Observatory
Your astrophotography library. Find any frame, know exactly how much data you have, and see what’s in every picture, without moving or changing a single file.
Observatory is image management software for astrophotographers on the Mac. Drop your imaging folder on it and it builds a library that organizes everything by session, target and equipment, tags what’s in your plate solved images, and shows you how much integration time you have on every target, filter by filter. It isn’t a processing suite, but it has the basic preprocessing tools to help you check and organize your data, all nondestructively.
Every clear night adds another folder
Every clear night adds another folder to a disk that’s already full of them. After a season, the questions get hard to answer:
Where did I put the Ha frames from last October?
How much data do I actually have on the Heart Nebula, and in which filters?
Is it enough to start processing, or does it need another night?
Which darks and flats belong with these lights?
Same size, same temperature, same exposure, right filter.
What else is in this picture?
That faint smudge in the corner has a name, if only you knew what it was.
Which folder was the good session?
Finder can’t tell you. It only sees files.
Observatory answers all of them
From one library that looks at your images the way you think about them: by night, by target, by telescope and camera.
Just drop your folder
Drag your top-level imaging folder onto Observatory’s icon in the Dock, and it builds your library from what it finds.
- Nothing is copied, moved or changed. The library stores a reference to each image and its metadata. Your folders and files stay exactly where they are, on the internal disk, an external drive or a NAS, and every master image is left untouched.
- It doesn’t matter how you organized them. Nested by date, by target, or in a jumble: Observatory groups everything by session, astronomical target and equipment on its own, and creates albums that mirror your folder hierarchy.
- It stays up to date. Turn on a Watched Folder and new images are imported as they arrive, quietly, with albums (and stacks, if you like) created for new subfolders.
- No duplicates, ever. Observatory recognizes an image it has already seen, even if you renamed or moved it in between.
- Use as many libraries as you like. Keep one for raw data, one for finished pictures, and a throwaway library for tonight’s session. Libraries are documents: open several at once, keep them where you want, and back them up with Time Machine.
It reads FITS, XISF (PixInsight), SBIG, and all the RAW formats macOS supports, plus TIFF and JPEG.
See every session, target and piece of equipment New in 2.2
Navigate your data the way you think about it.
The sidebar has a navigator for each way you look for images:
- Sessions. Every night you imaged, with its frames.
- Targets. Every object in your library. Select one and see all its images, and, if they’re plate solved, the target highlighted in the picture.
- Equipment. Sorted by telescope, camera, focal length, aperture and binning, so you can compare what each setup produced.
- Tags. Created automatically when you plate solve, grouped by kind of object: galaxies, nebulae, clusters, variable stars, exoplanet hosts, planets, comets and more.
- Source folders. The folders on disk your images come from.
Plus your own albums (nestable), smart albums, favorites, an archive, and a trash you can restore from.
Know how much data you have New in 2.2
The Statistics view: your whole imaging history at a glance.
Pick anything in the sidebar (the whole library, a target, a night, a telescope) and Observatory turns the metadata of your images into a report:
- Integration time per target and filter, so you know exactly when you’ve collected enough to start processing.
- Session activity: when you imaged, and how much.
- Filter and equipment usage: what actually gets used, and what just sits in the drawer.
- Constellation coverage: where in the sky you’ve been.
- A representative image for each selection: your favorite first, or your processed image.
Calibration frames and processed images are left out, so the numbers reflect the light you actually collected.
Find anything
Search and filter
Narrow the browser by image type, tag, rating, status or name, and sort by sharpness (HFD), right ascension, date and more.
Advanced searches, right from the search bar
Combine criteria without creating anything first. Like what you built? Save it as a Smart Album: “Narrowband, at least 20 minutes”, “Everything from Henry Coe State Park”, “Moonless nights in Cygnus”. It stays current as your library grows.
Search on the things that matter Many new in 2.2
More than two dozen attributes of each image can be searched, sorted and displayed, including target and target type, moon phase and the Moon’s angular distance from your target, altitude, azimuth and airmass, focal ratio, gain and e-gain, focuser temperature and position, minimum, maximum and median ADU, and the acquisition and processing software used.
Fix metadata in bulk
Correct a wrong filter name or add the telescope to a hundred frames in one edit. It’s stored in the library; your files stay as they are.
Organize your way
Color labels, star ratings, tags, a free-form status, and notes on every image and album. Attach reference material such as a processing log or a screenshot right in the library.
Know what’s in your picture
Plate solve an image and Observatory knows the sky.
Give Observatory a rough idea of where you were pointing, an object name or coordinates, and its built-in plate solver does the rest. It adjusts itself to your imaging setup. Can’t say where the image is? Use the blind solver, which needs no starting point at all (through astrometry.net, with your own free account and an internet connection).
Once an image is solved, everything opens up
- Automatic tags. Every object in the frame is tagged. Select Supernova Remnants in the tag navigator and your M 1 image is there, with M 1 highlighted.
- Overlays. Draw the image scale, orientation, an RA/Dec grid and the objects around you: Messier and NGC/IC objects, galaxies, planetary nebulae, double stars, variable stars, exoplanet host stars and stars down to magnitude 16 (20 with the optional Gaia extension).
- Planets, dwarf planets, minor planets and comets in the picture, identified for the time of your exposure. Catch a passing asteroid and find out which one it was.
- The Object inspector. Select any object in a plate solved image to see more about it.
- Control over the clutter. Set magnitude limits for overlays and for automatic tagging, toggle everything at once, adjust the overlay contrast, and show objects that lie just outside the frame.
- RA and Dec under the cursor, wherever you point.
The catalog behind it is large: 60 million stars, 500,000 minor planets and a million other objects are built in. The optional Gaia extension adds another 750 million stars, taking the star catalog from magnitude 16 down to 20, 800 million stars in all.
The solution is stored beside your image, never inside it. Even so, the Finder preview (below) shows the scale and orientation of your solved FITS, XISF and SBIG images without touching a file.
A little preprocessing, when it helps
Observatory is for organizing your images, not a replacement for your processing software. But a library is more useful when you can look at what’s in it, so it includes basic preprocessing tools. They’re nondestructive: every adjustment is a recipe stored with the image, and your masters are never modified, and no intermediate files are created.
Calibrate
Turn on Calibrate and Observatory lists the master bias, dark and flat frames that fit each light (same dimensions, matching temperature and exposure, right filter), so you don’t have to hunt through folders.
Stack and align
Combine frames into a stack, or let Auto-Stack group them as you import. Handy for building master calibration frames, or a quick look at how a night’s data adds up. Stacks are calculated on the GPU and cached.
Pick stacks
A stack type that doesn’t combine anything: it groups related images behind one representative image, a tidy way to keep a set together.
A few corrections
Cosmetic correction, debayering for one-shot-color cameras, background neutralization, gradient removal and color balance, to make an image easier to judge.
A screen stretch that behaves like PixInsight’s
Faint detail shows from the first look, per channel if you like. It changes only how the image looks, never the pixels.
Blink
Flip through the frames of a stack and anything that moves against the stars jumps out, such as an asteroid or a nova. Export the result as a movie.
When you’re happy, export a 32-bit FITS or TIFF, and continue in PixInsight, Acorn or your own favorite tool.
Measure
Hover over a star for its centroid, HFD and FWHM. Run aperture photometry against a comparison star, with magnitudes filled in from the Tycho-2 and Gaia catalogs for solved images, or measure the separation and position angle of two stars. The Overview, Histogram, Channels and Magnifier inspectors show more of what’s in an image, and the Canvas can be moved to a second monitor.
Go beyond your own telescope
The Virtual Observatory: professional archives, from your library.
Search the archives of professional observatories and space telescopes by name, identifier or coordinates, and download the images straight into your library, where they get all the same tools: tags, overlays and comparison with your own frames.
- DSS
- SDSS
- PTF
- ZTF
- SkyMapper
- 2MASS
- ESO
- Gemini
- Keck
- Hubble (HST and Hubble Legacy Archive)
- WISE
- Spitzer
Preview before you download. Names are resolved with the help of SIMBAD and NED. Start from an image you’ve plate solved and search for whatever else has been imaged in exactly that patch of sky. Search the Zwicky Transient Facility archive too, and your own library, from the same window.
It’s also a good way to prepare for a night: download a few images of your prospective targets and their surroundings to plan the framing.
Part of your Mac
Observatory adds astronomy to macOS itself, and these features work on your files even if you never make a library.
Quick Look
Select a FITS, XISF or SBIG file in the Finder and press the space bar to see the image, its metadata, and the FITS header. For plate solved images, the scale, orientation and coordinate grid can be shown too.
Finder thumbnails
Your astro files get real thumbnails in the Finder, in Open dialogs, and in every app that shows them, instead of generic icons.
Spotlight
Search your images by target, filter, exposure, camera and more, right from the Finder.
Acorn plugin
Open FITS, XISF and SBIG images at full bit depth in the Acorn image editor for finishing touches.
Share, print and export
Send images by Messages or Mail, print with overlays, or save a PDF report of the selection. Export to FITS (32-bit float or 16-bit), TIFF, JPEG or PNG, at any size, with folder and file naming templates such as date / target / filter.
What’s new in Observatory 2.2
Observatory keeps getting better. The latest release brings your library to life:
- Session, target and equipment navigators to organize images by observing session, astronomical target and the equipment used.
- The Statistics view, with session activity, filter and equipment usage, constellation coverage and integration reports. It replaces the separate Integration Reports window.
- More to search and sort on: moon phase and the Moon’s angular separation, target type, e-gain, focuser temperature and position, focal ratio, acquisition and processing software, and the minimum and maximum of your masters. Altitude, azimuth and airmass are computed for you.
- A “processed image” badge, so your finished pictures stand out from the raw frames.
Built to be safe with your data
Your masters are never modified
Not by importing, not by adjusting, not by stacking.
No copies
Your disk doesn’t fill up with a second set of your images.
Nondestructive editing
Everything is an adjustment you can undo.
Rename and move freely
You can rename and move your files after importing, and if a link ever breaks, it’s easy to restore.
No AI
Observatory never invents or “improves” pixels. What you see is your data.
Point it at a night’s worth of images
Observatory is a one-time purchase of USD 59.99 on the Mac App Store, and you can try the demo first. See your library come together.
Requirements
Observatory runs natively on Apple silicon and Intel Macs, on macOS 11 through macOS 27. It needs 8 GB of memory (16 GB recommended), and an SSD is highly recommended for your library.
Optional in-app purchases
- Gaia extension: 750 million additional stars for your overlays, plate solving and photometry, taking the star catalog from magnitude 16 down to 20.
- Upgrade from Observatory 1: if you are coming from Observatory 1.x, this unlocks everything in Observatory 2 (your libraries are migrated automatically, with a backup of the original). New customers get all of it from the start.
The built-in Help book covers everything in detail, and a PDF User Guide is available to download.
Questions or feedback? We’d love to hear from you: support@codeobsession.com
Also from Code Obsession: FITSit, for tidying up FITS files before they reach your library: rename them from their headers, fix their headers, and weed out the bad frames.