July 2023 update
Submitting for IOTD/TP consideration now requires some equipment and an acquisition session
Due to popular demand, and in line with AstroBin's core principle of sharing knowledge, experience, and information, since the beginning July images without an imaging telescope, an imaging camera, or one acquisition session are not eligible to be submitted for IOTD/TP consideration.
The AstroBin community loves AstroBin because it's an endless trove of information, and extremely useful if you're in the market for an equipment upgrade. We should all strive to keep it that way, and I agree with the sentiment of the many people who requested this, in feeling a sense of loss when an image gets an IOTD or a Top Pick, and it's lacking information about the equipment used or the acquisition details.
Agena Astro stock availability integrated within AstroBin's equipment database
Depending on your subscription level, your preferences, and your geographical location, you might see an indication of the number of items in stock for a certain equipment item at AstroBin sponsor Agena Astro. The information is updated daily and if you are in the US I warmly invite you to consider Agena for your astro shopping!
Ability to sort search result by RA/dec
You can now sort search results by right ascension or declination (ascending or descending). This is very useful in combination to only searching within your bookmarks, and I'm very happy about this feature that has been requested many times over the years 🙂
Ability to lter search results by lter type
You can now filter search result by filter type, so you can easily find SHO or LRGB images. Interested if a certain nebula has SII data? Try searching for its name and filter by SII filter type 😀
New discussion group: AstroBin Platform open discussions community forum
Some years ago, in a (successful) effort to increase the user engagement on AstroBin's forums, I decided to remove all forums that dealt with AstroBin specific topics: they made user support too difficult because the requests weretoo scattered.
Additionally, they made the AstroBin Forums look like a place where people discuss AstroBin, and I wanted them to be a place where you discuss astrophotography, astronomy, equipment and techniques.
This has been very successful, as the AstroBin forums are thriving today, especially when it comes to equipment related questions: when a topic iscreated in a forum that belongs to an equipment item, all users who didn't opt-out of this notification will be notified.
I have personally seen the same topic posted to AstroBin and to another popular forum platform, and get about 10x more views and replies on AstroBin, due to being able to reach the perfect audience.
Anyway, you guys still want a space to talk about AstroBin, so I created a group: AstroBin Platform open discussions community forum
This group exists to provide a space for people who want to openly discuss AstroBin and its features.
It's a public community group for the community.AstroBin official support is only available via the Support link inthe Help menu, and support requests in this forum will not be addressed byAstroBin.
The group is public and open to anyone who wants to join.
Working on experimental support for video formats
Again due to popular demand (I'm starting to see a pattern here... 😀), I'vestarted work to add support for videos to AstroBin. I know some of youhave requested years ago, but back then AstroBin lacked the infrastructure todeal with something like that.
With the work I've put in to modernize the frontend and the architecture, this isnow possible and actually not that daunting a task.
Thanks to things like the chunked upload form for the robust upload of verylarge files, and the asynchronous and scalable worker architecture, I think thatby late August I might have a beta available to test, and by late September thismight be live for all.
So get your video files ready! Solar flares, Jupiter rotations, cometaryjourneys, milkyway timelapses, even audio will work too!
I might still find a stumbling block, but things are looking good so far in myinitial rough implementation.
However, I need test files. Please send me your video files (use DropBox,Google Drive, MS One Drive, iCloud, Mega, etc) at support@astrobin.com.
Thank you!
Other changes worth mentioning
As always, thanks to your feedback, I've implemented several bug fixes and minor improvements.
Here's the bug fixes and small improvements in June, in no particular order:
Added support for downsample_factor and use_sextractor options to the basic plate-solving.
The @ character may not be used anymore for usernames in new accounts. Existing accounts that have this symbol in the username are not affected by this.
Fixed an issue where the advanced plate-solving annotations were still shown on the full-size view of images even if the mouse-hover property was set to Nothing.
Moved some files from external CDNs to the internal one, to improve deliverability.
Fixed gallery image counter to include collaborations.
Improved some aspects of the authentication workflow, to add more information about the OTP token.
Made the asynchronous tasks architecture more robust: now the worker servers automatically scale up and down depending on the size of the queue: this fixes the issue that sometimes (2-3 times a year, from memory) a worker server crashed and emails and other async tasks would pile up until I noticed and restarted it.
Fixed things so that no notifications by shadow-banned users make their way to you.
Added support for sub 1ms exposure time in solar system acquisitions.
Improved some error reporting in the image data editor form.
Fixed issue where you could create an empty equipment edit proposal.
Improved formatting and added some action buttons to equipment popovers. Additionally, added a delay before them appear on mouse- hover.
Added option to disable slide-in transitions in slideshows.
Allow log in with "real name" when it's unambiguous.
As usual, several security improvements, dependency upgrades, and small UI improvements.