Quality and reliability release — 21 bug fixes from a 72,000-file production audit,
PixInsight measurement parity validation, and continuous code quality monitoring.
Quality & Reliability
- Improved 72K-file production audit — 21 findings fixed across QA scoring, Imaging Intelligence, equipment detection, and scanner enrichment
- Improved PixInsight QA parity — 16 automated tests now verify FWHM, HFR, eccentricity, and SNR match PixInsight SubframeSelector within tolerance
- Improved Qodana code quality gate — continuous static analysis on every commit via GitHub Actions
- Improved 104 real-data tests — test suite rebuilt from synthetic mocks to real FITS data across 6 domains
Planner
- Fix Equipment Match filter now correctly filters targets by match percentage (≥50%, ≥80%)
- Fix Equipment pill visibility improved — clearer background, border, and hover state
Imaging Intelligence
- Fix Equipment switch no longer triggers unnecessary ML re-analysis when all files are already analyzed
- Fix Portrait sensor heatmap — SeeStar and other portrait-oriented sensors now display correctly oriented grid
Scanner & Data Integrity
- Fix Filter name normalization — consistent casing for OIII, H-alpha, and SII across all vendors
- Fix Enrichment preservation — rescanning folders no longer overwrites existing QA and ML scores
- Fix SNR clamping — extreme outlier values (e.g. 9.6 trillion) now clamped at 10,000
- Fix Phantom equipment cleanup — auto-generated placeholder setups are now deactivated on startup
- Fix FWHM zero guard — physically meaningless FWHM=0.0 values are no longer written to the database
Performance
- Improved Startup wizard deferred to prevent crash after welcome dialog
- Improved Telemetry ring buffer now persists snapshots to disk instead of losing data on overflow
Major release introducing AstroBin integration, smart telescope support, a complete theme redesign, and multi-language UI.
AstroBin Integration
- New AstroBin Manager — full AstroBin module with Connection Status, Gallery Sync, Acquisition Push, and Equipment Presets cards
- New One-click gallery sync — sync your AstroBin gallery with automatic catalogue-ID matching (M, NGC, IC, SH2, Abell, and more)
- New Published badges — gallery thumbnails show a badge when the target has a matched AstroBin published image
- New AstroBin column in Index Overview showing published status per object
- New Equipment Presets — import telescope, camera, mount, filter, and accessory setups from your AstroBin profile
- New Clickable image links — open matched AstroBin images directly in your browser
- New AstroBin credentials in Welcome Screen and Settings for easy onboarding
Smart Telescope Support
- New SeeStar S50, S30, S30 Pro — automatic detection from FITS headers with correct aperture, focal length, and sensor identification
- New SeeStar filter classification — IRCUT recognized as broadband, LP correctly identified as dual-narrowband (Ha + OIII), not light-pollution
- New Stacked-image pass-through — SeeStar stacked files (STACKCNT > 1) automatically categorized as PROCESSED with target name preserved
- New Built-in QE curves for IMX585, IMX662, and IMX462 sensors used in the SeeStar family
Theme & Visual Design
- New Proposal D palette — complete theme redesign with neutral dark backgrounds and brighter accent colors
- New Visual hierarchy selectors — accent-colored card titles (teal), count badges (gold), and sidebar section headers across all tabs
- Improved Gallery cards — consistent vertical name alignment across the grid, cleaner subtitle with exposure time only
- Improved Glass-card styling — semi-transparent backgrounds replacing solid teal in gallery cards
- Improved Unified token system — all 30+ inline-styled files migrated to centralized theme tokens; one file controls all colors
Multi-Language
- New German and Spanish — 1,875+ translated interface strings covering every tab and dialog
- New Language switcher in Settings for runtime language changes
Tools & Utilities
- New Blink Comparator — rapid frame-by-frame comparison with LINEAR, LOG, ASINH, and AUTO_STF stretch modes and adjustable playback speed
- New XISF thumbnail extraction — view embedded thumbnails without loading the full file
- New Multi-HDU batch keyword editing — edit FITS keywords across multiple HDU extensions at once
- New CSV export — export your full database or filtered views to CSV
Quality Fixes
- Fix Autopilot dialog no longer auto-starts before you can configure QA/ML checkboxes
- Fix Folder catalogue detection no longer overwrites FITS header target names
- Fix Catalogue grid no longer overlaps the summary panel
- Fix Planner equipment match column now refreshes when equipment changes
Focused on quality analysis accuracy, ML intelligence, stacking workflow, and the Session Planner V2.
Quality Analysis
- New V4 Quality Scorer — phase-space residual scoring with 32+ metrics per frame and 10 automatic defect detectors (fog, cloud, trailing, gradient, tilt, coma, vignetting, hot pixels, blank frames, underexposure)
- New 9 quality multipliers — star shape, seeing, transparency, star density, SNR weight, sky background, signal floor, PSF signal weight, and sharpness
- New Adaptive baselines — per-equipment-per-filter baselines with multi-level shrinkage (target > equipment > cohort fallback)
- New "Why is this X?" score breakdown — click any quality score to see exactly which multipliers affected it
- New QA header bar on gallery cards replacing pill badges, with 5-metric grid (FWHM, SNR, eccentricity, stars, score)
- Improved PixInsight parity — FWHM measurements now match PixInsight SubframeSelector within 1.5% using Moffat beta=4 fitting
Imaging Intelligence & AI (formerly ML Analytics)
- New 48 ML patterns (up from 40) — added 8 physics-based patterns using signal efficiency, scatter index, and star efficiency
- New AI-powered summaries — human-readable pattern insights with actionable recommendations, powered by GPT-4o or Claude
- New Local ML models — 5 trained models with a training UI tab for offline pattern analysis
- New ML + QA in Autopilot — added Imaging Intelligence (formerly ML Analytics, Step 7) and PixInsight Auto-Stack (Step 8) to the autopilot pipeline
Stacking & Processing
- New AutoIntegrate Combination Recommender — intelligent palette selection from 11 options (SHO, HOO, LRGB, Dynamic SHO, Natural HOO, and more) based on your filters and object type
- Improved SHO + RGB Stars as the standard narrowband recommendation
- Improved Stacking Advisor — PixInsight-aligned Winsorized Sigma at 2.2, PSF Signal Weight ranking
QE Sensor Curves
- New QE Curve Widget — display your camera sensor's quantum efficiency response with filter bandpass overlays
- New QE-aware SNR — signal-to-noise calculations now account for actual sensor sensitivity at each filter's wavelength
- New Auto-import QE — QE data automatically loaded from the built-in library when creating a camera model
- New 9 built-in sensors — IMX183, IMX294, IMX455, IMX533, IMX571, IMX585, IMX662, IMX462, MN34230
Session Planner V2
- New 5-state pipeline — Queued > Planned > Scheduled > Active > Complete with automatic state transitions
- New Equipment-aware suitability scoring — targets ranked by your focal length, sensor FOV, altitude, moon phase, and filter-specific safe zones
- New Annual Timeline — capacity-aware multi-month scheduler with visual timeline bars
- New NINA sequence export — export planned sessions directly to NINA
- New Catalogue Completion tracking with progress through Messier, Caldwell, NGC, IC, and custom lists
UX & Onboarding
- New 242 help tooltips across 14 UI panels (from 13% to 70% tooltip coverage)
- New User Manual accessible from Help menu (F1) with searchable in-app help
- New Trial license auto-download — 14-day trial activates automatically on first launch
- New Configurable install directory — choose where your data is stored
- New Autopilot Quick Setup — one-click scanning, equipment detection, and quality analysis with configurable options
Performance
- Improved Native C median filter with OpenMP parallelization for up to 3x faster QA processing
- Improved SMT-aware concurrency — automatic CPU affinity partitioning and dynamic worker priority
- Improved Galaxy mask caching with pier-side grouping for meridian-flip awareness
- Fix Tree view 6.7-second stall on large libraries eliminated
- Fix XISF memory-mapped file leak causing UI freeze resolved