wheels, focusers and LRGB sequences, and records straight to disk without dropping a frame.
Mac Observatory
Astrophotography on the Apple Mac
Software, hardware and workflows for imaging the night sky with a Mac, from an astrophotographer who does it every clear night.
Mac Observatory Apps
Native Mac Apps for Planetary Imaging
Made here by an astrophotographer who uses them every clear night. Transit tells you when the planets, Moon and Sun are worth imaging, Laminar captures them, and Strata stacks them into one sharp image. Meridian keeps your whole imaging archive: it's built around deep sky, and it handles planetary sessions too.
Stack & process
Strata
Thousands of frames. One sharp planet.
Grades every capture and shows you the best of the night. Strata Warp alignment, drizzle, wavelets and deconvolution, batched across a whole season.
Look up
Transit
Know when to look up: an hourly weather score for the night ahead, planets, the Moon, eclipses and satellite passes, in your menu bar.
Archive
Meridian
Every night you've imaged, in one place. Identifies every target from 41,731 objects in 19 catalogs, and knows what still fits tonight.
App Bundle on the Mac App Store
Mac Observatory Field Kit
All four apps in one bundle: Laminar, Strata, and Meridian at a discount, with Transit free.
$99
Get the Field Kit
Ephemeris: read your PHD2 guide logs natively on your Mac.
Find where last night's guiding went wrong: the guide chart, calibration and periodic error, a library of every night your rig has recorded, and 25 observations that say what to check next.
Tonight from Houston
Working out tonight's sky
Dark sky
Planets up tonight
Plan the shot before you set up
Two free calculators that work like Mac apps in your browser, best run full screen. Enter your telescope and camera once and both tools use them. Every number updates as you type, and a copied link brings back your exact setup.
From the Blog
Latest from Mac Observatory
Deep dives into the software, hardware, and techniques that make astrophotography work on the Mac.
News
Laminar 1.9.2: A Collimation Aid for Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescopes
Laminar 1.9.2 adds a Collimation Aid that measures an SCT's collimation from a defocused star and says which secondary screw to turn. 1.9.3 follows with two crash fixes.
Imaging
M78: Two Fairly Bright Nuclei
Over 32 hours of integration on M78, the brightest reflection nebula in the sky, and a short story about a survey ship that reaches M78 two thousand years after its discovery.
Tutorials
How to Photograph the Moon Through a Telescope with an iPhone and Laminar
An iPhone at the eyepiece, Continuity Camera and Laminar on the Mac make a practical first lunar imaging rig. Here's the setup, and where a phone runs out of road.
Software
Mac-compatible astronomy & astrophotography apps
Reviews
Hands-on equipment evaluations & first lights
Tutorials
Step-by-step guides for technique & processing
News
Software releases & ecosystem updates
Imaging
Astrophotography images with acquisition details
Field Notes
Personal stories from behind the eyepiece
From the observatory
All images
Partners
Trusted Resources
Affiliate Partner
All of your favorite astro gear in one place.
Telescopes, cameras, mounts, eyepieces, and accessories from the brands you trust. Shopping through this link supports Mac Observatory at no extra cost to you.
ZWO · Celestron · Askar · Sky-Watcher · William Optics
Shop Agena Astro
Affiliate link
