FITS and XISF, straight into Photoshop
Native format plugins for Windows and Mac, with floating-point or 16-bit imports, Bayer conversion, and source metadata retention. Signed installers now cover both platforms.
Software
A selection of things I've built and open-sourced over the years — the engine that runs this site, tools for astrophotography, a few desktop apps, open hardware and firmware, and some distributed-systems libraries from my day job. Almost all of it lives on GitHub. Release write-ups and build notes live in Projects.
- theatr.us · this catalogue and the processing tools
- PulsarFab · equipment: open hardware and the Regain drivers
- PSF Guard · frame grading and stacking
- Seiza · plate solving and stacking engine
- Chatstronomy · session chat
- blueAcro · reef-aquarium hardware
Latest software updates
Foraxx palette: one recipe, two apps
The Foraxx narrowband palette as a PixInsight script rebuilt for the 1.9.4 V8 runtime, with mask shaping and generated masks, and as a Photoshop plugin that builds the same palette as mergeable layers. Palette by The Coldest Nights.
Regain: one driver hub for the whole rig
Cameras, rotators, filter wheels, focusers and flat panels from more than one vendor, behind the same setup in N.I.N.A., Windows ASCOM and a cross-platform Alpaca server, sharing one fault-tolerant recovery engine.
Introducing Regain
Camera recovery in N.I.N.A.: isolated SDK workers, separate download and recapture retries, and experimental direct ASI capture.
NINA Field Kit
Multiple Alpaca safety sources, bounded retry policies, and an autofocus trigger with an absolute HFR limit.
Introducing Chatstronomy
Follow a N.I.N.A. session in Discord or Matrix, pair with the hosted Hub, and enable the commands you want at the telescope.
PSF Guard 0.9
Per-night calibration, SNR growth curves, optional RC-Astro processing, and the catalog and stacking fixes in 0.9.5.
Seiza 0.18 & desktop apps 0.7.1
Saved stacking contexts, live folder stacking, and star measurements for sensor-tilt diagnostics.
Astro & Photography
Capture, grade, solve, stack and publish. The section page adds guides, the Foraxx palette tools and the repositories to add in PixInsight and N.I.N.A. Open the section.
nina-field-kit
Alpaca safety monitoring and an absolute-HFR autofocus trigger for N.I.N.A. Combines required safety sources, handles retries and stale readings, and reports its decisions in live diagnostics.
pulsarfab/regain
Retryable, fault-tolerant camera capture that recovers a frame from camera memory rather than repeating the exposure, plus drivers for accessories from more than one vendor, all with the same setup across N.I.N.A., Windows ASCOM and a cross-platform Alpaca server.
Foraxx palette
Build a Foraxx narrowband palette, or SHO, HOO, HSO and OHS, from starless SII/Ha/OIII images. The PixInsight script installs from pixinsight.theatr.us and adds mask shaping, ratio masks and protected saturation; the Photoshop plugin builds the same palette as mergeable layers. Palette by The Coldest Nights.
tenrankai
The engine behind this very site: a fast, flat-file gallery, blog, and CMS with no database and a serious image pipeline — HDR AVIF, ICC-correct resizing, and watermarking.
psf-guard
Grade and organize FITS/XISF captures, manage calibration libraries, and build resumable mono and color stacks. Works with a standalone catalog or, through its N.I.N.A. plugin, with Target Scheduler so grading decisions reach the sequencer.
seiza
星座 — a Rust astronomy engine for hinted and blind plate solving, calibration, batch and live stacking, and star measurements. Available through a CLI, Rust and Python libraries, and a native C API.
FITS & XISF for Photoshop
Open and save astronomical images directly in Photoshop on Windows and Mac. Choose Float32 or rescaled 16-bit import, debayer tagged images, and retain source metadata on same-format saves. Output is a single flattened image.
Seiza desktop apps
Native FITS/XISF viewers for Windows and Mac with local plate solving, resumable live folder stacking, star and sensor-tilt analysis, and system previews and thumbnails. One program, two platforms.
chatstronomy
Your N.I.N.A. imaging session in chat: image previews, autofocus curves, guiding graphs, and status in Discord or Matrix. The N.I.N.A. plugin installs from the plugin manager and pairs with the hosted Hub or a local runtime.
AutoPierCam
Background still capture for ZWO ASI cameras, with day/night exposure adaptation, a Windows tray app and viewer, durable uploads, and a read-only N.I.N.A. pier-camera panel.
seiza-server
The queued plate-solving service behind seiza.fyi: browser uploads, catalog overlays, downloadable WCS, and native and Astrometry.net-compatible APIs.
seiza-overlay
Reusable astronomical overlays for web apps: WCS coordinate grids, catalog labels, satellite tracks, a React SVG renderer, and PNG export.
Apps & Tools
Desktop apps and tools with their own sites. Open the section.
toposaic
Turns any place on Earth into a 3D-printable topographic puzzle — pick a spot, get terrain tiles that interlock.
resticpal
A quiet Windows front end for restic backups: catches up after the laptop wakes, keeps working with no window open, and hides none of the repository format. The server adds signed policy, status reporting, and protected maintenance for a fleet of clients.
Hardware & Firmware
Open hardware and firmware, including the PulsarFab platform. Open the section.
pulsarfab/pulsarfab
An open-source hardware and firmware platform.
calcumaker/calcumaker
A make-your-own calculator — open hardware and firmware.
ledbrick
LEDBrick — open hardware and firmware for programmable, high-power LED lighting.
notchdeck
Open-hardware dual-mode (USB + BLE) train master controller — a "mascon" — built on the nRF52840.
mcpwm_unified
An ESPHome component that unlocks the full MCPWM capabilities of the ESP32-S3.
tsumikoro
Hardware and firmware for a contraption that makes a whole lot of spheres roll around. Exactly that.
Infrastructure & Distributed Systems
Libraries and daemons from the infrastructure side. Open the section.
akka-quartz
Quartz-based scheduling for Akka actors — "because using Camel to schedule Akka actors is silly." My most-starred project.
flotswarm
Webhook dispatch for NAT-bound fleets: a Lambda verifies an inbound webhook, fans it out to per-host SQS queues, and agents poll and run only pre-authorized commands.
mediate
Retryable, failure-tolerant, adaptive HTTP client transports for Go.
statsdproto
Utilities for parsing and canonicalizing the statsd wire protocol.
zpool-notify
A small daemon that watches ZFS pools and tells you when one degrades — before the second disk goes.
blueAcro
Open hardware and firmware for the reef-aquarium world, published under the blueAcro org. Open the section.
blueacro/reef-pi pico controller
A Raspberry Pi Pico–based controller board for the Reef-Pi aquarium platform, with its System Management Controller firmware.
blueacro/ba-firmware-dualdoser
Firmware and bootloader for the DualDoser precision dosing pump.
blueacro/reefvolt-dcbuddy
A family of DC power accessories for the reef aquarium.
blueacro/reefvolt-essential-power-bar
Design files for a DIY aquarium power bar.
blueacro/reefvolt-osmobuddy
A reverse-osmosis water controller.
Archive
Older projects, no longer actively developed, kept for posterity. Open the section.
pertempco
The "Perfect Temperature Controller" — precise, no-nonsense temperature regulation.
entropyking
Open hardware: a USB-based true random number generator.
copper-avr32-breakout
Open hardware: a DIP breakout module for the AVR32 processor.
libevecache
A reverse-engineered reader for EVE Online's client cache.
crestmarket
An authenticated EVE CREST market library and scanner.
contribtastic
A desktop upload client for EVE Online market orders.
softwedge
An X11 keyboard simulator that types barcode-scanner input from a file or serial port.
qsgen
Quick Site Generator — static site generation in a single Python file, and a spiritual ancestor of tenrankai.
cymbeline
An early Python web framework.