Observatory 2.0 is featured in November 2023 Astronomy Technology Today New Products / Industry News.

Observatory 2.0.2 is now available on the Mac App Store.

It resolves performance issues for images stored on NAS. Although you should never store an Observatory library file itself on NAS, Observatory requires quick random access to it after all, images can be stored on NAS. For best performance you should store the library files on your computer’s internal SSD or an SSD directly attached to it.

The File menu has a new “Delete Rejected Masters…” item. After an imaging session, drop the folder with your new images onto the Observatory application icon, then use the gallery browser or one with your canvas on a second monitor to quickly scan your images and reject those that are of unacceptable quality by pressing Control-Command-Zero (^⌘0). Afterwards in the browser bar deselect “Accepted” in the Image Type dropdown and you’ll see only those images you are about to remove. After verifying, choose “Delete Rejected Masters…” and Observatory will move all the rejected images to Finder’s trash.

PixInsight 1.8.9-2 was released a few weeks before Observatory 2, and has an important change buried in its release notes. Although it still accepts FITS WCS keywords when opening images, it will ignore them when saving XISF or FITS files. It now only writes astrometric solutions to PixInsight XISF files, and only using XISF properties. It’s a huge compatibility step backwards, as the FITS format and WCS FITS keywords are the standard in the astronomy community. PixInsight 1.8.9-2 still generates linear solutions in addition to its proprietary spline-based distortion corrections, and Observatory 2.0.2 adds support for these linear astrometric solution XISF properties.

The Quick Look preview action menu now also contains the STF option that was introduced in Observatory 2.0.1. It applies to the Quick Look preview and thumbnails. Please note that Quick Look thumbnails are cached by Finder, so changing it may not have any effect until you clear the Quick Look cache and relaunch Finder. Its main intended use is to temporary change how the Quick Look preview is displayed.

Observatory 2.0.2 has many more little improvements, like better asteroid magnitude estimates, a limit on image preview dimensions, a progress bar in the New Library window, and it fixes a few crashes. All changes can be found in the release notes.

Astrophotography has reached the front page of the Mac App Store! Open it and you will see Observatory 2 listed under Best New Apps and Updates. In the US Mac App Store it is currently shown on the front page.

A small update to Observatory 2 has just been released to the Mac App Store.

Observatory 2.0.1 fixes the “System is critically low on memory” alert a few users were reporting. This alert was implemented all the way back in Observatory 1.1 and intended for systems with a harddisk as their main storage device. Observatory 2 uses significantly less memory than Observatory 1.x and this alert is now obsolete, hence it has been removed.

There’s also a new “STF type” option in the General Settings for changing the default STF used by the canvas, thumbnails, exporting and sharing. This is useful if you only have processed images in your libraries.

Other changes can be found in the release notes.

Observatory 1.0 was released on April 25, 2016, when OS X 10.11 El Capitan reigned. It has received many updates over the years, adding many new capabilities while maintaining compatibility with OS X 10.11 all the way to the upcoming macOS 14 Sonoma. Its most recent incarnation is Observatory 1.6.7, released earlier this year, and like many releases before it it runs natively on Intel and Apple silicon Macs.

Today we unleash the next major version of Observatory. It requires macOS 11 Big Sur or later. If you purchased Observatory 1.x and have a compatible system, you will automatically receive it.

A lot has changed.

Observatory’s user interface has been completely overhauled, making it more modern, powerful and much easier to use. Advanced searches can now be performed without creating a smart album, image calibration has been streamlined, and the new plate solver automatically adjusts itself to your imaging setup. Stacks are now cached, and there’s no need for creating a managed master from them to add adjustments, plate solve or use them for calibration. The orientation of images also has changed, to match other software. Importing performance has greatly improved and you can now continue using Observatory while importing or plate solving is in progress. The new rendering engine is Metal based instead of OpenCL. USNO-A2.0 and UCAC4 catalog support has been replaced by an internal Gaia catalog up to magnitude 16*.

But that’s not all. Observatory 2 has many more new features:

• Tagging and overlaying the positions of our solar system’s planets and 500,000 asteroids in images from the year 2000 onwards;
• New watched folder features for keeping your libraries in sync with the file system, automatically importing images, creating albums and stacks;
• An enhanced Quick Look extension with image metadata and for plate solved images, scale, orientation & grid overlays;
• A Tag navigator to manipulate tags and display all images with a given tag. With a tag selected, Observatory even highlights the selected object in your plate solved images and displays additional information in its new Object inspector;
• Dual monitor support: display images in a separate window or on a second monitor;
• Magnitude limits for overlays and automatic tagging;
• Display the most relevant image information in the new Overview inspector;
• Select multiple images and export them as a movie;
• Floating overlay, STF and activity panels; When dropping images onto the Observatory icon, they can now automatically be combined into a single library; Virtual Observatory adds ZTF search; there’s a new magnifier panel; and much, much more.

If you purchased Observatory 1.x before, these new features are available for a deeply discounted “Upgrade from Observatory 1” In-App purchase. If you are new to Observatory and 2.x is your first purchase, then these features are included already.

Enjoy!

* With an optional In-App purchase the internal Gaia catalog can be extended all the way to magnitude 20. That’s more than 800 million stars in total!

Release notes.