All Articles
Software deep dives, equipment reviews, tutorials, imaging sessions, and field notes — everything published on Mac Observatory.
158 articles
vdB 16: The Octopus Nobody Cataloged
Sixteen hours of integration on the Dark Octopus and vdB 16, at the edge of the Perseus molecular cloud, and a short story about a filing clerk at the galactic registry who receives a formal complaint from a cloud.
Meridian 1.1: Half-Second Plate Solving and Annotated Images
Skyshot solves a 60-megapixel final in about half a second on my Mac, with no account or internet connection, and Annotations label every cataloged object in the result.
Sh2-155: The Cave That Waited for a Name
Over 12 hours of integration on Sh2-155, the Cave Nebula in Cepheus, and a short story about a people who will not name a thing in the sky until they have looked at it twice.
Strata 2.0: Mono Filter Combine, Telescope Blur Correction, and One Sharpening Chain
Strata 2.0 replaces Derotate with Combine, which turns a mono filter set into one RGB or LRGB image, and adds Correct Telescope Blur, which deconvolves with your own telescope's PSF.
IC 342: Evidence of Dust
Over 13 hours of integration on IC 342, the Hidden Galaxy behind the Milky Way, and a short story about two scholars in a distant galaxy who work out why the Milky Way has never answered their signals.
vdB 14 and vdB 15: A Star to Measure By
Twenty hours of integration on vdB 14 and vdB 15, two reflection nebulae around twin supergiants in Camelopardalis, and a short story about an old navigator who teaches a cadet to steer by two supergiants in Camelopardalis.
Meridian Is in Apple's New MacBook Pro Film
Apple's film for the new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display opens on Meridian, showing my image of M81 in the catalog.
Wavelet Sharpening for Planetary Images on Mac: A Strata Tutorial
Six layers, one change at a time: how to recover planetary detail without halos, grain or false texture.
M61: A Place That Grows Fast
Ten hours of integration on M61 (NGC 4303), the supernova factory of the Virgo Cluster, and a short story about a girl learning to read the sky in a failing town, and the one lesson that changes how she sees both.
How to Collimate a Schmidt-Cassegrain on a Mac with Laminar
Get the star on screen from an ASIAIR or a hand controller, then let Laminar's Collimation Aid name the screw, the direction and the amount.
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.
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.