December 2023 update

IOTD/TP Staff refresh

AstroBin regularly works on refreshing the IOTD/TP Staff, in order to keep fresh energy and multiple perspectives in the process. To ensure a smooth transition, the staff won't be replaced completely and the replacements will be staggered.

The AstroBin Search Engine is better at finding images of catalog objects

AstroBin now uses a synonyms mapping to find images of astronomical objects.For instance, if you search for Crab nebula, AstroBin will now find also images that don't mention Crab nebula anywhere, but they mention M1.

I would like to thank Zachary Jacobson who contributed the synonyms list as part of his master's thesis.

The current list of synonyms is available on GitHub, and further contributions are welcome!

Other smaller but noteworthy improvements

Acquisition dates are now displayed in ranges in the technical card of images. This makes the information more compact and readable.

The acquisition details are now exported as part of the data download available in your preferences.

The Find images in the same area button has been fixed to work correctly also in areas near the celestial poles and equator.

You now get a different notification when there are replies to a forum topic that you started (as opposed to a topic that you replied too). This can be configured in your notification settings, of course.

You can no longer input acquisition dates prior to the year 1000 AD. Some images had acquisitions in the year 23 when surely the photographer meant 2023. This caused some problems with date formats that were more easily solved this way. My apologies to any time-traveling astrophotographers on AstroBin.