What’s New in AstroGuide 1.3.6

AstroGuide 1.3.6 adds new ways to understand what is visible, plan what is worth observing, and share the planning context you have built.

The headline feature is Planetary Mode: a new view for exploring which planets are visible tonight, when they are best placed, and how their motion connects to the larger solar-system picture.

This release also makes Capture Studio schedules more concrete, adds field-of-view previews to schedule planning, improves Telescope Workshop search and comparison, and introduces new ways to share both observing schedules and site context.

Planetary Mode

Planetary Mode is a new way to explore the planets from your current observing site.

It shows which planets are visible tonight, when they rise into useful observing windows, how high they get, and where they sit in the sky. It also includes an educational solar-system view that helps connect the familiar sky-path view with the larger geometry of the solar system.

You can select planets, focus visibility buckets, and scrub through the night to see how the available options change over time.

Capture Studio Schedules and Field-of-View Previews

Capture Studio now connects more directly to real observing schedules.

When a Capture Studio project is added to a schedule, AstroGuide can preserve the framing details for the selected panel. That means schedule previews can show the actual field-of-view rectangle for the telescope, mount, framing scale, rotation, and panel position you planned.

This is especially useful when working around trees, buildings, horizon profiles, or panorama obstructions. Instead of only asking whether the subject center clears the obstruction line, you can better understand whether the frame itself fits the available window.

Better Schedule Sharing

AstroGuide schedules can now be shared through AstroGuide:Explore links.

A schedule can be turned into a compact share link that opens the plan on the web or back inside AstroGuide. Shared schedules use a compact encoded format, include privacy-safe preview information, and preserve enough timing and framing context to make the plan useful outside the original device.

Incoming Explore links flow through AstroGuide’s existing import preview, so you can review what is in the shared plan before saving it.

AstroSite Import and Export

Sites can now be shared as portable AstroSite packages.

An AstroSite export can include site metadata, obstruction profiles, imported horizon samples, and active panorama assets. AstroGuide also includes privacy controls when exporting: rounded coordinates are used by default, while precise coordinates require an explicit choice.

This should make it easier to share useful site context with other observers without accidentally sharing more location detail than intended.

Telescope Workshop and Search

Telescope Workshop continues to get deeper.

You can now compare multiple telescope rigs more clearly, including planning-relevant attributes like field of view, aperture, resolution, sampling, focal length, and focal ratio. The comparison view is designed to make equipment differences easier to understand instead of leaving them as abstract numbers.

AstroGuide Search can also find Telescope Workshop content. Pro users can search for owned rigs, optics, and cameras directly from the global search flow, then jump into the relevant Workshop view.

The bundled equipment catalog also includes new William Optics Ultra Cat optics for Telescope Workshop, while the smart-telescope catalog has been cleaned up to avoid mixing conventional optical tubes into smart-telescope equipment choices.