Observer Pro 1.4 is Now Available

It's long overdue, but the next big update to Observer Pro is finally here!

Believe it or not, I've been steadily working on this release for over two years. Why so long? Observer Pro has been around for a long time now (as far as iOS apps go anyway). Version 1.0 was released in September 2011, so as of next month, Observer Pro will be 13 years old. A lot has changed in how iOS apps are built since 2011, and there were large portions of Observer Pro's codebase that were getting difficult to maintain, and even more difficult to build on top of. So, I embarked on the daunting task of rewriting most of the app using modern languages and up-to-date APIs.

With this new foundation, my hope is to release more frequent updates with steady improvements so Observer Pro can continue to be a useful tool for imagers and observers everywhere. I'm excited to share that the first wave of enhancements built on this new foundation are finally here with the release of version 1.4.

Here's an overview of what's new in 1.4. Read on below for the full details on each:

• Advanced filtering options for lists and catalogs

• Improved detail and accuracy in visibility charts

• Home Screen widgets

• Better iOS system integration

• Plus many other enhancements and fixes across the app

Advanced list filtering

All of the list views in Observer Pro can now be filtered based on object properties and visibility. Multiple filters can be enabled on a list to further narrow scope. For example, you can configure to only show galaxies larger than 10' that have good contrast for the first 3 hours of astronomical darkness on the current date.

Filter by Visibility: Only show objects that meet certain visibility requirements during a specific period of time. The time window can be relative to astronomical dusk and dawn (e.g., from dusk to 3 hours after dusk) or specific clock times. The visibility requirement can either be "good" visibility (contrast above your set threshold) or merely unobstructed.

Advanced visibility filter options in Observer Pro 1.4.

Filter by Object Properties: You can filter by types, a magnitude range, and a size range. This helps narrow lists down to objects that are well-suited to be viewed or imaged with your observing setup.

In addition to the above, you can also filter by whether or not an object is in your Favorites and by whether or not an object has been observed.

Chart improvements

There are two big ways that the visibility charts have been improved in Observer Pro for version 1.4.

The first is that the precision and time resolution of the visibility data computed for the charts has been greatly increased. This allows the charts to accurately represent changes in object visibility over much shorter time scales. For example, an object passing behind a narrow obstruction or only being visible for a short window of time due to a narrow gap.

The amount of information that can be gained from the day, month, and year visibility charts has also seen some big improvements. All three charts now include a textual summary of what the charts show. For example, what time period the object has good (green) vs unobstructed (orange) visibility for the day chart, which night has the most hours of good visibility (and how many) for the month chart, and which month has the most good hours per night for the year chart. All three charts also now support inspecting the chart values directly by tapping and holding your finger on the chart then moving side to side to read the values.

Richer detail provided by the visibility charts in Observer Pro 1.4.

On the day visibility chart, you can now toggle a zoomed view that focuses on the period between your chosen dark start and end times (e.g., nautical or astronomical twilight). It also shows you want those times are just below the chart.

The month and year visibility charts, which were only simple single-value bar charts in version 1.3, now accurately visualize how many hours of good vs. unobstructed visibility the object has throughout the time period, as well as showing which part of the night that visibility will occur. This makes it easier than ever to plan ahead and make the most of the time objects are at their best for observing.

The sky map charts have also seen some upgrades. Observer Pro's sky rendering engine was completely overhauled to support object symbols, text labels, showing photos for all objects in view at once, and adding support to load stars to a much fainter magnitude. Some of these enhancements didn't make it into any features in version 1.4, but you will notice that the Finder view now shows far more stars than it did previously.

The finder view in Observer Pro 1.4 shows stars to a much fainter magnitude.

Home Screen widgets

Observer Pro 1.4 introduces a Home Screen widget that shows photos of objects. All three widget sizes are supported and several configuration options are provided, including which object list to show, whether to show one or multiple at a time, and what kind of information to show with the photo. Tapping an object photo on the widget will take you to the detail view in Observer Pro for that object. You can learn more about how to access the configuration options for a given widget on Apple's support page.

I have some great ideas for other widget types to support, so look forward to more in future updates.

Add a featured object widget to your home screen to discover objects that currently have good visibility at your observing site.

iOS system integrations

Observer Pro now integrates better with some iOS system features:

Shortcuts: You can tap and hold on the Observer Pro app icon to go straight to specific parts of the app through the menu.

Spotlight Search integration: You can now find objects you've recently viewed, favorited, or planning on observing from search on your iPhone's home screen. You can also search and go straight to specific catalog names and other lists in Observer Pro (like Featured, Favorites, and Observing List).

Everything else

There are far too many fixes and small enhancements that have been made across the app to list here, but I will call out a few:

Featured object: Observer Pro will now pick and show an object from the Featured list. You can tap on it to show the details screen for that object. It will change periodically, but you can manually update it by swiping down to refresh.

APCC horizon export support: You can now export your measured horizon profile from Observer Pro in the native format supported by Astro-Physics Command Center (APCC). Measuring your horizon in Observer Pro and importing it into APCC saves a lot of time getting APCC setup for your observing site.

Help content: I've expanded the help content available in the app and made the help for different parts of the app available from those screens. Look for a "?" In the toolbar and menus to learn more about how to get the most out of Observer Pro.

A note about night vision mode

No doubt some of you have noticed that Observer Pro no longer has dedicated support for a night vision (red) theme. There are two reasons for this: First, it was difficult to build and maintain, and my limited time is better spent improving Observer Pro's functionality. Second, iOS now supports a system-wide red theme that is far more comprehensive and much more convenient to activate.

To set this up, go to iOS Settings → Accessibility → Display & Text Size → Color Filters. From there, turn on Color Filters, select Color Tint, and adjust Hue to be red by moving the slider all the way to the left. Make sure Intensity is all the way to the right for pure red.

To make this much more convenient to toggle on and off, you can assign Color Filters to the Accessibility Shortcut, which you will find near the bottom of Settings → Accessibility. This will cause triple-clicking the side button of your iPhone to toggle Color Filters on and off. This shortcut works anywhere in the system, including in third-party apps like Observer Pro. You can also add the Accessibility Shortcut as a button in Control Center by going to Settings → Control Center. Read more about configuring the Accessibility Shortcut on Apple’s support page.

Observer Pro 1.3 is Now Available

I’m delighted to announce that Observer Pro 1.3 is now available! You can look forward to the following enhancements in this free update:

Finder View: The object Finder View now has an extended zoom range with support for visualizing the object image overlaid with custom camera and eyepiece field-of-view indicators.

Sort: New sort options in object lists to make it easier to find the perfect object to observe. Imagers will find that sorting by hours of unobstructed visibility particularly useful! Object lists also now support context previews and menus under iOS 13 (tap and hold an object in the list).

Horizon Measurement: Local horizon measurement accuracy has been greatly improved. You can now also export and import horizon profiles in more convenient ways, including to/from the Files app as well as exporting a PNG for use in SkySafari.

Light Theme: For iOS 13 users who are not fans of dark mode, Observer Pro now has a light UI option. Check the Appearance options in the Observer Pro settings screen.

Plus numerous bug fixes and small enhancements. In particular, the default astronomical weather forecast now loads correctly.

As always, if you have any feedback or questions, please feel free to email me at joshua@observerpro.com. If you like Observer Pro, please tell your friends and leave a rating on the App Store.

Clear skies!
Josh

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Looking for Beta Testers!

Update (Feb. 29, 2020): The beta period for Observer Pro 1.3 is now over. Thank you to all who participated! If you are interested in testing future versions of Observer Pro, please follow the email link below so I can put you on the list.

---

Several months ago I put aside the work I was doing to re-build Observer Pro with powerful new capabilities to focus instead on making fixes and improvements to the current version to make it fully compatible with current versions of iOS and devices. Many long weekends were spent updating layouts for iPhones with larger screens and replacing code that used out-dated functionality. Not the most exciting aspects of software development, but it has been nice to see Observer Pro moving forward. And, to be honest, I was getting really tired of how old Observer Pro looked on my iPhone XS.

There are still lots of little fixes that need to be made here and there. Enough that I realized I will need help making sure it’s ready for prime time. So, I’m putting out a call for beta testers. If you are interested in testing and sharing feedback on the upcoming and future versions of Observer Pro, please let me know by using the feedback form inside the app or email me directly at joshua@observerpro.com.

If you do reach out to join the Observer Pro beta, please tell me a little bit about how you do astronomy. What part of the world are you in? Are you primarily an imager or visual observer? Are you mostly in it for the views and/or photos, or scientific research as well? How does Observer Pro fit into astronomy for you (or how would you like it to)? It would also be useful to know what version of iOS you are running.

Thank you all for the excellent feedback and support you’ve given me over the years and, most of all, your patience as I slowly make time to keep Observer Pro in development!

Clear skies,
Josh

P.S. One thing that is new in this version that I had a lot of fun working on was rebuilding the horizon measurement tool using Apple’s ARKit framework. Apple has been doing a lot of work to support augmented reality applications over the last few years and the new horizon measurer in Observer Pro is way better for it. Far more accurate, responsive, and you don’t have to hold your phone a certain way to use it anymore.

Using Observer Pro Horizons in SkySafari

Update (March 2, 2020): Observer Pro 1.3, with built-in support for exporting horizon profiles for Sky Safari is now available in the App Store.

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In Observer Pro it’s quick and easy to measure your horizon obstructions, but sometimes you want to use that information in other applications. You can export the horizon altitude measurements by going into the Local Horizon settings for your observing site. Once there, tap the action button at the top right of the screen to export the horizon profile data as a “.hzn” file.

Several years ago I created a script that can convert an Observer Pro horizon file into an image that can be used in SkySafari. Since I’m not the only one who wants to do this, I thought I’d share it here for people to find and use.

The script is written to run in the Processing programming environment. Processing is free to download and use and supports macOS, Windows, and Linux operating systems. To start converting your Observer Pro horizons, download and install Processing, create a new Sketch, and replace its contents with the code listed below. Press the “Play” button near the top of the Processing window to run it. It will ask you to locate the horizon file that was exported out of Observer Pro and will produce a PNG file with the same name in the same folder as that horizon file. This PNG file is ready to import into SkySafari (consult the SkySafari documentation for the details on how to do that).

---

import java.io.File;

PGraphics pg;

void setup () 
{  
  pg = createGraphics(2048, 1024); 
  selectInput("Select a horizon file:", "fileSelected");
}

void fileSelected(File selection) 
{ 
  if (selection != null) 
  {   
    String inFilePath  = selection.getAbsolutePath();
    String outFileName = split(selection.getName(), '.')[0];
    String outFilePath = selection.getParent() + File.separator + outFileName + ".png";
    
    pg.beginDraw();
    pg.background(0,0,0,0);
    pg.noStroke();
    pg.smooth();
    
    // Draw ground
    pg.fill(0, 128, 0); // This sets the ground color: r, g, b
    pg.rect(0, 512, 2048, 512);
    
    // Draw horizon
    pg.fill(0, 128, 0, 200); // This sets the horizon color: r, g, b, alpha
    
    pg.beginShape();
    
    pg.vertex(0, 1024);
    
    String lines[] = loadStrings(inFilePath);
    
    String vals0[];
    String vals1[];
    
    for (int i=0; i<lines.length; i++)
    {
      vals0 = split(lines[i], ',');
      
      if (i < lines.length - 1)
      {
        vals1 = split(lines[i+1], ',');
      }
      else
      {
        vals1 = split(lines[0], ',');
        vals1[0] = "360";
      }
      
      if (vals0.length == 2 && vals1.length == 2)
      {
        float azi0 = float(vals0[0]);
        float alt0 = max(float(vals0[1]), 0.0);
        float azi1 = float(vals1[0]);
        float alt1 = max(float(vals1[1]), 0.0);
        
        int x0 = int(2048*azi0/360.0);
        int y0 = int(512*(1.0 - alt0/90.0));
        int x1 = int(2048*azi1/360.0);
        int y1 = int(512*(1.0 - alt1/90.0));
        
        pg.vertex(x0, y0);
        pg.vertex(x1, y1);
      }
    }
    
    pg.vertex(2048, 1024);
    pg.vertex(0, 1024);
    
    pg.endShape();
    pg.endDraw();
    
    pg.save(outFilePath);
  }
  
  exit();
}

void draw() {
}

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Observer Pro Status Update

Hello patient Observer Pro customers. I wanted to post an update here to let everyone know where things are at with Observer Pro development.

First of all, the current release of Observer Pro (version 1.2), works on all current devices (including the new iPhone XS and friends) as well as the latest release of iOS (12.0). However, Observer Pro has not been optimized for all of the screen sizes that you find on modern iOS devices, so you will see some letter boxing and potentially larger than normal text.

I have done a significant amount of work on building a new “engine” to power the next generation of Observer Pro. It’s more accurate and has a new database system that’s designed to be scalable for things like having multiple observing lists or adding new objects or catalogs of objects.

The other big piece of this work is to create a very powerful way to search and filter large numbers of objects to find exactly what you’re looking to observe or image. This system is much more powerful than just filtering by object properties (type, brightness, size, etc.) and I think you will find it as useful as I have while testing it out for my own imaging planning.

To get Observer Pro out the door and into your hands, I still need to re-work the user interface to go with the new engine. This includes support for modern Apple devices and many of the feature requests that you’ve sent over the years. Due to the amount of effort it takes to build this in my minimal free time (and how expensive a hobby astrophotography is), I’m planning on releasing Observer Pro 2 as a separate application. I know this will not be popular with everyone, but it’s just what I need to do to make the effort worthwhile.

My intent is to make enough time to finish it up over the next six months or so. I’ll endeavor to post more updates here as development makes progress. Thank you for your patience.

Clear skies,
Josh

Observer Pro 1.2 is now available

Observer Pro 1.2 is now available on the app store! This update brings the following improvements:

• The Featured list is now much more useful: your location, local horizon, and the current lunar phase are now used to provide a list of objects that are prime for observing.

• Added option to show an object's catalog name rather than common name when browsing lists.

• Correct moon image orientation for Southern Hemisphere sites.

• Fixed bug that made it impossible to leave the Observing List screen after rearranging items.

• Other bug fixes and other improvements.

As always, App Store reviews are very helpful. If you experience any problems with the app though, feel free to contact me directly at joshua@observerpro.com.

Observer Pro 1.1.1 submitted

Observer Pro 1.1.1, with fixes for devices running iOS 8, has been submitted to Apple for review. This update will fix two problems that were discovered and reported by users running iOS 8:

• Swiping rows in object list screens was not displaying the action buttons
• Tapping on the object image to go to the sky view screen would cause the app to crash

The update should be available later this week. These bugs only affected devices running iOS 8. 

Thank you to the users who contacted me about these issues!

Observer Pro 1.1 is now available

After an embarrassingly long absence, Observer Pro is finally back on the App Store!

In addition to compatibility with iOS 8 and 9, Observer Pro 1.1 includes the following:

• Improved night mode

• Altitude angle display in object Sky View

• Swipe to edit objects in the list views (add to favorites, etc.)

• User interface refresh

• Bug fixes

As always, if you have any feedback or questions, please feel free to email me at joshua@observerpro.com. If you like Observer Pro, please tell your friends and leave a rating on the App Store.

Making Progress

Hello patient astronomers,

Before I get into a development update, I want to apologize. As you know, I still haven't shipped an iOS 8 compatible version of Observer Pro. I also haven't kept you informed of progress that has (or has not) been made. I know many of you are holding off updating your devices to iOS 8 because you want to continue using Observer Pro. This is a terrible thing to do to loyal customers. I'm sorry.

Your emails and comments on this blog have been amazing and extremely encouraging, and are much appreciated even if I haven't responded to them all. 

I have recently dedicated some time to pick Observer Pro up off the floor and get development going again. I took a short vacation from my day job to tackle the biggest barriers I was facing. It's now in a place where I can better utilize small time slots on nights and weekends to keep making progress.

Going forward, I plan on doing a better job of communicating progress so that you can have a better feel for when you'll finally get your hands on the next version of Observer Pro. Thank you so much for not giving up on me!

Clear skies,
Josh

Return from the Dead

Observer Pro 1.0 shipped on September 15th, 2011. After a minor bug fix update, Observer Pro has continued to work through several major updates to iOS. Despite my intention of continuously improving Observer Pro through feature updates, I found it difficult to make the time to do the work. The pressure has been building over the years as I, and other Observer Pro users, have wanted more from the app.

On top of that, when iOS 7 shipped, Observer Pro instantly looked dated and parts of the app started exhibiting incorrect behavior. I knew it was time to get to work in whatever way was possible. So, I fired up Xcode and opened up the Observer Pro source code and compiled it for iOS 7 just to see how things went, to see how much work I had ahead of me to at least ship a compatibility update. Well, things had changed so much in the world of iOS development that there was a significant amount of work to be done just to get it to run correctly when built using the iOS 7 SDK.

This effort was further motivated after installing the iOS 8 beta on one of my older devices to see how the App Store version of Observer Pro would run. Turns out, it doesn't run at all under iOS 8. This is a big problem! I love using the latest and greatest software, but if I upgrade to iOS 8 then I'll lose Observer Pro. Of course, this would also be the case for the thousands of users who have come to rely on Observer Pro for their astronomy planning.

With the prospect of so much work just to ship a compatibility update, I began thinking maybe this was a good time to reimagine Observer Pro for today's world. To create the version of Observer Pro that I would want now that I've had years of using Observer Pro 1.0 and feedback from other users. Making time in the evenings and weekends, that's what I am currently doing.

I know this is really a long time coming. Thank you for your patience.