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Software deep dives, equipment reviews, tutorials, imaging sessions, and field notes — everything published on Mac Observatory.
133 articles
Strata 1.3 Adds Warp+, and Here's What I Measured
Warp+ picks the sharpest frames separately at every alignment point. On a 799-frame Moon capture it gained about 14% local contrast at the median tile, at 2x to 3x the stacking time.
Why I Shipped Laminar's Interval Capture as a Shortcut Instead of a Feature
Two App Intents, a bundled shortcut, and the interface work that isn't ready yet.
Strata 1.2.1: How One Tester's Logs Cut a 19-Hour Solar Batch to Five
Sven ran the same 1,999 solar videos through Strata and Planetary System Stacker on the same Mac. Strata took 19.65 hours. PSS took 7.2. His logs found a GPU bug that was invisible on my own hardware.
How Long Does an EdgeHD Really Take to Cool Down?
EdgeHD focus data: 694 autofocus runs, one temperature coefficient, and a probe that lied for 23 nights
Two Free Planning Calculators: Deep-Sky Field of View and Planetary Capture
A deep-sky framing calculator that overlays your sensor on real survey imagery and counts your guide stars, and a planetary calculator that places any planet and its moons on your chip for any date and time, then finds your frame-rate ceiling. Both free, both in the browser, no account.
Strata 1.0 is out
Strata 1.0 is on the Mac App Store. The third stacking engine I wrote, six months of beta, 367 pieces of feedback, and the testers who shaped every part of it.
Planetary Cameras vs Deep-Sky Cameras: When Does Specialization Matter?
Frame rate is the spec that splits the two categories, and it costs more than the spec sheets admit. Measured on an EdgeHD 8, with a pixel scale calculator to check your own combination.
Ephemeris 2.0 is out: from last night to this season
Ephemeris now keeps a library of every night your rig has recorded, tells you what it notices across them, and always says where each observation came from.
July 31, 2026 Venus
Venus near dichotomy, twenty minutes after sunset, in seeing Laminar rated as poor. 10,000 frames at 347 fps through an EdgeHD 8 and a 2.5x Powermate, captured in Laminar and stacked, sharpened, and colored in Strata.
Meridian 1.0 Is on the Mac App Store, and the Beta Is Closing
Meridian, the native macOS deep sky archive manager, is now on the Mac App Store. Fourteen rounds of beta, 93 bug reports, and the features that exist because testers sent me email.
Laminar Keeps Shipping: Everything New Since 1.5.0
Eight free updates since the 1.5.0 release. QHY joins full production, Laminar now measures your drives and plans captures around them, and a capture-engine rebuild you can feel in the interface.
Introducing Transit: Tonight's Astronomical Events, in Your Mac's Menu Bar
Transit is a new Mac-native menu bar app that watches for astronomical events and notifies you with enough lead time to actually get outside. Here's why I built it.