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v0.1.12 — first release (dev mode)

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@giulioroggero giulioroggero released this 10 Aug 12:10
· 182 commits to master since this release
v0.1.12
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Sky for Mac (skyformac) v0.1.12 — first release, still in active development

This is the first tagged release of Sky for Mac, a native SwiftUI/AppKit astrophotography capture app for ZWO ASI cameras, iPhone (Continuity Camera), and other USB webcams. It's still a development build — expect rough edges, and treat it as a preview rather than a finished product. Feedback and issue reports are welcome.

How to run this build (important — read before opening)

The attached .zip is ad-hoc signed, not notarized. macOS will refuse to launch it after downloading — sometimes with the familiar "cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified" dialog, but on current macOS it can also just silently fail to launch (Console will show OS_REASON_ENDPOINTSECURITY ... denied the process from executing). Either way, this is Gatekeeper reacting to the missing Developer ID signature/notarization, not a broken build.

To run it, clear the quarantine flag the browser attaches to anything downloaded from the internet, from Terminal:

xattr -cr /path/to/skyformac.app

(If that alone doesn't do it: xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/skyformac.app, then try launching again.) A notarized build is planned but not done yet — see Known Limitations below.

What works

Capture sources

  • ZWO ASI cameras over USB (vendored SDK) — RAW8/RAW16 streaming, full dynamic control set (gain, exposure, offset, cooler, binning, flip, etc.), single long exposures.
  • iPhone via Continuity Camera, or any other USB webcam — including focus lock (fixes autofocus fighting afocal projection) and a frame-stacked "Night Mode" (10s/60s).

Rendering & performance

  • GPU render path (Metal compute shaders) for debayer, stretch, denoise, wavelet sharpening, histogram, and live-stacking, with a CPU fallback. GPU dark/flat calibration.
  • Pinch-to-zoom/pan live preview, a dedicated fullscreen mode with its own zoom slider.

Imaging workflow

  • Dark/flat calibration, live stacking, Lucky Imaging (burst capture + sharpness-ranked stacking), continuous recording with a GPU sharpness gate and disk-space guardrail.
  • Focus assist (Vision star detection + HFD focus tracking with thermal-drift alerts), planetary auto-center/crop, Smart Exposure (read-noise/sky-brightness based sub-exposure recommendation).
  • Star-field recognition against a small bundled catalog, live WCS solving, a Catalog HUD overlay, and two-frame polar alignment.
  • FITS/PNG/TIFF export.

Other

  • All-Sky/rig monitor (secondary webcam/iPhone picture-in-picture feed with cloud/motion alerts).
  • In-app Help with full-text search and a "?" shortcut next to every setting that jumps straight to its explanation.
  • Night mode (red-only UI) for dark adaptation.

Known limitations (dev-mode caveats)

  • Real ZWO hardware testing is partial. The capture pipeline has been exercised against a real ASI camera during the day; a full overnight/dark-sky session is still outstanding.
  • Not notarized, ad-hoc signed only. See "How to run this build" above — Gatekeeper will block it until you clear the quarantine attribute.
  • No geometric alignment in stacking. Live Stack and Lucky Imaging both assume a tracked, stationary mount — there's no star-alignment step, the same honest scoping SharpCap's basic live-stack mode uses.
  • Not a full plate solver. Star recognition/polar alignment use a small hand-curated bright-star catalog and triangle-similarity matching, not a general blind solver like astrometry.net — sparse star fields may not resolve.
  • Two originally-considered AI features (a trained Neural-Engine denoiser, AI super-resolution) were intentionally not built — they'd need a Core ML model this project doesn't have.

Requirements

macOS 14+, Apple Silicon recommended for the GPU render path. ZWO ASI camera optional — an iPhone (Continuity Camera) or any webcam works as a capture source without one.

License

GPLv3, with an additional permission (GPLv3 §7) to link against ZWO's proprietary ASI Camera SDK. See LICENSE.md/THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md in the repository.

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