Changelog

Added

• Now on Mac. Download ClearNightCoach-mac.dmg, open it, drag Clear Night Coach into Applications and open it from there. Apple Silicon (M1 or later), macOS 14 Sonoma or later; Intel Macs are not supported. Signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarised by Apple; not on the Mac App Store. Your Pro key works unchanged: one online activation, then offline. NINA is Windows-only, so on a Mac the SEND button becomes SAVE and writes the sequence file for you to carry to the Windows machine that runs NINA. When a newer release carries the Mac disk image the dashboard shows the update strip; it never installs anything by itself. If you're on one of the Mac test builds, install this over it, replacing the test build - settings, logbook and licence stay.
• TONIGHT'S LIMITS - a new bar on the dashboard. Set FROM and TO (DUSK, half-hour steps, DAWN) to the part of the night you can actually shoot, and the board re-ranks on the good time inside that window. A target that peaks outside it says so, and the altitude chart marks YOUR SESSION. BROADBAND ONLY plans as if no narrowband filter is on the scope tonight. The small i beside the label opens a short explainer, "Your session tonight", on a click or a tap. Free.
• New equipment. Telescopes: Askar SQA55, SQA60 Pro, SQA70, SQA85, SQA106, SQA130 and 131F; ZWO FF65, FF70, FF80, FF107, FF110, FF130 and FF131 (type "ZWO" to find them). Filters: a new DUAL-BAND (OIII + SII) class. Each shortlist row now picks the filter by the emission line the target actually needs, so Target Detail no longer recommends an Ha filter for an OIII target, or the reverse.
• Supernova watch. The boost a supernova gives its host galaxy now tapers with the galaxy's apparent size, so a tiny host no longer tops the board over a target that fills the frame. The supernova strip still shows.
• Catalogue corrections. Heart Nebula 150 x 150 arcmin, Tarantula 40 x 25 arcmin; vdB 142 and Ced 215 now carry the UHC filter recommendation.
• A tidier board. The "Ranked for a clear sky — tonight's forecast is NO-GO." line is gone, because the verdict already says it, and targets ticked DONE are no longer named in the "sitting out" line.
• Pro narration: a multi-band filter now reaches the cloud as one filter, which reads more cleanly in the briefing.

Fixed

• The week around a clock change shifted by an hour. Each night is now computed on its own daylight-saving offset.
• Target Detail times could read five hours out after changing time zone without restarting.
• (Windows) The nav Pro button, clicked while already on Settings, left the loading emblem spinning for ever.
• (Mac) CONTACT on Settings opens Mail.
• (Mac) USE MY POSITION now asks macOS for Location permission through the system's own Location Services, and if no position comes back the toast says why.

Notes

Much of this release came from the people on the Mac test builds and from emails about the Windows app, with enough detail each time to reproduce the problem here. Thank you.

From this entry on, an item with no tag applies to Windows and Mac. Only the exceptions are marked (Mac) or (Windows).

Nothing moved behind the paywall in this release: everything that was free in v2.3.6 is still free.

Upgrading from any earlier version on Windows: run the new installer over the top of the old one. On a Mac, drag the new copy into Applications and replace the old one. Your settings, logbook and licence key are untouched either way.

The Store carries the same application, and Store installs update themselves with nothing to download.

Added

• ALREADY IMAGED - a free button on the hero card and every shortlist row rests a target for about three months, the same rest a logged capture gets. One click on WAKE IT UP undoes it. A rest is a penalty rather than a ban: a rested target can still appear if it clearly beats everything else that night, and a bright supernova in a rested galaxy brings it back early on purpose. The rest applies wherever you image, not per site or rig. When something is sitting out, a line above the shortlist says so, and searching for a rested target shows RESTING UNTIL and WAKE IT UP with no key needed. Pro can remove a target for good and restore it from the new REMOVED TARGETS panel in the Session Log.
• Right now, before the window. Open the app hours before dark and the WEATHER page now says what the sky is doing at this moment and when met.no has it clearing - for example "Right now (~17:00): ~91% low/mid cloud and rain — clouded out. The verdict is for the dark window from 20:25; met.no has it clearing by 20:00." Until now nothing was said until an hour before the window, so a GO could sit under a thunderstorm all afternoon. The verdict itself is unchanged.
• Smart scopes in EQ mode get their EQ sub length. Anyone shooting a smart scope in equatorial mode was being told the alt-az 10s limit. The Mount setting now picks the ceiling: Seestar S50, S30, S50 Pro and S30 Pro 60s; DWARF 3 60s; DWARF Mini 90s, all manufacturer-published. Every smart-scope line now names the mode, and the Equipment page MODE line reads "subs up to 10s in alt-az, 60s in EQ mode — set Mount above to match how you shoot". Vespera II, Vespera Pro, Odyssey and Origin publish no EQ figure, so nothing changes for them.
• Wind and equatorial mounts (Pro sub recipe). The 10s wind cap was worked out on a 16-inch alt-az Dobsonian and was being applied to guided equatorial mounts as well - someone on an Askar FRA300 with a guided equatorial mount was told 10s subs every windy night. An equatorial mount, guided or unguided, now keeps its own sub length and gets a guiding note instead, and the "(subs capped)" tag on the weather strip follows the actual cap decision. Alt-az behaviour is unchanged.
• New equipment. Smart scopes: DwarfLab Draco (pre-release - manufacturer specs, no field unit measured yet, and the app's note says so), Vaonis Vespera 3 and Vespera Pro 2, Celestron Origin Mark II, plus Origin's Mosaic Mode. Telescope: Askar 71F.
• USE MY POSITION now says why it failed - Windows Location services off or the app not allowed to use them, a position that couldn't be worked out, or a timeout - in place of one generic "No position available".
• About page: a NEWSLETTER panel with JOIN THE NEWSLETTER opens the sign-up form in your browser. The app never handles your address.

Fixed

• The REMAINING countdown hung off the right of the screen at 1920x1080 with Windows 125% scaling. The top ribbon now wraps on every page.
• FEELS LIKE showed "None" for some US sites, where met.no serves no feels-like value. It now shows a dash when there's no value.

Notes

Most of this release came from the people using the app. The button was asked for three times in a fortnight, the EQ sub length was reported twice, and the right-now line and the wind cap were each found on one user's screen with enough detail to reproduce here. Thank you.

Nothing moved behind the paywall in this release: everything that was free in v2.3.5 is still free.

Upgrading from any earlier version: run the new installer over the top of the old one. Your settings, logbook and licence key are untouched.

The Store carries the same application, and Store installs update themselves with nothing to download.

Added

• The top bar stays put while you scroll. Suggested by someone using the app. It pins on wider windows only - roughly 1500px across, or 1040px if the window is tall as well. On anything narrower the bar scrolls away as it always has, and that is the design rather than a fault.
• Two additions to the equipment lists: the ZWO ASI4400MC Pro camera and the William Optics UltraCat 108 telescope.

Fixed

• All seven nights answer, wherever you are (Pro). Outside one band of time zones, the NEXT 7 NIGHTS week filled two or three tiles and printed NO FORECAST DATA across the rest - the UK, Europe, all four United States time zones, Japan, India and New Zealand among those affected. The cause was a time-zone fault, and it happened to work on the machine it was built on, which is why it survived this long; several people wrote in about it, which is how it was found. The week is now checked against live forecast data at real United States coordinates. Three things came out of the same repair: rain counts on the far nights, which previously carried no rain figures at all and so could not be marked down for it either way; a far night that was perfectly clear can no longer come back NO-GO; and a far night no longer prints a best window assembled from too few readings, but says nothing where it does not know. What the far nights are: beyond the first couple, a night is a LEANS verdict marked OUTLOOK, worked out from six-hourly data. Seven nights that answer, not seven firm forecasts.
• WEATHER read OFFLINE for an hour on a brand-new site, and would not say why. On a site added that day, the hour between astronomical dawn and sunrise had no data behind it, and the page offered no explanation for the gap.
• A supernova now pulls its host galaxy back onto the board. If you had photographed the galaxy already, its rest period kept it buried and the app stayed quiet about the one reason to go back to it - which is the whole purpose of the supernova watch.
• Rest wording that argued with the board. A target could be described as resting while the app was recommending it, and the count alongside could read “1 days ago” or “0 days ago”.
• Target pictures that stayed blank once the connection returned. A picture that failed to load was filed as though it were the picture, so the empty box sat there for ten minutes. Loading the page again now asks for it properly.
• Typing M42 found nothing. It finds M 42.

Notes

Almost everything above arrived from people using the app, with screenshots, coordinates and enough detail to reproduce the fault on this end. The seven-night week was caught on a subscriber’s own screen rather than at this desk. Thank you.

Nothing moved behind the paywall in this release: everything that was free in v2.3.4 is still free.

Upgrading from any earlier version: run the new installer over the top of the old one. Your settings, logbook and licence key are untouched.

The Store carries the same application, and Store installs update themselves with nothing to download.

Added

• Sub-length advice stops treating the noise floor as the target. On a fast optical train under a bright sky the app could work out that five-second subs already swamp the camera’s read noise, then offer that as the recommendation - which takes no account of how many frames you are left to store, calibrate and stack. Where the sky limit falls below 30 seconds and nothing else caps you, the line now reads “SUB LENGTH — sky-limited from 5s at your site. Anything from 30s to 120s is fine tonight; pick the length for frame count and star cores, not noise.”, with the upper figure trimmed to whatever your mount allows. Tonight’s wind is taken into account too, so a card trimmed for wind and the sentence under it no longer disagree. One honest limit: when something else already caps subs below 30 seconds - an alt-az mount does at every transit, and wind does on any mount - this does not apply, and you will still see the shorter figure with the older wording.
• A night that clouds over in the middle now reads MARGINAL. Two or more cloudy hours sitting between the first and last clear hour cap a GO at MARGINAL, instead of a night that is clear at both ends and shut in between reading as a straight GO. It is a narrow rule - across the 57 nights sampled in testing it changed none of them - and it is there for the night it does.
• Gusts are quoted only where they are forecast. MET Norway serves gust figures inside its Nordic area; elsewhere the field is empty, and the app had been repeating the plain wind speed as though it were the gust. Gusts now drop out of those reasons, the Weather page says “not forecast here”, and the hourly column shows a dash. The verdicts themselves are unchanged.
• A message when the app cannot start. If the local server never answers - a port already in use, a failed bind - you now get a message box naming the reason and the log to look at, rather than the launch art followed by a blank error page. Every launch also writes a first line to startup.log in %LOCALAPPDATA%\ClearNightCoach.
• The app now installs as a folder of files instead of one self-extracting executable. Until now every launch unpacked around 55 MB of libraries into a temporary folder and loaded them from there. That is gone, so start-up is quicker and nothing is left behind in %TEMP%. It also removes the cause of a failure reported on PCs running Smart App Control or Windows Defender Application Control, where those temporary copies carried no signature and were blocked - either “Bad Image” dialogs (error 0xC0E90002) or an app that never opened at all. The change can only be tested on a Microsoft-signed build, so it goes to the Microsoft Store with this version. Nobody has yet been able to confirm it on an affected PC, and it is not being claimed as fixed until someone has.

Fixed

• Targets are no longer buried for having been shown. The app rests a target for a while after it has been on the board, to rotate its suggestions. A shortlist appearance was resting a target nearly as hard as a night you had actually photographed it, and for a month - and because a six-row board is often separated by only a few points, that was enough to remove the strongest objects for your rig from the list after a week or two of daily use. A shortlist appearance now costs about a third of what it did, a hero night about a quarter, and both clear in a fortnight rather than a month. Targets you have actually shot still rest hard; that part is unchanged. A night the app itself calls NO-GO now records nothing at all, and if an earlier run that evening called the night MARGINAL, those rows are cleared when the verdict turns.
• Export backup and calendar downloads. EXPORT BACKUP, and the calendar (.ics) button on Target Detail, started the loading emblem and never finished, and no file was ever saved - the app’s own window had been cancelling downloads silently. Both now open a Save As dialog, and cancelling leaves the app usable.
• Picking from the Equipment lists with a slower click. The Preset, Telescope and Camera boxes hid their list 180 milliseconds after the box lost focus, so any press held longer than that - a deliberate click, a trackpad, a touchscreen, an older mouse, a slower machine - closed the list between press and release and nothing was chosen. The lists now stay put until you pick a row or click away.
• Typed coordinates fill in the timezone. The Timezone box filled itself only from a map click or drag, so anyone typing exact coordinates had to search for a nearby town to get a zone and then retype the coordinates. Typing a latitude or longitude now fills it too, when the box is empty or the spot has moved more than about 50 km. A zone you typed yourself is never overwritten, nor is an elevation you typed.
• SAVE CURRENT RIG and SAVE CURRENT SITE now save. Both used to add the entry to the list on screen and then wait for a second click on the main SAVE button; to anyone reading the button, it had already saved. One click now keeps the saved list and the current form together. The site button also posts the site on its own, so half-finished edits elsewhere in Settings are left where they are and DISCARD still reverts them.
• The Weather page says which source feeds what. The footer read as though MET Norway and 7Timer both fed the cloud numbers. Cloud, rain, wind and dew come from MET Norway; 7Timer supplies seeing and transparency only. The footer now says exactly that.
• The dashboard’s SUB LENGTH line is Pro. It was being drawn under the free capture recipe, where it quoted a wind- and sky-tuned length that contradicted the free line immediately above it.
• Narration for a sky-limited rig (Pro). The hosted voice had no way to know the app had put a floor under your sub length, so for a fast rig under a bright sky it either repeated the old advice or fell back to the templated voice. It now receives the floor, the sky limit and the upper figure as facts in their own right, and speaks to them.
• Small: long rig and site names with no spaces in them now wrap inside their own column in Your Rigs, Your Sites and the NINA templates list, instead of painting across the line beneath; curated notes no longer repeat a target’s name back to you in the coach’s prose; and in the browser fallback, dragging an equipment list’s scrollbar no longer closes the list.

Notes

Several of the fixes above were found by people who wrote in, with screenshots, a video, and in one case a complete Windows bug report. Thank you: most of this list exists because you took the time.

One line changed tier, and it is the dashboard SUB LENGTH line named above. It is a Pro figure and was appearing on free dashboards by mistake, arguing with the free recipe printed alongside it. Free plans keep the capture recipe and the mount’s own limit, as before. Nothing else moved.

Coming from any earlier version: run the installer over the top of it. Your settings, logbook and licence key are kept.

The Store carries the same application, and Store installs update themselves with nothing to download.

Added

• Camera names recognised more reliably. Typed variants such as “ZWO 2600MC Pro”, “ASI2600MC Pro” or “ASI 2600MC-Pro” now match the camera list, so a recognised CMOS camera gets gain and offset advice, and gain/offset in the NINA export (Pro), instead of ISO wording. The Equipment page now shows whether your camera is recognised: “Recognised — … · gain/offset table on”, or “Not recognised — ISO wording. Pick your camera from the list to switch on the gain/offset table”. One thing to be aware of: if the camera name you typed now matches, your NINA export (Pro) switches from ISO to gain/offset. That is intended.
• Smart telescopes found from the Telescope box. Typing a smart telescope such as “Dwarf 3” into Optics → Telescope now offers the smart telescope preset (“SMART TELESCOPE — fills the whole rig”). Search boxes show a no-match line instead of an empty list.
• New preset: ZWO Seestar S50 Pro.
• Wind on the night picker. Each night tile now shows wind and gust, for example WIND 22 · GUST 29 KM/H.
• Timezone list easier to search. Each zone shows its UTC offset, for example UTC-06:00 · US Mountain Time, and common names such as “Mountain”, “Pacific”, “Eastern”, “Central” and “GMT / BST (UK)” find the right zone.
• Shortlist button renamed. The row button that sends a target to NINA now reads “◎ SEND TO NINA” (Pro; it used to say “Choose”) and shows its result beside the row.
• Read-noise field explained. The Equipment page now explains that the read-noise figure is used by Pro’s sub-exposure verdict; free plans use the mount’s limit.
• Licence key PASTE button. Settings → License Key has a PASTE button that puts a copied key straight in.

Fixed

• Weather and target pictures on some Windows PCs. On some PCs the Weather page showed “WEATHER OFFLINE — ASSUMING CLEAR” and target pictures stayed as grey placeholders, even though the internet worked and the forecast site opened in a browser. Those PCs were missing the security certificates that the forecast service (MET Norway) and the picture service use. Windows only downloads certificates like these on demand, and the app had no way to prompt that download. The app now carries its own list of trusted certificates alongside Windows’ own, so the forecast and pictures load whatever the PC has saved. Certificate checking is never switched off. If the forecast still can’t be reached, the Weather page now gives the reason under the offline line, for example “Couldn’t reach the forecast service: certificate verify failed.”, “…: timed out after 8 s.” or “…: connection failed.” Thank you to everyone who reported this and sent screenshots; they are what made it possible to track down.
• Searched targets respect the weather. A target you searched for used to show its own verdict, such as SHOOT IT, even on a clouded-out night. The verdict line now combines both: NO-GO · SHOOT IT IN BETTER WEATHER, SHOOT IT · WEATHER MARGINAL, SHOOT IT · WEATHER GO, or SHOOT IT · ASSUMING CLEAR when the forecast is offline. On NO-GO nights the shortlist says “Ranked for a clear sky — tonight’s forecast is NO-GO.”
• Target Detail keeps your target. Picking a target on the Targets page and then opening the Target Detail tab now shows that target, not tonight’s suggested one.
• HyperStar reducer. A 0.2× reducer (HyperStar) is no longer rounded up to 0.3×.
• Small: the upgrade page’s weather line now reads GO / MARGINAL / NO-GO, and the app now states each page file’s type itself, a safeguard against unstyled pages on unusual Windows setups.

Notes

Upgrading from any earlier version: just run the new installer - your settings, logbook and licence key carry over.

Also on the Microsoft Store, where installs update themselves with no download needed. Both routes deliver the same application.

All 25 Founder Lifetime keys have been claimed, so that option is no longer on the upgrade page. Existing Founder keys keep working as before.

Nothing moved behind the paywall in this release: everything that was free in v2.3.2 is still free.

Added

• Saved Rigs. The Equipment page gains a Rig Name field and a SAVED RIGS section: save the current rig under its name (up to six), USE loads one back into the form, REMOVE deletes it. With two or more saved, the dashboard's status ribbon shows a RIG switcher next to LOCATION; choose one and tonight is re-planned for that rig's optics, mount and camera on the spot. This was asked for, and the reason is a real one - a Dob at home, a travel refractor, a smart scope. If you run one rig, nothing changes.
• Backups get the same voice as the hero (Pro). Since v2.1, Pro's live narration read only on the hero; every backup click fell back to the templated voice. Now the hero and all five backups are voiced live, re-voiced whenever a new plan is computed, and the dashboard swaps the live prose in. Free tier unchanged: templated voice.
• Supernova watch. The feed used to judge each supernova by its discovery magnitude, the faintest it ever is, so a nearby one caught early by a survey was dropped: SN 2026aaiv in NGC 7331 was found on 1 September at magnitude 17 and about 13.5 within five days while the app said nothing. Now, for Type Ia, superluminous supernovae and hypernovae, anything found at magnitude 20 or brighter that its distance says should climb into reach is kept and shown on the rise, with an estimated current brightness and a predicted peak and date, marked as a prediction with a reminder to check the current magnitude. One still too faint tonight is listed as a watch, so you can plan the galaxy ahead of its best nights; and if the host galaxy never gets high enough from your site, the row says so and gives the altitude it reaches instead of "no supernovae".
• In-app dialogs. Every browser-style "127.0.0.1:5055 says" confirm and alert box is replaced by an in-app dialog that matches the console.

Fixed

• Licence keys. A revoked key is checked once at launch when online and cleared only when the server says revoked; offline use is untouched. A lapsed subscription now says so - "Your Pro access has ended - the key is still saved, and Pro returns the moment it is renewed", with a PRO ENDED chip and a CHECK AGAIN button - instead of blaming your internet connection. Pro-voiced plan prose no longer lingers for up to 30 minutes after a lapse.
• Narration stays honest to the numbers (Pro, server-side). The hosted narration now receives every fact with its unit and meaning attached, and every figure in the returned prose is checked against those facts before it is shown; a mismatch falls back to the templated voice. Backups are also told they are backups, so one no longer introduces itself as tonight's hero. This part lives on the server and applies to every Pro version once deployed.
• Small: a dialog danger-button text colour now follows the theme token.

Notes

Upgrading from any earlier version: just run the new installer - your settings, logbook and licence key carry over.

Also on the Microsoft Store, where installs update themselves with no download needed. Both routes deliver the same application.

Nothing moved behind the paywall in this release: Saved Rigs is part of the free app, and everything that was free in v2.3.1 is still free.

Fixed

• Shortlist ranking at dark sites (Bortle 4 and darker). Catalogue entries with no measured brightness - placeholder surface-brightness values from the Cederblad and van den Bergh reflection-nebula lists, plus unmeasured NGC/IC rows - were being scored as if the placeholder were a real measurement, and could outrank proper targets. In our own review, a Bortle-4 site in mid-November put an unnamed fragment of the Pleiades reflection nebulosity (Ced 19h) in the hero slot ahead of the Crab Nebula (NGC 1952). Placeholder brightness can no longer make an object rate as an easy catch, and the 45 lettered Cederblad fragments (the haloes around individual Pleiades stars - the picture is M45) no longer compete as targets. Every Cederblad designation still works in search. Catalogue count 11,264 to 11,219. Bortle 5 and brighter skies were unaffected.
• Tie-break. Scores were capped at 100 before comparison, so two strong candidates could read as a tie and the hero went to whichever rose first. The Crab had in fact won on merit (102.3 vs 100.0). Ranking now compares the uncapped score, and the same correction applies to the "keyhole" guard that protects a hero with a narrow visibility window.
• Seven named objects with placeholder brightness are now rated as fainter targets that reward integration, rather than easy catches, at Bortle 3: the Witch Head, Angel Nebula, Toby Jug, IC 349 (Barnard's Merope Nebula), the Mice, Seyfert's Sextet and Stephan's Quintet. Our astronomy adviser confirms this is correct - they are hard.
• Recipe wording. The free-tier sub-exposure card said Pro tunes the sub to "tonight's wind and moon". The moon never changes the sub length. It now says Pro trims the sub for tonight's wind and finds the sky-limited length.

Notes

No new features and no settings changes.

Upgrading from any earlier version: just run the new installer - your settings, logbook and licence key carry over.

Microsoft Store: v2.3 is cleared

Added

• 11,000+ objects - the catalogue grows from 10,181 to 11,264 rows with the Sharpless HII regions, the curated Barnard dark nebulae, van den Bergh and Cederblad nebulae, Abell planetaries, the Arp peculiar galaxies, the Hickson compact groups (see below) and the open clusters of the Collinder, Melotte, Trumpler, Stock, Berkeley and King lists. Every new row carries a surface-brightness rating reviewed by our astronomy adviser. Objects already present under another name became searchable aliases ("Sh2-277" finds IC 434), 27 nicknames now resolve that did not (Tadpoles, Cygnus Loop, Pickering's Triangle, Eskimo, Phantom, Skull, Keyhole, Silver Coin, Hamburger, Ptolemy Cluster among them), and M45 and IC 1318 - the Pleiades and the Sadr region - are back after going missing in v2.2. Hand-added rows for the Squid Nebula (OU4), Dark Shark, Propeller, Soap Bubble, Jones-Emberson 1, Baby Eagle and Orion's Belt. Dark nebulae are now a type of their own, with a Bortle check: a dark nebula cannot be darker than a Bortle-7 sky, and the engine says so.
• The Hickson compact groups - all 100 of them, from catalogue VII/213 at CDS VizieR: the tight knots of interacting galaxies, Stephan's Quintet among them. Ninety-nine sit in the catalogue under their own HCG number rather than folded into a member galaxy; the hundredth was already there as IC 700, which "HCG 54" now finds. Used with Paul Hickson's permission; the DATA SOURCES panel cites Hickson (1982, ApJ 255, 382) with the author's kind permission. Our astronomy adviser reviewed the rows first, applying a surface-brightness floor and a V-R colour term to them.
• Several saved sites - Settings > Saved Sites keeps up to six observing sites (home, dark site, club field), each with its own horizon mask. Switch from the dashboard's Location readout and the night is re-planned from there.
• Several saved NINA sequences - Settings > Saved Sequences keeps LRGB, narrowband and focus-offset templates side by side; pick which one to fill from the SEND TO NINA button, and the one you pick becomes the active template. The File Bridge settings now explain what goes in the box, what Coach changes and what it never touches.
• "Project done" in the log - tick a log entry as done and that target is never suggested again until you untick it. A plain logged capture still rests for 90 days.
• The best fortnight, in your diary - the Seasonal Planner exports its best 14-night window as an .ics (one all-day entry per night with that night's dark hours and moon) or a one-click Google Calendar entry. Geometry and moon only.
• Sky map on the dashboard - a SKY MAP panel with 15-60 degree zoom chips and a default that adapts to your rig. Under the score, the identity column shows YOUR FRAME and THE OBJECT as survey cutouts.
• Gain and offset for CMOS astro cameras - 44 ZWO, QHY, Player One and SVBONY models now show gain and offset instead of ISO, on the card, in the briefing and in the NINA file. QHY 268 and 600 show their readout mode. Class-typical values are flagged in the briefing as a starting point. DSLRs are unchanged.
• A new launch screen with a real boot checklist.

Changed

• Fewer targets your rig cannot take. An object under 24 pixels across on your sensor is gated "too small for your rig" rather than ranked; small planetary nebulae (under 120 pixels) are scored down in proportion, so a 408 mm refractor is no longer told to shoot the Blue Snowball; faint broadband objects lose score gradually towards the hopeless line instead of tying with bright galaxies.
• Emission targets are judged by the filter class you own (none/CLS, UHC, dual-band wide or tight, line) and whether the sensor is mono. A filterless OSC is not sent to the Bubble; an OIII-dominant faint planetary reads as a skip on broadband glass and an integration project with a line filter.
• Sub length knows your mount. Alt-az gets a field-rotation cap, an unguided equatorial a periodic-error cap from focal length, a guided equatorial a sky-limited length from your camera's read noise and your Bortle class - and the card says why a number is short ("Held short - alt-az field rotation"). A tracking-only mount with no GoTo gets an honest framing multiplier on big targets.
• The seeing penalty now anchors on your own site's forecast climate, learnt over a week of nights, rather than one fixed scale - a mountain site's nights are told apart again.
• Corrections: IC 1396 (the Elephant's Trunk complex) and a sweep of suspect sizes; globulars NGC 3201, 4372 and 6101 re-rated EASY from the Harris catalogue; naked-eye clusters (Alpha Persei, Hyades, Orion's Belt) read EASY.
• Dashboard straight talk. The pick is labelled "Optimal Target - Tonight" (the night's pick, not this minute's); the TIMELY strip is always on and says "none" when there is nothing, with the comet gate matched to your aperture; the "Ephemeris" tab is now "Target Detail"; narration tone chips read "Full Coach" and "Just the facts", and the Narration settings spell out what the briefing does, what it never touches and exactly what leaves the machine on Pro - the target name and tonight's numbers, nothing else.
• Fresh installs now default to an equatorial, guided mount. Existing settings are untouched.
• The update banner now downloads the installer directly from the release (from the next update onward).

Notes

Upgrading from v2.2, v2.1, v2.0 or v1.0: just run the new installer - your settings, logbook and licence key carry over.

Being submitted to the Microsoft Store alongside this release; Store installs update themselves once Microsoft's review completes. Both routes deliver the same application.

Nothing moved behind the paywall in this release: everything that was free in v2.2 is still free.

Added

• Set-up before the first plan — a brand-new install now opens on the Settings page and asks for your observing site and rig before it computes anything, instead of starting from a placeholder location. Existing installs are untouched: if you're already set up, nothing changes.
• A "Right now" cloud line — the dashboard adds a "Right now: ~X% low/mid cloud" reading whenever the current hour disagrees with the verdict for the night as a whole.
• A calm page for midsummer at high latitude — above roughly 49° north (Scotland, Scandinavia, Canada) the sun never reaches astronomical darkness for weeks around June, and the app used to stop with an error on launch there. It now says plainly that there's no astronomical darkness tonight, with links onward to Weather and Settings. Southern observers in June are unaffected — that's midwinter.

Changed

• A GO over a patchy sky no longer calls it clear. The verdict reads "mostly clear but PATCHY" and names both the best clear run and the cloudy spell.
• When the clear hours cover less than three-quarters of the dark window, the call is capped at MARGINAL rather than GO.
• Forecast age is now measured from the weather model's own issue time rather than from when the app fetched it. An ageing forecast wears a STALE badge; once it's too old to trust for cloud, the verdict word steps aside for SKY-CHECK — go and look. The target ranking stays either way, because geometry doesn't age.
• The moon penalty reads the filter you own. Owned filters are now classed as broadband, UHC, duo-band (wide), duo-band (tight) or narrow line, and the moon-brightness penalty uses a tolerance per class, so a tight duo-band or single-line filter is allowed more moon than a UHC. The Seestar and DWARF built-in duo filters are classed as duo-band wide. UHC owners see no change.
• Under the bonnet, the seeing feed is now fetched over HTTPS, and the engine has been consolidated into one shared core so the desktop and future apps compute identical verdicts.

Notes

Upgrading from v2.1, v2.0 or v1.0: just run the new installer — your settings, logbook and licence key carry over.

Also on the Microsoft Store, where installs update themselves with no download needed. Both routes deliver the same application.

Nothing moved behind the paywall in this release: everything that was free in v2.1 is still free.

Added

• Seven-night outlook — one tile per night for the week ahead, each with a GO / MARGINAL / NO-GO call, moon percentage and dark window. Tonight and tomorrow are free; nights three to seven are Pro. Forecast skill fades past about three days, so every Pro night is labelled an outlook rather than a firm verdict.
• Tonight’s timeline strip — a colour strip across the dark window showing where clear sky, target altitude and moonlight actually overlap, so the usable stretch of the night reads at a glance.
• Seasonal planner — pick a target and see its best month, and best fortnight, over the coming year at your site. Geometry rather than forecasting, so it works fully offline.
• Sub-exposure verdict — one honest line suggesting a sub length from your camera’s read noise against the sky brightness at your Bortle class, with 91 cameras classed. Mount and scope limits always win: it will never suggest a sub your mount can’t track.
• 36 more southern showpieces — the hand-curated gem list grows from 81 to 117, and the southern set from 15 to 51, including 47 Tucanae, Omega Centauri, NGC 6397, the Carina Nebula, the Tarantula and the Helix.
• Two more smart telescopes — one-pick presets for the ZWO Seestar S30 Pro and the Dwarflab DWARF Mini.

Changed

• Shortlist targets now open instantly — clicking a target used to pause for several seconds before the panel appeared.
• The timely-comet callout now lists every comet worth chasing tonight, not just the best-placed one, and each is a link straight to its own panel.

Notes

Upgrading from v2.0 or v1.0: just run the new installer — your settings, logbook and licence key carry over.

The nightly decision stays free, along with the timeline strip, the seasonal planner, the sub-exposure verdict and the first two nights of the week view.

Added

• Northern Hemisphere support — the full-sky catalogue now scores 10,181 objects across both hemispheres, with 66 hand-curated northern showpieces joining the southern set. No toggle needed: your site latitude decides your sky.
• Smart telescope presets — one-pick rig setup for ZWO Seestar S50 & S30, Dwarf 3, Vaonis Vespera II & Pro, Unistellar Odyssey and Celestron Origin.
• Daylight theme — a light UI alongside the night-friendly console, switchable in Settings.
• In-app update notice — the app now tells you when a new release is out.

Changed

• Faster startup — no more blank window on launch.
• Morning check now answers for the coming night, not the one just finished.

Notes

Upgrading from v1.0: just run the new installer — your settings and logbook carry over.

Added

• Tonight’s decision: one hero target plus a shortlist, scored for your rig, your site and tonight’s sky
• Plain-English “why” debrief for the night’s pick
• Conditions call: weather, moon and darkness weighed into a verdict on the night
• Timely targets: well-placed comets and active supernovae alerts
• Check a target: score any target you type in, including honest NOs
• Horizon mask: draw your site’s skyline so scoring respects what you can actually see; imports NINA/Stellarium horizon files
• Fully offline free core — no account required
• Offline-first free core no account required — the decision runs fully offline; alerts and weather use internet when available
• Send-to-NINA sequence export (Pro)
• Tonight-tuned exposure recipes with wind-aware sub lengths (Pro)
• Session Log: night diary with photo attachments (Pro)
• Watchlist (Pro)
• Multi-Night Tracker: logged hours vs an integration goal, per target (Pro)
• Live AI narration (Pro)

Notes

v1.0 targets the Southern Hemisphere. Northern Hemisphere support is coming.