Release Notes

Observatory 2.1 September 5, 2024

New

• Nested albums, i.e. merging the functionality of folders and albums, making it easier to reflect the structure of the file system;
• Integration reports, providing a quick overview of all exposures for a given target;
• Automatically watch source folders, keeping the library synchronized with the file system;
• Quick Look FITS headers;
• Tag and overlay numbered comets in images from 2000 onwards.

Changed

• Observatory 1 is no longer supported. Use the “Upgrade from Observatory 1” In-App Purchase to continue to use Observatory;
• The Library Navigator now displays the number of child albums next to the album name instead of the number of images in the album;
• When selecting multiple images, the Overview Inspector displays the number of accepted subframes in addition to their total integration duration;
• Enhanced plate solver hint parsing and support for numbered comets;
• Stop Tasks now also stops importing, downloading and plate solving;
• Add Observatory icon to Quick Look window;
• Observatory libraries are automatically migrated. The original file is copied to the ~/Library/Containers/com.codeobsession.Observatory/Data/Library/Application Support/Migration Backup folder.

Fixed

• Arc minute and arc second symbols in scale and grid overlay;
• Missing Centroid, HFD and FWHM measurements;
• “No Selection” in inspectors;
• Memory leak;
• Beach ball when selecting a large number of images;
• Request permission to show notifications;
• The demo version of Observatory once again displays “Demo” on its icon when running.

Observatory 2.0.8 May 29, 2024

New

• Normalize object attribute when importing an image;
• Display warning before quitting the application if it has active importing, plate solving or downloading tasks.

Changed

• When searching images using the toolbar, also search for normalized variant of the input;
• Enhance state restoration.

Fixed

• State restoration on macOS 14 Sonoma;
• Crash when selecting multiple images in Virtual Observatory.

Observatory 2.0.7 May 3, 2024

New

• Object filtering with toolbar search field;
• Sort by sensor temperature, focal length, aperture diameter, azimuth, altitude, album, source folder path, and telescope/camera/guider/observer/observatory name.

Changed

• Don’t debayer calibration frame in Quick Look;
• Don’t add FITS HISTORY to notes;
• Modernize toolbar search field;
• Improve import error messages.
• When updating Observatory, it must be launched at least once to enable the Quick Look extension.

Fixed

• List browser unstacking crash;
• Notes not editable after switching inspector;
• Image preview scaling for small images.

Observatory 2.0.6 April 6, 2024

Fixed

• Stall or crash while importing.

Observatory 2.0.5 March 24, 2024

New

• CPU core allocation setting;
• Optionally disable library document versioning.

Changed

• Quick Look window dimensions;
• Skip STF for 8 bpc images;
• Less aggressive automatic CPU core allocation;
• XISF metadata for Quick Look;
• Do not include planet and dwarf planet tags in new library;
• Error message when OpenCL fails to initialize (Observatory 1.x only).

Fixed

• Improve import error handling;
• XISF focal length property unit.

Observatory 2.0.4 December 1, 2023

New

• Display total exposure duration in the Overview Inspector when selecting multiple images or stacks;
• Optionally display the image name in the canvas header;
• Index content creator application with Spotlight.

Changed

• Reorganize toolbar;
• Display Tycho–2 identifiers once again in overlays;
• Tag Navigator count column behavior;
• Relax import duplicate detection;
• Inspector layout tweaks;
• Use the file creation timestamp if the image exposure data/time is not available;
• Internal caching enhancements;
• Upgrade reminder.

Fixed

• Declination sign for named objects;
• Plate solver sometimes continues when the solution has been found;
• Skip rejected stack subs completely for stacking;
• Truncate long names in the browser bar and smart album;
• Do not create a new Smart Album until it is explicitly saved;
• HFD error handling;
• WCS xattr handling when importing;
• Reported plate solving duration;
• Limit pixel scale for plate solving;
• Virtual Observatory cone search radius.

Observatory 2.0.3 November 1, 2023

New

• Object field, initialized with value of corresponding FITS keyword;
• Timestamp in console and ability to clear the console.

Changed

• Rename Pedestal to Offset;
• Change import defaults and remember the settings between launches;
• Skip the debayer adjustment if the debayer pattern is unknown;
• Make list browser columns wider, increase maximum width, and truncate values in the middle instead of at the end;
• Display full path in Source Folder column;
• Truncate library navigator names in the middle and increase count column width;
• Always use GAIN FITS keyword for gain;
• Do not display HFD for calibration image;
• Increase minimum sidebar width and maximum width of sidebar and inspector;
• Double click attachment to open it;
• Add message to Welcome window and settings if Gaia Extension or Observatory 2 upgrade is not installed;
• Upgrade reminder.

Fixed

• Memory leak;
• Browser selection sometimes results in extreme CPU usage;
• Column ordering regression;
• “No Selection” macOS 14 Sonoma specific inspector issue;
• Auto-stack inconsistency;
• Album attachments not shown unless album is explicitly selected;
• Plate solver sometimes returns an invalid solution;
• Magnifier behavior when canvas is hidden;
• Sidebar can be collapsed by dragging its divider.

Observatory 2.0.2 September 30, 2023

New

• “Delete Rejected Masters” for moving rejected master images immediately to Finder Trash;
• Support for linear astrometric solution XISF properties introduced in PixInsight 1.8.9–2;
• STF options in Quick Look preview action menu;
• Linear progress bar for Empty Library window.

Changed

• The name column is now visible for all image types in new libraries as the second column.

Fixed

• Significant browser performance improvements, especially noticeable for images stored on NAS;
• Occasional Quick Look preview and thumbnail extension crash;
• Asteroid magnitude estimate accuracy;
• Limit image preview dimensions;
• Metal Compute crash for large stack;
• Stack Inspector not showing stack settings for focused stack;
• CPU usage when menu is open while canvas is shown;
• Image statistics optimization.

Observatory 2.0.1 September 10, 2023

New

• “STF type” in General Settings for default STF used by canvas, thumbnails, export and sharing;
• Keyboard equivalents for selecting stack, pick and subs.

Fixed

• “System is critically low on memory” alert;
• Sticky tag selection;
• General Settings layout issue;
• Don’t show modified master badge for managed masters after copying a library;
• Show “Compact Library…” when holding Option key in File menu. You can use this to reset all thumbnails of a library.

Observatory 2.0 September 5, 2023

New

• Complete overhaul of user interface;
• New render engine using Metal Compute;
• Floating STF, overlay and activity panels;
• Simplified image calibration and adjustments;
• Advanced searches without creating Smart Albums;
• New plate solver which automatically adjusts itself to your imaging setup;
• Concurrent importing and plate solving;
• Stars up to magnitude 16 from the Gaia catalog, with an an optional In-App purchase to extend this to magnitude 20. That’s more than 800 million stars in total!
• Tag and overlay the positions of our solar system’s planets and 500,000 asteroids in images from the year 2000 onwards;
• New Watched Folder features to automatically keep your libraries in sync with your file system;
• New image attributes and tags maintenance feature;
• Enhanced Quick Look extension with image metadata and for plate solved images, scale, orientation & grid overlays;
• Tag navigator to manipulate tags and display all images with a given tag;
• Highlight the object corresponding to the selected tag in your plate solved images;
• Object inspector with additional information for selected objects;
• Display the selected image in a separate window or on a second monitor;
• Magnitude limits for overlays and automatic tagging;
• Optionally display overlays beyond the image boundaries;
• The new Overview inspector displays the most relevant image information;
• Select multiple images and export them as a movie;
• The Median & HFD values of images are now computed during import;
• Various image stacking enhancements: caching of stack images, ability to apply adjustments to a stack image without the need to create a managed master, a new Pick stack type and set a default stack type.
• When dropping images onto the Observatory icon, they can now automatically be combined into a single library;
• Virtual Observatory adds ZTF search;
• Magnifier panel;
• Touch Bar support.

Changed

• Image orientation;
• Removed support for USNO-A2.0 and UCAC4 catalogs (now using the Gaia catalog);
• Dropped OpenCL (now using Metal Compute);
• Removed the ruler, hidden collections and the assistant editor features;
• Minimal system requirement is now macOS 11 Big Sur;
• Enhanced Observatory library format. Observatory 1.x libraries are automatically migrated. The original file is copied to the ~/Library/Containers/com.codeobsession.Observatory/Data/Library/Application Support/Migration Backup folder.

Observatory 1.6.7 January 14, 2023

Fixed

• Improve handling of WCS FITS headers generated by PixInsight.

Observatory 1.6.6 November 27, 2022

Fixed

• Quick Look on macOS 13 Ventura.
• Handle a change in the PTF Archive.
• Downloads popover layout.

Observatory 1.6.5 April 30, 2022

Changed

• Use secure connection for astrometry.net.

Fixed

• Update link to ESO user portal.

Observatory 1.6.4 November 3, 2021

New

• “Empty Trash” library navigator contextual menu item.

Fixed

• Crash upon launching Observatory on OS X 10.11 (El Capitan), macOS 10.12 (Sierra) and macOS 10.13 (High Sierra).
• Folder icons in source folder navigator.

Observatory 1.6.3 October 26, 2021

Changed

• New icon in the assistant editor.

Fixed

• Sloan Digital Sky Survey image download fails.
• Observatory occasionally stops responding when adjusting the histogram.
• Rare memory leaks and crashes.

Observatory 1.6.2 June 10, 2021

Fixed

• An issue with Quick Look on Apple silicon.
• Handle a change in the Keck Observatory Archive that leads to an error when saving the library.

Observatory 1.6.1 February 23, 2021

New

• Handle incorrect scale in WCS solution generated by ASIAIR PRO upon importing.

Changed

• Adjust ESO archive imaging instruments.
• Adjust text and contrast in preferences.
• Updates to user manual.

Fixed

• Library Navigator state regression.
• HST archive access.
• Crash when removing assistant editor.
• Rare state restoration crash.

Observatory 1.6 November 17, 2020

New

• Observatory now runs natively on Apple silicon.

Observatory 1.5.3 October 14, 2020

New

• Optionally skip calibration frame validation.

Fixed

• Limit precision of calibration frame validation.
• Improve Quick Look handling of large FITS images.
• Apple silicon compatibility enhancements.

Observatory 1.5.2 September 21, 2020

New

• Automatically reopen libraries.
• Apple silicon compatibility.

Changed

• Improve legibility of inspector, browser and editor labels.
• Minor improvements to the user guide.

Observatory 1.5.1 May 30, 2020

New

• New smart album criteria: album name, observatory name, detector temperature, constellation IAU code & name, canvas width & height, binning width & height, airmass, azimuth, altitude, latitude, longitude, focal length, aperture diameter, ISO speed, pedestal, gain, right ascension and declination.
• Rotator angle support. This optional information is extracted from images upon importing, and taken into account when calibrating and auto-stacking. This field is available in the version inspector and list browser.
• Help articles about organizing images with Observatory and smart albums.
• Expert preference for disabling the automatic black & white point adjustments.

Changed

• Improved library performance.
• Copy the original file when exporting a master FITS or SBIG file with its original dimensions.
• Double click a folder, album or smart album to edit it.
• Duration of importing and exporting in console output.
• Small corrections to the user guide and added a FAQ about automatically reopening library windows.
• When exporting a FITS file the SWMODIFY keyword is now set.

Fixed

• A bug in galaxy overlay position angles.
• Missing title when exporting to PDF.
• Observer, camera and telescope name smart album criteria not behaving correctly.
• After creating or editing a smart album it is now always selected and the browser updated.
• Incorrect library is being opened when using Open Recent from Welcome window.
• Enabled image upscaling for printing and PDF export, because only allowing downscaling had the unintentional consequence that for high dpi printers images would come out post stamp sized.
• Adjustments and managed masters created from image versions are now using the attributes of the image version instead of the master image.
• Lowered precedence of ESO hierarchical FITS keywords so they are not used for exporting.
• FITS image concurrency bug that could be triggered by automatically reopening multiple libraries upon application launch.
• Support DEBAYER FITS keyword.

Observatory 1.5 March 15, 2020

New

• The documentation and release notes are included in the application, and searchable.
• Adjust the blink speed with the backward/forward buttons.

Changed

• Enhanced the documentation, and added a new section with solutions for specific goals.
• Focus backward/forward buttons wrap around.
• Drop shadow and increased opacity for the overlay labels, improving readability.
• When reopening a library, the last accessed image is not selected if it is part of a stack.
• Modernized how we ask you to rate our application in the Mac App Store.

Fixed

• Auto-weight beach ball.
• Incomplete notes when importing images.
• Overzealous Cosmetic Correction.
• Illegible Smart Album sheet in Dark Mode.
• A rare crash when reading FITS images.
• A rare crash when moving the cursor over an image.
• A rare case where loading an image would seemingly never complete.
• Do not recursively import packages.
• Dimmed version inspector thumbnail.

Observatory 1.4.4 December 12, 2019

Fixed

• Changes in the SkyMapper Southern Sky Survey service caused SMSSS searches to fail in Virtual Observatory.
• Improved the rating indicator for systems running macOS 10.13 or later.
• The version inspector is once again displaying the stack icon for stacks.

Observatory 1.4.3 September 5, 2019

New

• We made it much easier to import images. Adding source folders is now optional. It is only needed if you want Observatory to monitor it for new images. It is also recommended before moving around folders on disk.
• You can now import images by simply dropping them from Finder onto a library window. This also works with folders.
• Empty libraries now have a drop zone for your images and folders. You can also click it to select them.
• Because Observatory is build around the concept of image libraries, an odd quirk since its first release has been that it wasn’t capable of opening a single image if you tried with Finder. You now can. It creates a temporary library with just that image. Use it to quickly inspect an image, its metadata, apply nondestructive adjustments, plate solve, overlay catalog data, and more.
• You can now stack images directly from Inbox! There’s no need to first move them to an album anymore. Observatory libraries are automatically upgraded to support this new feature.
• Stacks can now be moved or copied to another album using the corresponding menu item or by dragging them. Press the option (⌥) key to copy. To move a stack back to Inbox, choose “Image ▸ Remove From Album”.
• We improved the compatibility with older hardware, and added an Expert preference in case your hardware is incorrectly reporting support for certain OpenCL features.

Fixed

• Performance regression in the star detector, triggered by low memory.
• Crash when using certain GPUs as compute device.
• If you have your General System Preferences configured to automatically reopen documents and windows when reopening applications, Observatory will now reopen them with the last accessed folder and images selected.
• Action menu is missing the Watch Source Folder menu item.
• Observatory now opens the Locate Source Folder Navigator with the last known folder location.
• The stack icon is once again displayed in the focus bar when applicable.
• Disable “Add To Favorites“ for images that are part of a stack.
• Display the correct dragging cursor when pressing the option (⌥) key to copy an image to an album.

Observatory 1.4.2 June 5, 2019

New

• Watched source folders! This can be turned on for any source folder, and is done automatically when dropping one onto Observatory. Watched source folders are monitored for new images, which are then automatically imported, and appear in Inbox.
• Camera gain, pedestal (offset) and ISO speed support. This information is extracted from the images upon importing, and taken into account when calibrating and auto-stacking. These fields are available in the version inspector and list browser, and can also be used for sorting images.
• Spotlight support for camera gain, pedestal and ISO speed.
• We added an “Align & Stack” command to the Stack menu. It adds the Align adjustment to the selected images and stacks them.
• Division correction type for the Flatten Background adjustment.
• In addition to the measurements of the photometry inspector, the Console window now also reports details about the tasks Observatory is executing, and their duration.
• Help improve Observatory by automatically sending anonymous diagnostics and usage data. This can be turned on or off in the General Preferences.

Changed

• Enhanced the star detector. The align and chromatic align adjustments are much faster now.
• Locating a missing Source Folder is now recursive.
• The Console window position and size is now remembered between launches. We’ve also increased its default size.
• Increased the width of the temperature column.
• The News and Forum URLs were updated.
• Observatory is now using the macOS Hardened Runtime. The demo version is Notarized.
• Updated the Little Snitch Internet Access Policy.
• Observatory libraries are automatically upgraded to support the new features of this release.

Fixed

• Resolved an issue that caused the Align and Normalize adjustments to sometimes remain in an incorrect state when stacking or unstacking.
• An empty source folder wouldn’t be added when importing images or dropping it onto Observatory. This has been fixed.
• Fixed a folder and file export name template selection bug.
• Increased the height of the folder and file naming template.
• Resolved a Dark Mode issue in the Histogram panel.

Observatory 1.4.1 December 28, 2018

Changed

• Renames Blog menu item to News.

Fixed

• Resolves a crash that could occur when closing a library window.
• Searching the Spitzer Heritage Archive and previewing 2MASS images with Virtual Observatory is working again. Both issues were caused by changes in these services.
• Fixes minor Dark Mode issues.

Observatory 1.4 October 21, 2018

New

• Dark Mode! In the new Appearance preference pick System to follow the system setting, or choose either Dark or Light to override it. Dark Mode is fully supported on macOS 10.14 Mojave. On macOS 10.11–10.13 it only affects the appearance of the Library window.
• The WCS inspector of plate solved images now displays the field of view in arc minutes.

Changed

• Now defaults to 0 and 255 as black and white points for 8 bit images.
• Improves display of short exposure durations in the inspector.
• Improves handling of SGP FITS headers. The headers may contain inaccurate WCS information, and sometimes you will need to rotate the image to have the overlays align correctly.
• Header keyword precedence handling. This reduces the chance of Observatory selecting the incorrect exposure date or sensor temperature from the image header when it contains multiple similar keywords.

Fixed

• Searching the ESO archive and downloading images is working again. A change in the ESO service had broken it.
• Resolved a crash that could occur when emptying the Trash in Observatory.

Observatory 1.3.1 June 14, 2018

New

• Expert preferences for advanced features (see documentation).

Changed

• The demo version of Observatory now displays “Demo” on top of its icon when running.

Fixed

• The labels and tags for variable stars were incorrect for a few constellations.
• Photometry enhancements.

Observatory 1.3 June 6, 2018

New

• More overlays!
  • Confirmed exoplanets
  • Variable stars (GCVS 5.1)
  • Double stars (WDS)
  • Planetary nebulae (CGPN 2000)
• Update previously tagged images with the information of these new catalogs with the “Update Tags” command, accessible by holding down the option (⌥) key while opening the Image menu.
• Use the “Show Sky Chart” command to show the Sky Chart for your image in SkySafari. This feature requires SkySafari 6.1 or later for macOS. Enable it using the General Preferences.
• “Show Console” command for photometry output.
• A reminder to rate Observatory on the Mac App Store.

Changed

• The timeout for the blind plate solver can now be adjusted.
• Enhanced the photometry inspector, subpixel handling, reduced the minimum allowed aperture radius, and tweaked the magnitude error estimates.
• The “Show PGC2003” command has been renamed “Show Galaxies”.

Fixed

• Resolves an issue where Observatory may not detect a blind plate solver failure until the timeout period has been reached.
• Disables the “Reset Attributes” command for versions that are missing the master.
• Fixes a crash that could occur when closing a library while stacking was in progress.

Observatory 1.2.3 March 21, 2018

New

• Plate solve images without providing an estimate of the image center and scale with the new “Blind Match…” command.

Changed

• Enhances the photometry inspector with magnitude error estimates. The comparison star error field has a default value of 0.1 magnitude and is automatically populated based on the catalog used for the comparison star magnitude, if any. The magnitudes and their error estimates are displayed with 3 decimals. The electronic gain now can be set.
• Adds “Match” and “Blind Match” toolbar buttons.

Fixed

• Improves support for FITS keywords generated by PTF and MicroObservatory.
• The image scale is now taken into account when looking for photometry comparison star magnitudes in the catalogs.
• Resolves an issue with the Edit command in the contextual menu of the library navigator.
• The SMSSS catalog is now part of the default selection when you open a library.
• Fixes an issue in the version inspector when selecting multiple images with different vertical image dimension, pixel dimension or binning value.

Observatory 1.2.2 March 12, 2018

Fixed

• Resolves a crash that could occur when displaying the Import Images sheet.
• Already imported images are once again disabled in this sheet.

Observatory 1.2.1 February 15, 2018

New

• “Forums” in the Help menu provides quick access to the new Code Obsession Forums on our website. Please join if you want to discuss the use of Observatory and related issues with us or other users.
• When it fails to find a solution, the plate solver lets you quickly retry it with adjusted settings. It also displays more helpful information when this happens. The sheet has a new Automatic Detection Sensitivity setting and a Help button.
• Observatory contains a Little Snitch Internet Access Policy with information about the Internet connections Observatory establishes and what purpose they serve. Little Snitch 4 uses this information to help you decide whether to allow or deny a connection.
• “Product Page” in the Help menu opens the Observatory product page on our website.

Changed

• “Stack ▸ Select ▸ All Items” and its Focus Bar equivalent now exclude rejected image versions from the selection.
• The Align and Normalize adjustments can be set on images that are not part of a stack. This is for convenience only, and they are ignored unless the image is part of a stack.
• All links to our website are secure using HTTPS.

Fixed

• Resolved various bugs that conspired against the star detector and plate solver.
• On macOS High Sierra, the editor bar would not always display the current pixel position and local measurements. This has been fixed.
• Fixed a macOS High Sierra specific toolbar rendering issue.

Observatory 1.2 January 12, 2018

New

• Additional nondestructive adjustments!
  • Cosmetic Correction: Identify or correct hot and cold pixels in your image.
  • Debayer: Convert a Bayer-encoded grayscale image to an RGB image.
  • Background Neutralization: Equalize the red, green and blue components of an RGB image to yield a neutral gray rendition of the sky background.
  • Color Balance: Adjust the white balance of an RGB image.
  • Flatten Background: Reduce or eliminate gradients caused by instrumental vignetting or light pollution.
  • Chromatic Align: Counter the effects of atmospheric dispersion by aligning the channels of an RGB image.
  • Grayscale: Convert an RGB image into a grayscale image.
  • RGB: Convert a grayscale image into an RGB image.
• You can now quickly apply the same adjustments to all images in a stack by selecting the pick image, adding the necessary adjustments, then selecting all the stack’s images, and finally choosing the new “Copy Pick Adjustments…” command of the Layer menu.
• The Quick Look plugin now automatically debayers images when needed, followed by a Background Neutralization.
• Virtual Observatory supports the SkyMapper Southern Sky Survey archive.

Changed

• Observatory now automatically executes adjustments in the correct order. The ability to reorder them manually has been removed.
• The Binning adjustment now handles Bayer-encoded grayscale images.
• Hot, cold and missing pixel handling has been improved throughout.
• The width of sliders in the inspectors is now dynamic.
• Updated the text in the welcome window and Accounts Preferences.
• The ability to add, reorder or remove layers has been removed because of issues with the implementation.
• The “RGB” and “Grayscale” commands of the Image menu have been moved to the Layer menu because they are now implemented as adjustments.
• The “Install Extras…” command has been removed as requested by Apple because including the Acorn plugins in the application violates the Mac App Store Review Guidelines. It is once again a separate download from our website, as was the case before 1.1. The Acorn plugins were merged, and now automatically debayers images when needed. If you have the previous three Acorn plugins installed in Acorn’s App Support Folder, then you should remove them and replace them by the new one.
• The Quick Look plugin now automatically bins images when needed in an attempt to keep memory usage below limits imposed by macOS.
• Increased the width of the status and tag fields in the inspectors.
• Remove the space between a number and an angle unit.

Fixed

• When an error occurred while applying adjustments, Observatory would sometimes continue to display the error message even after you resolved the issue. This has been fixed.
• The editor scrollbar position is not reset anymore when changing the black/white points or adjustments.
• When promoting/demoting/accepting/rejecting images, changing the pick, or using auto-weight, the stack was not immediately updated. This has been fixed (again).
• Adjusted the weight calculation for auto-weight average and brightest star FWHM.
• Workaround for a regression in the WISE service.
• Fixed a bug in the star detector.
• Fixed an issue with the pixel aspect ratio adjustment.
• Fixed an issue that could result in Finder displaying an Observatory library as a regular folder.

Observatory 1.1.1 October 2, 2017

New

• Browser: You can edit an image version’s name directly in the image browser.

Changed

• Sidebar: The Library Navigator has been modernized. “Unfiled” is now “Inbox”. It is permanently visible, and the default selection for new libraries. “Recent Import” is now “Imports”, “All Images” has moved down, and the “Collections” section has been renamed “Albums”.
• Browser: The focus bar displays the folder or stack icon.
• User Interface: The “Collection” menu has been renamed “Album”.
• User Interface: Improved the button naming in various alerts.
• User Interface: Improved the text in the welcome window.
• Demo: Changed the default button in the “Demo Limitations” information alert.

Fixed

• Sidebar: Smart albums display matching stacks.
• Sidebar: Fixed a selection issue when using favorites.
• Import: Adjusted the progress indicator for autostacking.
• Export: Fixed a pixel value scaling issue when exporting as 16 bits FITS.
• Export: Special characters are now removed from file names when exporting as FITS, to avoid a write error.
• Performance: The priority of automatic library maintenance tasks has been lowered, and they are now gracefully paused when the user is initiating a task.

Observatory 1.1 September 7, 2017

New

• Observatory now remains responsive while loading, processing and stacking images. You can even edit an image version’s notes and other metadata during these tasks.
• There is a new “Stop Tasks” toolbar button and “File ▸ Stop Tasks…” command to stop image loading, processing and stacking. It also temporarily stops automatic library maintenance tasks.
• The editor and inspectors display progress indicators when appropriate.
• It uses less memory. Stacks can be larger, especially those without adjustments.
• When the system is running low on memory, Observatory will now issue a warning. Most of the time the system will be able to handle the tasks just fine and you can ignore it. If it is running critically low on memory, it will issue another warning with the option to automatically stop tasks when this happens. It is fairly conservative with these warnings, and systems equipped with SSDs may be pushed well beyond it.
• Observatory now includes FITS, XISF and SBIG plugins for Acorn. They allow you to import these images straight into Acorn at full bit depth. Use the new “Observatory ▸ Install Extras…” command to install them.
• You don’t need to focus on a stack anymore just to see the number of images it is made of. This is now shown on the stack’s browser thumbnail itself.
• There is now a demo version of Observatory, which you can download from our website.

Changed

• Editor: The editor displays an error icon and message if a stack or image cannot be loaded or processed.
• Editor: The behavior of selecting an image while holding down the option (⌥) key has changed. If the key is not pressed, the image is displayed in the standard editor. If it is pressed, it is displayed in the active assistant editor, and the editor’s mode is automatically switched if needed.
• Editor: The active assistant editor is now indicated using the system’s highlight color.
• Inspector: The error handling has been improved for the image statistics inspector and the histogram, and the latter displays an error icon if the image is unavailable.
• Tags: Automatically added tags are now all lowercase and without spaces.
• Preferences: The new “Reset Warnings” button resets the “Do not show this message again” checkboxes of alerts.
• User Interface: The calibration albums in the “Move To Album” and “Add To Album” menus are now at the top level, making it easier to choose them.
• User Interface: “New Master”, “Export”, “Export as PDF”, “Print”, “Auto-Weight” and the Share button display a progress indicator if the selected images are still being processed. Clicking the “Stop” button will continue the processing, but skip the chosen action.
• User Interface: The “New” menu that was removed from the contextual browser menus in 1.0.6 has been put back. Instead, the less commonly used “Lock” and “Resize Canvas” items have been removed. They are still in the main menu of course.
• User Interface: The “Compact Library…” command will ask for confirmation before proceeding.
• User Interface: The browser-type keyboard equivalents have been removed because they were conflicting with the stacking keyboard equivalents.
• User Interface: Clicking the “Code Obsession News” notification opens the Code Obsession blog in Safari.
• User Interface: The size of the tag field in the inspectors and the maximum width of the sidebar and inspectors has been increased.

Fixed

• Enable undoing/redoing on macOS 10.12+.
• Browser: Archived stacks were erroneously displayed when selecting “All Images”.
• Editor: Taking E-W orientation into account when drawing galaxy overlays.
• Stack: Use the stack’s pick canvas size as the initial canvas size of a stack.
• Library: Resolved a library consistency issue when unstacking.
• Sidebar: Improved undoing/redoing behavior of adding, duplicating, editing and deleting folders.
• Import: Handle invalid FITS keyword line lengths in XISF files. The PixInsight ImageIntegration module creates HISTORY values that may exceed the maximum FITS line length.
• Import: Changed timing of progress feedback.
• Export: Fixed a pixel value scaling issue.
• Export: Fixed an issue with exporting resized images.
• Inspector: Do not allow multiple adjustments of the same type.
• Inspector: Update inspectors when undoing/redoing actions.
• Inspector: Fixed an issue with the angle field of the Rotate adjustment, and do not unnecessarily rotate an image.
• Channels: Do not allow hiding a channel of a stack.
• Spotlight: Remove unnecessary security-scoped URL handling from Quick Look and Spotlight plugins.
• Leak: Fixed various memory leaks.
• Performance: Reduced memory usage when choosing “Optimize Library…”.
• Stability: Fixed Core Data concurrency issues.
• Crash: Fixed a potential crash when emptying the trash while one of its items is currently selected.
• Crash: Fixed a rare crash in the plate solver.
• Crash: Fixed a rare crash during stacking.

Observatory 1.0.8 April 3, 2017

Fixed

• Accuracy: Enhanced the star detector, plate solver and Align adjustment.
• Stack: When promoting/demoting/accepting/rejecting images, changing the pick, or using auto-weight, the stack was not immediately updated. This has been fixed.
• Browser: Resolved a thumbnail rendering issue in the image browser.
• Browser: When double clicking one of the images in a stack, the stack is not unfocused anymore.
• Editor: Fixed an issue when switching to the editor-only mode.
• Crash: Fixed a crash that could occur in the editor when moving the mouse cursor.
• Crash: Fixed a rare FITS header related crash during importing.

Observatory 1.0.7 February 10, 2017

Fixed

• Import: Fixed a spike in memory usage immediately after importing.
• Import: Improved the import performance.
• Import: Image thumbnails are now generated during the import for all images, not only for those initially visible in the browser.
• Preferences: Fixed the link in the description of the USNO-A2.0 catalog.
• Browser: Fixed a delay that could occur when deselecting images in the browser.
• Accuracy: Enhanced the star detector.

Observatory 1.0.6 February 1, 2017

Changed

• Performance: Stacking, calibration, normalization and image alignment are now a lot faster.
• Performance: In addition to the star detector, used internally by the plate solver and the Align adjustment, now stacking and calibration also optionally use a GPU for their computations. It may not always lead to an actual performance improvement, so use the corresponding “Compute device” option in Observatory’s preferences with caution.
• Stack: The default stack type is now “Average” instead of “Layer”.
• Library: Reduced the disk space utilization for all stack types.
• Editor: The “blinking” frequency has been increased slightly.
• Histogram: The “Auto Adjust” option is now disabled by default.
• Measure Inspector: The background estimation was removed because Observatory doesn’t actually use such single value.
• User Interface: Removed the “New Version” command because the subtle way it differs from “Duplicate Version” wasn’t worth it.
• User Interface: Removed the “New” menu from the contextual browser menus. It’s still in the main menu of course.
• User Interface: The Help menu now contains a link to the videos on our website.
• User Interface: Updated the copyright year.

Fixed

• Performance: Observatory is now smarter about when to keep an image in memory.
• Performance: Optimized the image browser and image strip browser.
• Performance: Fixed an issue with the (weighted) median computation and made it faster.
• Performance: Observatory no longer requires the discrete GPU to be in use for MacBook Pros.
• Performance: Only the green channel is now used for determining the Align adjustment of an RGB image.
• Calibration: Fixed a bug that prevented calibration from working properly for images that had no filter name set.
• Calibration: Resolved an issue where a flat dark would erroneously be listed.
• Browser: Resolved various selection and focus issues in the image and image strip browsers.
• Stack: An image’s layer opacity is now taken into account, effectively acting as a weight.
• Sidebar: You cannot enter an empty name for folders, albums or smart albums anymore.
• Import: WCS information is now correctly imported for XISF images.
• Import: Handle XISF files with FITS keyword string values that are not stored according to the XISF specification.
• Import: Handle an invalid aperture diameter value in RAW image EXIF data.
• Import: For RAW images, the image type is now initialized using the file name.
• Import: Initialize the source value for PTF, WISE, Spitzer and Gemini images.
• Inspector: When you move an image to a calibration album, making it read-only, the inspector is now updated to reflect that.
• Inspector: You cannot enter an empty image version name anymore.
• Inspector: With multiple images selected, placing the cursor in the name field could result in empty names. This has been fixed.
• Layers: The blend mode, opacity and visibility in the layer panel are now disabled for the generated stack images.
• User Interface: “Show Master FITS Header” now works for XISF images as well.
• Accuracy: Enhanced the star detector.
• Accuracy: Enhanced the solar system computations.
• Accuracy: Use stricter computation accuracy requirements for supported GPUs.
• Crash: Fixed a crash that could occur with the Crop adjustment.
• Crash: Fixed a possible crash when removing an adjustment.

Observatory 1.0.5 November 12, 2016

New

• Observatory now has Quick Look and Spotlight plugins for XISF images, and can import them as well. XISF is the native file format of PixInsight, an image processing software platform designed specifically for astronomical imaging.
• The Image menu and Browser contextual menu have new “Open Master” and “Open Master With” commands. This allows you to quickly open a master file in an external editor, for example PixInsight.
• Library: It is now easier than ever to create a new library. Just drag the folder containing your astronomical images in Finder and drop it onto the Observatory application icon. It will create a new library and import all images in the folder and its subfolders. It’s a great way to quickly inspect your latest images, and can serve as a starting point for a much larger library as well.
• Browser: You can drag & drop images from the browser to albums in the library navigator to organize your images. If you press the Option key while dragging, the image version is copied instead of moving it. Currently you can only move images to the albums in the “Collections” section of the library navigator, not the “Library” section. For this to work, the browser should also not be focused on a stack.
• Browser: You can drag & drop images and stacks on top of another image or stack of the same album. This combines them in a stack. If you press the Option key while dragging, the image version is copied instead of moving it. The browser cannot be focused on a stack for this to work.
• Browser: The Image menu has new “Move to New Album” and “Move to Album” commands. Press the Option key to access the previous “Add to New Album” and “Add to Album” commands. The corresponding commands in the Browser contextual menus have been removed.
• Browser: Observatory now actively monitors master images to detect if they were altered or deleted. It updates the image version badges accordingly. If a master image is altered, choose “Image ▸ Reset Attributes…” to incorporate the changes into the library, and remove the badge. There are currently still some limitations to the number of master images it monitors simultaneously, which will be addressed in a future release.

Changed

• Browser: A new badge is used to indicate a missing master. The browser uses the previous badge to indicate that a master was altered. This can happen if you open the master with an external editor, and modify it.
• Browser: Weights are now always and only displayed when focusing on a stack. The corresponding subtitle and column selection commands have been removed. The weight column is now always next to the date/time column, both of which cannot be moved.
• Browser: The date/time column command has been removed because this column cannot be removed from the List Browser.
• Editor: For matched images the image scale is shown by default, in addition to the grid.
• Editor: The maximum allowed aperture, gap and annulus values in the centroid settings have been increased.
• Library: The compression ratio for Managed Masters has been slightly improved.
• Preferences: Adjusted the label capitalization style.
• User Interface: Adjusted the font size in the inspector dropdowns.
• User Interface: Increased the width of the image and collection name field in the inspectors. Now the favorites, archive and trash icons are rendered behind this field, when applicable.
• User Interface: Enhanced the application icon at small sizes.
• User Interface: Observatory libraries have a new icon.
• User Interface: One icon is now used for FITS and SBIG images, as well as for XISF images. The latter is used only if PixInsight is not installed.
• User Interface: The “Observatory Blog” command has been renamed to just “Blog”.

Fixed

• Library: “Reset Attributes…” uses much less memory, and is more efficient when multiple image versions are selected.
• Library: Fixed an issue with the creation of a Managed Master when using “Image ▸ New ▸ Master”.
• Import: Improved handling of invalid binning, pixel size and pixel scale values.
• Import: Fixed an SBIG date/time handling issue.
• Browser: Resolved an image browser layout issue when switching between browser types.
• Sidebar: Improved the selection behavior in the library navigator, making it much easier to add folders, albums and smart albums.
• Sidebar: Resolved an issue where the sidebar was not always updated if there was a change to an album.
• Inspector: Fixed an issue that made it impossible to change the sensor temperature in the image version inspector.
• Inspector: Fixed issues with duration and length unit conversions.
• Spotlight: Fixed a mixup in the FITS and SBIG Spotlight Importers that may prevent them from working properly.
• Spotlight: Now including the “Content Created” item in the Finder “Get Info” window so it actually displays the exposure date/time.
• Spotlight: Fixed an SBIG date/time handling issue.
• Crash: Resolved a crash that sometimes occurred when switching to Virtual Observatory immediately after opening a library.
• Crash: Resolved a crash that could occur if a managed master or image version was damaged or missing.
• Crash: Image thumbnail generation and stacking are now more robust against failures. Together with the previous issue and in combination with state restoration, it could prevent Observatory from fully launching.
• Leak: Fixed a memory leak in the Blog update notifier, inspectors and a potential leak in the channel pixel data handling.

Observatory 1.0.4 September 14, 2016

New

• Browser: When you select a folder, album, or smart album, the browser displays a Focus Bar. It contains the name and type of the selected collection, and allows you to traverse up the collection hierarchy using its “Unfocus” button.
• Browser: Instead of expanding stacks inline, the images comprising a stack are shown when you focus on the stack with the Focus Bar. When focused on a stack, the Focus Bar displays three handy buttons to quickly select the stack’s pick image, all images comprising the stack, or the stacked image itself. With the “Unfocus” button you traverse up to the stack’s album.
• Browser: Badges are displayed for images that have notes or are marked as favorites.
• Virtual Observatory: Additional archives!
  • Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE AllWISE Atlas). WISE is a 0.4 m NASA infrared-wavelength space telescope.
  • Spitzer Heritage Archive (level 2). The Spitzer Space Telescope is a 0.85 m NASA infrared-wavelength space telescope.
  • Palomar Transient Factory Archive (level 1). A survey using the Palomar Samuel Oschin 1.22 m Schmidt Telescope.
  • Gemini Observatory Archive. The Gemini Observatory consists of two 8.19 m telescopes, the Gemini North in Hawaii and the Gemini South in Chile.
• Virtual Observatory: Filter search results by target, instrument, filter name, description or identifier.
• Virtual Observatory: 2MASS preview images.

Changed

• Browser: The Image Browser and Image Strip Browser have been reworked to improve compatibility with future OS updates.
• Browser: The image selection handling has been enhanced.
• Browser: The Open/Close All Stacks and Open/Close Stack commands have been replaced by the “Focus on Stack” and “Unfocus” commands, with keyboard shortcuts ^⌘[ and ^⌘].
• Browser: Stack thumbnails are displayed with an upper-left corner badge icon instead of the number of images comprising the stack.
• Browser: The Outline Browser has been renamed List Browser and it uses the standard selection behavior.
• Browser: The browser in “Browser & Editor” mode is now always of fixed height, regardless the type of browser.
• Browser: The three Image Browser size buttons have been replaced with a slider. The maximum thumbnail size has been increased.
• Browser: Double click a stack to focus on it.
• Browser: Double click an image to switch to “Browser & Editor” mode, select the image, and focus on its album.
• Browser: The contextual menus have been updated with “Focus on Stack” and “Unfocus” commands.
• Browser: The “Show in Album” command has been renamed “Focus on Album” and moved upwards in the main menu and contextual menus.
• Browser: The “Focus Back” and “Focus Forward” commands have been renamed “Go Back” and “Go Forward”, with keyboard shortcuts ⌘[ and ⌘].
• Browser: The attachment badge is now also displayed if an image’s album has an attachment. For them to show up in the attachments inspector you still need to select the album.
• Virtual Observatory: If you switch to the Virtual Observatory, and its search field is empty, it will now automatically receive the keyboard focus.
• Virtual Observatory: Renamed the “Bandpass” column header to “Filter”.
• Inspector: The “Edit” button has been removed from the image version inspector and the collection inspector. Now you can edit the metadata right away, unless you lock the image version or collection.
• Inspector: The image statistics inspector is now displaying ranges as “min – max” instead of “min Δdelta”.
• Inspector: The default position of the WCS inspector is now below the location inspector.
• Inspector: Visual improvements for all inspectors.
• Editor: The image focus history buttons in the editor’s header and their corresponding commands have been removed.
• Editor: The image name is now centered in the editor header. It is prefixed by a stack badge if the editor is displaying a stack.
• Stack: The Stack menu contains a new Select submenu, corresponding to the three buttons that are displayed in the Focus Bar when focused on a stack.
• Performance: Further optimizations to loading and displaying RAW images.
• Spotlight: Handling the [K] unit for sensor temperatures, so the temperature is correctly converted from Kelvin to Celsius, if the unit is provided in the FITS header.
• Preferences: Observatory resets the paths and displays a warning if the chosen UCAC4 or USNO-A2.0 folders do not contain the expected catalog data.
• Tags: The automatic tagging does not add tags for stars of the Tycho–2 catalog anymore.
• User Interface: The “Edit Note…” command has been moved to the Collection and Image menus, and is now also available in the library navigator and browser contextual menus.
• User Interface: The “Attach File…” command has been moved to the Collection and Image menus.
• User Interface: Renamed the “Reset Master Attributes…” command to “Reset Attributes…”.
• User Interface: Moved the Mode submenu item further down in the Image menu.

Fixed

• Browser: You can now lock Unfiled images as well.
• Browser: The keyboard focus is set correctly when switching between browsers.
• Virtual Observatory: The ESO archive would under certain circumstances not be searched with the correct radius. This has been fixed.
• Virtual Observatory: Resolved an issue that prevented the air mass and observer name, if available, to be displayed in the inspector.
• Virtual Observatory: If an album is renamed in the sidebar, while the virtual observatory is active, this change is now reflected.
• Virtual Observatory: The exposure duration as displayed in the inspector for HLA images would sometimes contain extraneous zeros after its decimal separator.
• Virtual Observatory: Under certain circumstances not all archives were initially selected for a newly created library.
• Virtual Observatory: Fixed a search results selection issue when sorting.
• Import: The album hierarchy created when importing folders of images generated superfluous folders.
• Import: The right ascension, declination, latitude and longitude FITS keyword parser sometimes failed to parse the (arc)minutes and (arc)seconds correctly, resulting in values of the form “NN 00 00.0” in the inspector. This has been fixed. To resolve this for images in existing libraries, select them in the browser, and then choose “Image ▸ Reset Attributes…”. Please be aware that this resets all attributes to those of the master image, not only these four.
• Import & Spotlight: Handle OBSERVAT FITS keyword, and keywords used by the newly supported Virtual Observatory archives.
• Inspector: The image statistics inspector is now taking into account which channels are active of the image.
• Inspector: Disabled word wrapping for inspector attributes values.
• Inspector: Removed the slider displayed next to the air mass attribute.
• Editor: WCS coordinate transformation error handling has been improved.
• Channels: If a channel is active or visible is now image layer specific, instead of being a global setting for the whole library.
• Source Folder: The “Locate Source Folder…” item has been added to the action menu.
• Library: Improved handling of read-only libraries.
• Crash: Resolved a crash that occurred when the expected files of the UCAC4 or USNO-A2.0 catalogs were not accessible.

Observatory 1.0.3 August 3, 2016

New

• Spotlight: Observatory now includes Spotlight Importers for FITS and SBIG files. This means that, when choosing File ▸ Get Info for such files in Finder, it will now display useful information like image dimensions, exposure time, detector temperature, right ascension, declination, etc. What’s more, you can now search for this information right from within Finder itself!

Changed

• Library: When creating a new library, you now will not be asked for its name anymore. You only need to provide it when explicitly saving it. This is more convenient and consistent with other applications that support Auto Save. More importantly, this makes Observatory fully compatible with the new Tabs feature of upcoming macOS Sierra.
• Library: Disk space utilization for layer stacks has been optimized. For existing libraries, switch the stack type to for example Average and then back to Layer to recover the disk space.
• Virtual Observatory: Search results are now displayed as they come in. You do not need to wait until the last archive returns its data anymore.
• Virtual Observatory: Download notifications are coalesced.
• Virtual Observatory: The search radius is now expressed in arcminutes instead of degrees. The default value has been reduced to 10’.
• Virtual Observatory: The search results can now also be sorted by Source.
• Virtual Observatory: Scrolling through the results with the trackpad gesture has been improved by enabling predominant scrolling.
• Performance: Loading and displaying images is up to 40% faster.
• Outline Browser: Enabled predominant scrolling, making it easier to scroll using the trackpad gesture.
• User Interface: Observatory now will display a notification whenever the Observatory Blog is updated.
• User Interface: Notifications are now shown while the application is in front.
• Finder: FITS files are now referred to as “Flexible Image Transport System” instead of “Flexible Image Transport System Image”.
• Finder: Tweaked the library document identifier reported to the system in preparation for future enhancements.

Fixed

• Import: FITS files with names that contain special characters (parenthesis, brackets, etc) now can be imported as well, and rendered by the FITS Quick Look plugin.
• Virtual Observatory: Fixed an issue which could result in duplicate searches to be submitted to the archives while they were still ongoing.
• Virtual Observatory: Changing the search radius will now start a new search.
• Virtual Observatory: Resolved an issue where under certain circumstances images would not be downloaded into the selected album.
• Preview: Virtual Observatory preview images sometimes were downloaded even when the preview pane or sidebar was collapsed. This has been fixed.
• Sidebar: The sidebar icon size is now adjusted when changing the corresponding preference.
• Histogram: Fixed an issue where selecting many images and a histogram preset would not set the black & white points correctly.
• Editor: Now images are correctly centered in the editor even on macOS Sierra.
• Editor: The editor zoom factor now is updated correctly when switching between assistant editors.
• Stack: Fixed an issue with layer offset handling.
• Crash: Resolved a potential crash upon quitting Observatory after using the stack inspector.

Observatory 1.0.2 June 8, 2016

New

• GPU Accelerated Computing: With the new “Compute Device” option in the General tab of Observatory’s Preferences window you can now instruct it to perform some intensive computations on the GPU instead of the CPU. Only supported compute devices are listed, and the GPU that is currently connected to your display is indicated with an icon next to its name. If your computer has multiple GPUs, it is recommended to select one that is not connected to the display.
• Library: If you press the Option key while opening the File menu, the “Compact Library” command changes into “Optimize Library…”. Choose this new command if you wish to immediately generate the thumbnails of all images in a library.

Changed

• Performance: Observatory is now smarter about when to load an image into memory.
• Performance: Channel and layer thumbnails are now cached.
• Performance: Observatory now does not compute image statistics if the corresponding inspector is hidden or collapsed.
• Performance: The performance of image statistics computations has been improved.
• Performance: The star detector that is used internally by Astrometric Matching and the Align adjustment is now faster and optionally GPU accelerated.
• Import: The “Auto-Stack” option in the Import sheet is now unchecked by default.
• User Interface: Slight improvements to the animations in the sidebar and inspectors.

Fixed

• Image Browser: Resolved an issue with the quick filter that resulted in temporary blank thumbnails.
• Image Browser: Workaround for a vertical scrolling issue when using the scroll gesture.

Observatory 1.0.1 May 8, 2016

New

• Virtual Observatory: Added support for the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS).
• Virtual Observatory: Added support for the W. M. Keck Observatory Archive (KOA). It is currently limited to the NIRC2 instrument.
• Virtual Observatory: The number of search results and selected items is now displayed.
• Measure Inspector: There’s a new Cursor inspector which for matched images displays the celestial coordinates at the current cursor position.

Changed

• Library: When creating a new library, the example “Observation Sessions” folder will not be generated anymore.
• Virtual Observatory & Astrometric Matching: The look of the archive, SIMBAD and NED buttons is changed.
• Main Menu: The Help menu now contains links to the Release Notes and Observatory Blog.

Fixed

• Virtual Observatory: SDSS searches that are out of range now will not display an alert anymore.

Observatory 1.0 April 25, 2016

• Hello World!