What's New in AstroGuide 1.4.0

Version 1.4 marks a major milestone for AstroGuide!

Until now, AstroGuide has been focused most deeply on deep-sky objects: understanding what is worth observing, when a subject fits the night, and how your site, sky, equipment, and goals all shape the plan.

This release builds on the momentum of the last few updates to deliver Solar System Mode: a broader set of features that help us understand our solar system, and how we experience it from our own back yards.

The Moon, planets, comets, meteor showers, and close encounters now sit alongside AstroGuide’s deep-sky planning tools. The goal is not just to show more things, it’s to make the sky feel more connected, more understandable, and more useful when deciding what kind of night you actually have.

Solar System Mode

Solar System Mode is the new home for nearby-sky planning in AstroGuide.

The former Planetary Mode now includes Planetary, Lunar, Meteors, and Comets sections. Each view starts from the same practical foundation AstroGuide already uses for deep-sky planning: your site, your selected night, and the changing conditions that shape what you can actually observe.

Each major area in Solar System Mode starts with an interactive diagram, helping to explain the position and motion of objects in our night sky. You can scrub dates, move between event types, inspect orbital context, and bookmark solar-system events you want to revisit. Planetary visibility remains part of the experience, but it now sits inside a larger view of motion, timing, geometry, and opportunity.

Lunar Mode

Lunar Mode gives the Moon a much richer role in AstroGuide.

Instead of treating the Moon as just a percentage in the weather forecast, AstroGuide now helps you explore the Moon’s phase cycle, moonlight timing, selected-night visibility, longer-range lunar outlook, full-moon cycle names, lunar eclipses, and close encounters between the Moon and deep-sky subjects.

The goal is practical learning: when does moonlight matter, when does it stay out of the way, and when is the Moon itself the thing worth planning around?

Eclipses and Moon Close Encounters

Lunar eclipse planning now includes local visibility, eclipse timing, eclipse geometry, and a scrubber-driven eclipse simulator.

AstroGuide can also preview the Moon’s path with phase-aware coloring, including site panorama and obstruction context when available. That makes eclipse planning feel less abstract: you can see not just that an eclipse exists, but whether it is actually visible from your observing site.

Moon close encounters add another layer to lunar planning. AstroGuide can highlight nearby alignments with deep-sky subjects, connect them to your goals and observing history, and help you decide whether an interesting pass is worth turning into a real plan.

Comet Mode

Comet Mode gives comets a dedicated place in AstroGuide.

Out of the huge catalog of possible comets, AstroGuide curates a select list of the 20 most accessible comets for amateur astronomers. You can inspect orbit and tail geometry, scrub through time, preview sky paths, and explore close encounters involving comets, deep-sky targets, the Moon, and major planets.

Comets can be hard to reason about because they do not behave like the fixed deep-sky catalog and they do not fit neatly into ordinary planetary planning. This release starts making them feel less mysterious: not just a list of names, but a way to see motion, timing, geometry, and nearby opportunities.

Meteors and Event Bookmarks

Meteor showers now live inside Solar System Mode too.

AstroGuide helps explain the source of meteor showers, and how Earth’s orbit determines when different meteors become visible. This helps contextualize these annual celestial fireworks displays, and lets you fit them into your overall observation plan.

Unlike most deep-space objects, solar system events are much more time sensitive; phases of the Moon, eclipses, planetary opportunities, comets, close encounters, and meteor showers are “limited time only” events. So, AstroGuide now has the ability to bookmark events that occur on specific dates; you can browse and review your bookmarks, and will be alerted to them as their dates approach. Bookmarked events can be filtered, restored, and synced across devices.

A better (safer!) way to share location information about your observations

When you post amazing astrophotography results on social media, the most common questions are about Location, Bortle, and altitude. AstroGuide now gives you an easy way to answer! Site Visibility Explorer can now create privacy-safe share cards with Bortle class, directional SQM range, and selected overlay layers. This gives you a cleaner way to share useful site context without exposing more location detail than intended.