Plenty of new features have been added. Here are the most important ones:
Daily Visibility Updates
The biggest new feature is Daily Visibility Updates — personalised nightly observation forecasts delivered straight to your inbox. Each email includes:
- Cloud cover and transparency forecasts for your location
- Astronomical darkness times (civil, nautical, astronomical twilight)
- Moon phase and position data
- Best observing windows filtered to nighttime hours (18:00–06:00)
- Upcoming astronomical events relevant to your region
Dispatch times are configurable in 5-minute increments with full timezone support. The system uses your profile location as a fallback if no subscription location is set, and gracefully handles missing locations by pausing the subscription and notifying you.
A dedicated Visibility Updates page lets you manage your subscription settings right from your profile page.
Current Conditions Popup
A new “Current Conditions” button on your profile gives you an instant, real-time weather and observing conditions report. It shows the same data as the daily forecast but on demand, with smart caching to keep things fast.
Astronomical Events System
A complete astronomical events pipeline has been built from the ground up:
- Automated source discovery: An AI-powered edge function discovers RSS feeds, iCal calendars, and event APIs from observatories, planetariums, and space agencies worldwide — tailored to the regions where users are active.
- Daily event ingestion: A scheduled job fetches and normalises events from all approved sources.
- Event archive page: Browse the full history of astronomical events with time and search filters.
- Homepage banner: A dismissible banner highlights upcoming events for the next 7 days.
- Admin tools: Manage sources, approve/reject discoveries, trigger manual fetches, and monitor health metrics.
- Email integration: Upcoming events are included in the daily visibility forecast emails.
Public Sharing
Sharing has been expanded across all levels:
- Sessions, objects, and individual photos can now be shared via public links.
- Public pages feature a minimal, embed-friendly design.
- A Globe icon () indicates public shares, while a Users icon () marks community shares — both bubble up to parent cards.
- The homepage includes a filter for sharing status (All / Shared / Private).
- Native OS sharing is supported.
Equipment Profiles
A new Equipment page lets you create and manage equipment profiles — your telescope, camera, mount, and accessories. Equipment profiles can be linked to individual photos, making it easy to track which gear produced which results.
Interactive Sessions Map
The homepage now features an overview map showing all your observation sessions geographically. Key improvements include:
- Filter bar to narrow sessions by time period and other criteria
- Per-user caching with smart invalidation when locations change
- Synced filters between the map and the session list
Profile & UX Improvements
- Profile location field: Set a home location used as fallback for weather lookups and forecasts.
- Profile picture caching: Reliable avatar display with proper cache busting.
- Cleaner profile page: Actions consolidated into three clear buttons (Current Conditions, Daily Updates, Equipment).
- Session thumbnails now display correctly on index cards.
- Photo detail links: Clicking a photo navigates to its detail page.
- Photo actions dropdown: Replaces inline buttons with a clean dropdown menu.
- Swipe navigation disabled during editing to prevent accidental navigation.
That covers the highlights — a massive update that transforms Astro Chronicles from a session logger into a full observation planning and sharing platform.
Check it out!