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Software deep dives, equipment reviews, tutorials, imaging sessions, and field notes — everything published on Mac Observatory.
119 articles
Strata Build 14: Solar Tone Rebuilt, and Honesty About What's Next
Build 14 of Strata, the Mac-native planetary and solar processor in the Mac Observatory Suite, is on TestFlight. The headline change is a complete rebuild
Laminar 1.2.5: White Balance Comes to the Inspector, Plus Celestron and UVC Camera Support
Laminar 1.2.5 brings camera-side white balance directly into the Inspector, graduates the ToupTek OEM family and SVBONY out of Beta, and adds initial support for Celestron webcam-style astronomy cameras alongside generic UVC video devices including iPhone via Continuity Camera.
Laminar 1.2.3 is Out: Editable Custom ROI, a Refactored Imaging Pipeline, and Two Cameras Out of Beta
Laminar 1.2.3 finishes the editable Custom ROI workflow with eight resize handles and numeric entry, refactors live preview onto a Metal-direct path, and graduates the SVBONY SV305C PRO and ToupTek Astro G3M678C out of Beta after hardware testing.
PixInsight 1.9.4 Lockhart Brings Native Apple Silicon to Mac Astrophotography
After five and a half years of Rosetta 2, PixInsight finally runs as a native ARM64 binary on M-series Macs. I tested it on my Mac Studio M3 Ultra and the CPU score nearly doubled.
May 3, 2026 Sun
The first time I ran a full solar capture and processing workflow inside my own apps: 11,159 H-alpha frames through a Lunt LS60MT, captured in Laminar and stacked, sharpened, and colored in Strata.
M90: The Violet Harvest
Over 24 hours of integration on a large spiral in the Virgo Cluster — and a short story about a civilization that lives inside the bright heart of M90, harvests spores from the radio winds, and discovers too late what their elders have become.
Introducing Ephemeris: Native PHD2 Guide Log Analysis on the Mac
Ephemeris is a free, Mac-native viewer for PHD2 guide logs — Swift Charts, FFT, multi-session combine, drag-to-exclude. Available now from Mac Observatory.
On the Rim of NGC 3718
Over 45 hours of integration on the gravitationally warped spiral in Ursa Major — and a short story about a civilization watching its galaxy come undone, and discovering it was never alone.
Laminar 1.1.0: Planetary Capture for Ten Camera Brands on Mac
Laminar 1.1.0 is live on the Mac App Store with native macOS support for ten astronomy camera brands — QHY, ToupTek, SVBONY, Altair Astro, OGMA, RisingCam, MallinCam, Omegon, plus ZWO and PlayerOne.
Laminar 1.0 Is on the Mac App Store — Native Planetary Capture for macOS
The first planetary capture app built specifically for the Mac is here. Real-time frame quality analysis, automatic planet tracking, and atmospheric seeing scores — $34.99 on the Mac App Store.
Mac Observatory Automation with ASCOM Alpaca: What Works in 2026
ASCOM Alpaca Is Quietly Unlocking Full Observatory Automation for Mac Users The biggest obstacle to running a fully automated observatory on a Mac has never
Strata Is Now in Beta — Native Planetary Stacking and Sharpening for macOS
Strata replaces the traditional Windows-only chain of AutoStakkert, RegiStax, and PIPP with a single GPU-accelerated macOS app. Now available as a free public beta on TestFlight.