N.I.N.A. - Nighttime Imaging ‘N’ Astronomy Changelog

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Version 3.2

Bugfixes

Sky Atlas constellation filter is no longer failing to find some of the objects that are part of the selected constellation
Autofocus after Time and Loop for Timespan are now using UTC time instead of local time
Added support for latest version of SkyGuard (SkySurveyor, SkyGuard, SkyGuide, SkyWave depending on license)

Improvements

The device chooser will now show a stored device id that is currently not available as an “Offline device” instead of showing “No Device” to differentiate having no device selected versus a saved device that is currently unavailable
ZWO EAF is now available as a native driver
Framing assistant sky annotation options are now saved to the active profile
Looping mode is no longer started when NINA connects to PHD2.
GPSD support added as a GNSS source for getting site location information
Renamed “Direct Guider” to “Mount Dither”
- The device type has been renamed to better reflect its purpose. The “Mount Dither” driver does not perform guiding but is specifically designed to initiate dithering commands directly through the mount interface. This change ensures clarity and better alignment with the feature’s intended functionality.
Plate solver specific settings are now shown for the selected Plate Solver and Blind Solver only. This makes it simpler to see at a glance that everything is set up correctly.
N.I.N.A. Star Detector now properly calculates the centroid of stars
- The centroid is now also annotated in the N.I.N.A. Star Annotator
Autofocus report now displays the determined step number as an integer instead of a floating point number
N.I.N.A. will now query the ASCOM device name after connecting to the driver.
Added separate options for dither pixel and dither settle time parameters to Sky Flat instructions
Improved rendering performance of guider chart
Introduced a new “Complete duration” filter option for altitude filters in the sky atlas search, filtering for objects that remain above the horizon or the specified altitude for the entire specified duration.
Added lock and unlock buttons to the sequencer, which disable manual input and drag-and-drop when activated
Added drag-and-drop disable and enable buttons to the sequencer, which disable all drag-and-drop when activated
Hitting the escape key while dragging an item will cancel the drag and drop action
Added new observation related metadata fields in Options > Astrometry. These fields Observer, Observatory, and Site are also written to the FITS file as OBSERVER, OBSERVAT and SITENAME, respectively.

Commandline Options

The following command line options have been added

-g, --disable-hardware-acceleration        Disables UI hardware acceleration

Plugin Development

AssemblyLoadContext

Plugins are now loaded within separate AssemblyLoadContexts
- This change will isolate third party plugin dependencies so that one plugin having a different version of the same third party library will no longer cause issues
- No changes to existing plugins are required

Version 3.1 Hotfix 2

Improvements

The hard disk space scan is no longer put into the log header and thus blocking the application start for the duration of the scan. This check can take a bit when network drives are mapped where the initial connection to them can take a while. Instead the check will done asynchronously and put into an info log statement.
Quicker switching between single-exposure and stream mode on QHY cameras, bringing improved responsiveness when using the Speckle or Lucky Imaging plugins.
Improved accuracy of estimated time display for Wait If Sun/Moon altitude instructions as well as Loop while Sun/Moon altitude conditions
Improved the dock panel layout for flat panels inside the imaging tab when smaller sized
Added a new instruction Save Sequence to be able to automatically save the sequence during runtime inside the advanced sequencer
In Framing Assistant the “Annotate DSO” and “Annotate Grid” buttons will keep their state when resizing or reloading the framing image
SITELEV keyword is now populated from Options > Astrometry instead of the mount
Legacy sequencer now also shows validation issues for target startup actions like slew, center & rotate
Weather Underground client now knows about wind gust and rain rate, and has increased decimal precision for all supported weather statistics

Bug Fixes

When using CFitsio to save files, if the file name contains a parenthesis, it will no longer fail to save. parenthesis are special characters for CFitsio and will thus replaced with an underscore.
In some special cases the AutoFocus After Exposures trigger was no longer firing. The trigger logic is adjusted and should handle these cases properly now.
Fixed an issue where sky flat exposure time compensation was going into the wrong direction
The color boxes in the color schema settings now show their true color also when they are not clickable
Text color when opening the additional options of Sequence Instructions using the three dots are now using the same color as the instruction text itself
When using the Cool Camera instruction, the camera’s failure to reach the target setpoint now results in a sequence error event. An example cause would be the camera’s cooling progress stalling (moving < 0.5°C over 2 minutes) while the cooler is at 100% power due the ambient temperature being too hot to reach the desired setpoint.
Fixed a display issue in the mini sequencer where the sequence container header was indented too much.
Messagebox instruction now automatically closes when a loop will interrupt the instruction set where the message box is placed inside
Improved input behavior for topocentric coordinates where sometimes a small rounding issue lead to incorrect display when cloning instructions
When using a dome with the dome follower, a timeout during dome synchronization will no longer cancel the remaining steps after a meridian flip
QHY Cameras:
- The TEC setpoint and state is now preserved when switching between single-exposure and stream mode.
- The list of available cameras will now properly update when one camera is replaced by a different one.
When dome option to “close on unsafe conditions” was selected it is no longer commanding the closure multiple times when switching to unsafe and instead properly waits for the first call to finish

Version 3.1 Hotfix 1

Improvements

On the equipment camera tab, the cooler chart axes are now annotated with their units of measure. The temperature axis has been moved to the right side.
The meridian flip pop-up no longer shows guiding related items when no guider is connected or when direct guider is connected

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where a sequence item was sometimes not marked as failed on error
Cancelling a connection attempt to switch equipment will no longer result in duplicate switches upon a subsequent successful connection
Handling of unresponsive sequence instructions is no longer applied to instruction sets and thus preventing multiple error messages and isolating the issue to the specific instruction in question
Native autofocus: When only one star is detected, the routine will no longer fail with the error that there is not enough HFR spread
Prevent an edge case where the time condition did not cancel the remaining instructions following an instruction that did not fit into the remaining time, even though those subsequent instructions would fit within the available time

Version 3.1

Behavioral Changes

Loop while unsafe condition will not be skipped anymore when the safety monitor is not connected but instead it is assumed that the state is unsafe and the loop for it will run
Center after drift will now only trigger when the next instruction is a LIGHT frame exposure (similar to autofocus triggers). This will not affect the background solving to determine the drift distance
Sky Atlas Images are now generated from the Offline Sky Map Cache. The “Sky Atlas Image Repository” option has been removed as it is now fully superseded by the Offline Sky Map Cache.
The image saving method has been updated from a two-step process (writing a temporary file and then moving it to the destination) to a single write process. Now, the image is processed first and then written directly to the destination.
- This change addresses issues on some systems where cloud sync file listeners, antivirus software, and similar processes block file access.
- For exposures lasting multiple seconds, there will be no noticeable performance loss.
- For short burst exposures, to achieve similar performance as before, adjust the file save queue size. Go to Options > General > Advanced > Image Save Queue Size and set the queue size to greater than one. Note that this setting will require more application memory.

Improvements

Allow camera cooling values down to -200°C instead of restricting it to -50°C
Disallow opening the ASCOM setup screens when a device is connected
The setup screens for devices now run in separate non-blocking STA (Single-Threaded Apartment) Threads
- As a result, you can open ASCOM setup screens without compromising the main application’s responsiveness.
- However, please note that you must close the setup screen for the specific device before being able to connect to it.
Offline Framing Gridlines for right ascension now use a better increment of 5, 10, 15 , 30, 60 minutes on the scale
Alpaca Devices can now open their setup in a web browser when clicking on the setup button next to the device chooser
Image History axis selection now persists across sessions
Improved handling of unresponsive sequence instructions after cancellation: Now continues sequence execution if an instruction fails to react to cancellation within two minutes
A warning message is now displayed in the lower right corner of the application when trace logging is enabled. This warning highlights to the user that trace logging is active, ensuring it is not accidentally left on. Trace logging should only be enabled for debugging specific issues due to its potential impact on performance and log file size.
USB device connection and disconnection are now logged with detailed information including Device ID, PNP Device ID, Description, Name, Manufacturer, Service and Status
On Camera Download Failed the gain and filter is now displayed properly when using default gain values and current filter input
The documentation is now included as an offline page with the installer.
- Additionally, the documentation is now integrated directly into the application. You can access it by clicking the book icon in the lower-left corner, instead of opening it in a browser window.
- Furthermore some sections of the application now offer a direct popup to their respective section in the manual by clicking the book icon
The application version number is now shown in the title bar of a notification. Furthermore the notification window size is slightly increased in width.

Bugfixes

Fix Center instruction to consider plate solver gain
Fixed colors of Flat Wizard Tabs to use same styling as other similar tabs in the app
Fixed that an incorrect flag was evaluated for the mount capability of PulseGuiding
Fixed an issue in TimeCondition where the time would be overridden to current time
When polling the SafetyMontior for “IsSafe” and an error occurs it will now always assume unsafe conditions instead of using the last known value
When hovering over the list of plugin entries in the plugin tab the complete row is now clickable to select the entry instead of just the text area
Alpaca devices that are no longer responding are now properly recognized and disconnected
Previously, during the exposure time or brightness determination in the flat wizard, along with its corresponding sequencer instructions, all images were retained in memory, leading to a spike in memory consumption. This issue has been addressed; now, only the most recent image will be kept in memory.
Offline Sky Cache will now always find the relevant tiles for small field of views.
Fixed an issue where Auto Brightness Flat and Auto Exposure Flat would apply an incorrect value range when used via the flat wizard
An autofocus that happened before any LIGHT frame was saved is now registered properly in the history and considered for triggerevaluation
Removed an unnecessary 5 seconds delay after executing an external script
Autofocus runs with current Profile-ID are now shown after changing the profile
Fixed interpretation of pixel scale value in PinPoint’s solve results

Plugin Development

New Feature: `IMessageBroker` Interface

Introduction of `IMessageBroker` Interface:

A new IMessageBroker interface has been added to facilitate inter-plugin communication.
This interface allows plugins to publish and subscribe to messages of type NINA.Plugin.Interfaces.IMessage.
Promotes loose coupling between plugins by allowing them to communicate without direct references to each other.

Publishing Messages:

Plugins can now inject the IMessageBroker interface to publish messages.
Messages can carry various metadata, including:
- SenderId: The unique identifier of the sender plugin.
- Sender: The name of the sender plugin.
- SentAt: The UTC timestamp when the message was sent.
- MessageId: A unique identifier for each message.
- Topic: The topic or intent of the message.
- Content: The generic body of the message.
- Additional metadata such as Priority, Expiration, CorrelationId, and custom headers.

Subscribing to Messages:

Plugins can subscribe to specific message topics via the IMessageBroker.
When a message is published to a topic, all subscribed plugins will receive and process the message asynchronously.

Event Additions

Device mediators have been enhanced with numerous new events that subscribers can monitor following an action performed by the device (e.g., mount slewing, cover opening, etc.)

Platesolve Measurements

The CenteringSolver’s substeps, which were previously opaque, are now measured individually.
Results of these measurements are provided via Measurement data structure alongside the plate solve result.

New Control “Browser”

NINA.WPF.Base now includes the dependencies to WebView2
Using this dependency you can embed a browser into the application

Version 3.0

Important Changes

Rotation values in N.I.N.A. have been updated to use the counter-clockwise notation, aligning with the common “East of North of North Celestial Pole” standard used in most astronomical applications. Existing templates, targets, and other saved items from previous versions will be automatically migrated to reflect this change.

ZWO: Persistent device IDs (Aliases) are now supported for ZWO cameras and filter wheels. If one is already set in either of these devices and has not yet connected to it under NINA 3.0, the device will need to be selected again and connected in NINA’s Camera or Filter Wheel equipment selection list. This change makes it easier to support setups where multiple ZWO cameras and filter wheels are present.
- Device IDs are limited to 8 ASCII characters in length.
- ZWO EFWs must have firmware version 3.0.9 or later to support storing persistent device IDs.
The command line options have been revisited. Previously /profileid <profile id> was available. This has been changed to --profileid <profile id>. See below for more details.
Flat Wizard logic has been revamped and can now also be used inside the sequencer. See below for more details.
The “Loop for time” condition and “Wait for time” instruction have been redesigned. When selecting dawn or dusk times, the rollover will now occur at sunrise or sunset, respectively. For example, when dusk is selected, the rollover will happen at dawn.
The native driver for Pegasus Ultimate Power Box v2 has been removed. The Pegasus Unity ASCOM driver supersedes this implementation and should be used instead.
The native driver for PrimaLuceLab EAGLE has been removed. The EAGLE ASCOM Switch Driver supersedes this implementation and should be used instead.
SGP Server API has been removed from the core application. Instead this is available as a plugin via “SGP Server Emulation”
Touptek, RisingCam, Altair, MallinCam, OgmaCam and OmegonCam now support HDR modes if available. The “High Conversion Gain” toggle has been removed and instead this is controlled via ReadoutModes!
DARKFLAT has been removed from the selection of image types. They really are just DARKs and are classified as such. Previous saved sequences and templates will be automatically migrated.

.NET 8

The application has transitioned to .NET 8. This is not merely a version upgrade from the previously used .NET Framework 4.8. Instead, .NET 8 is rooted in .NET Core, representing a complete rewrite of the .NET Framework by Microsoft. This marks a significant technical advancement for N.I.N.A.
Plugins from previous versions are disabled. They must be patched by the plugin authors and targeted specifically for the new version to ensure compatibility with .NET 8.

Improvements

The Profile Chooser will now be displayed before the application fully initializes
- This change also fixes the issue that sequence templates are loaded from the first profile when switching it in the chooser instead of the one being chosen
The guider tab will now also show the dither pixels translated to the main camera based on the guider pixel scale reported by the connected guiding application
N.I.N.A. will attempt to synchronize the mount’s clock with that of the computer’s. Not all mount drivers support this feature. A warning will be displayed if the difference between the clocks is more than 10 seconds and the mount time cannot be set
ZWO: Native driver for ZWO EFWs now supports setting the Unidirectional option as well as initiate a calibration run.
ZWO: The native driver for ZWO cameras now supports managing the Mono Bin feature of models with color sensors.
QHY: Added support for 6x6 and 8x8 bin modes to the QHY native driver. This applies to camera models that support these modes.
GNSS devices: Support for retrieving site location information has been expanded to enable different types of sources:
- NMEA serial GNSS devices
- PegasusAstro Uranus Meteo
- PrimaLuceLab Eagle’s GPS and Eagle Manager X
In the Imaging Tab above the image preview, a new button to flip an image horizontally per click is added. Each following image will then also be flipped. This flip is for display only and doesn’t affect the data.
Further parallelization of post image capture actions. This should especially speed up capturing using a dslr native driver where the time consuming raw conversion will no longer hold up the next exposure.
Added an option under Options > Equipment > Telescope to define the automatic sync direction for location. This can be used to supress a user prompt for automatic connection and control.
Plugin folder in %localappdata%\NINA\Plugins now contains a subfolder with the Major.Minor.Revision version of the application containing plugins for the current version. This will make it simpler to upgrade and downgrade application versions without having to exchange plugins for developers. From user perspective nothing will change as everything is automatically migrated.
Sequencer Sidebar Tab for Templates and Targets now indicate a load progress when the list is refreshed and should also load faster.
In Options you can now specify custom plugin repositories for privately hosted plugins
Autofocus report JSON files now append the profile id in their filename and get filtered in the application by only using the relevant files from the current profile
Mini sequencer will now auto scroll to active items
The SkyX Imagelink is now available as a plate solver
DC-3 Dreams PinPoint is now available as a plate solver
When switching profiles the “Switch Filter” instruction will rematch the filter selection based on the name or the index
In framing tab and Deep Sky Object Containers you can now paste in full text coordinates into the RA/Dec text fields and they will be parsed into the separate boxes - e.g. when pasting the following string into the textbox the coordinates will be fully populated: RA: 05h43m05s.90 DEC: +52°10′58″.0
When sending location to the telescope the elevation is now handled separately and a different error message is shown
DitherAfterExposures will only trigger when the next item is an exposure item of type LIGHT
Added a new toggle in the framing assistant to control the automatic saving of images for the offline sky map. If you’re using the complete offline map from the homepage, you can disable this setting to prevent changes to the cache.
Within the imaging tab, several panels now feature a settings button on the upper right corner. This button allows you to reveal or conceal adjustable settings for that particular panel.
- In conjunction with this update, the HFR History panel has been modified. It will now use the aforementioned settings button, eliminating the previous feature where settings appeared upon mouse hover.
- Every equipment panel now features an “Info only” switch, allowing users to opt for purely informational displays or to incorporate interactive controls.
Changed the default application theme to “Persian Faint”
Reverse autofocus direction when backlash compensation mode is set to “Overshoot” and a BacklashIN value is specified, to reduce the amount of required backlash compensation during autofocus
Native autofocus will now properly show star detection result in the image statistics panel
The native autofocus mechanism has been upgraded to simultaneously process images while shifting to new focus points, which enhances the speed of the entire autofocus operation.
Offset is now displayed next to Gain in the Image Statistics window
Adjusted color picker style to follow along the customized theme colors of the application
“Telescope” in equipment area has been renamed to “Mount”. Furthermore the equipment options have been separated by telescope and mount. The renaming is an ongoing effort, so some labels might still refer to “telescope” instead of “mount”
When the offline sky map is selected, you can customize which Deep Sky Objects are displayed by disabling specific catalogues. To do this, find and adjust the settings in the ‘Toggle Catalogue Display’ menu located in the lower-left corner of the user interface.
Added Alt/Az input for manual coordinates in telescope tab
Previously, when users clicked ‘X’ to close the profile chooser window, the application would start with the selected profile. With this update, clicking ‘X’ on the profile chooser will now exit the application instead of launching it.

Commandline Options

Multiple command line options have been added to be able to adjust some of the startup parameters for the application

-p, --profileid         Load profile for a given id at startup.
-s, --sequencefile      Load a sequence file at startup.
-r, --runsequence       (Default: false) Automatically start a sequence loaded with -s and switch to Imaging tab.
-x, --exitaftersequence (Default: false) Automatically exit the application after the sequence has been finished.
-d, --debug             (Default: false) Activates Debug Mode in the application, revealing additional UI elements and features that are available only for development and testing purposes. This mode is intended to assist developers and testers in diagnosing issues, understanding application flow, and verifying UI elements that are not accessible in the standard operation mode.
--help                  Display this help screen.
--version               Display version information

Flat Wizard Rework

Flat Wizard screen

The Binning and Gain settings have been relocated to align with other settings, and they can now be configured on a filter-specific basis.
Additionally it is now possible to specify a camera offset
A step size is no longer required. The algorithm will now initiate at ((Min+Max)/2) and continually halve to determine the optimal exposure time.
The option for dark frames is concealed when selecting sky flats; due to variable exposure times with sky flats, darks become redundant.
Internally the flat wizard will now use the new advanced sequencer instructions
The Flat Wizard will now save the exposure used to determine the exposure time, reducing the overall number of exposures taken by one and saving time

Trained Flat Exposure List

The settings page to view and maintain the trained flat exposures for the flat device has been reworked
Trained exposures are now presented in a single unified grid, replacing the previous multiple grids.
The new layout aims to enhance user comprehension and simplify manual adjustments.
Settings from previous versions will be seamlessly migrated to this new format.

New Instructions for advanced sequencer

Auto Exposure Flat: An instruction to find an exposure time for a static flat brightness
Auto Brightness Flat: An instruction to find a flat panel brightness for a static exposure time
Sky Flat: Similar to the Flat Wizard sky flat, this will take flat frames that have a constantly adjusted exposure time while progressing to compensate for illumination changes due to sun altitude.

Object Database Additions

1538 LDN objects (Lynds’ Catalogue of Dark Nebulae - Lynds 1962)
180 Barnard objects (The Barnard Catalogue of Dark Markings in the Sky - Barnard,1927)
66 StDr, StDrLu, StDrL, PaStDr, StDrLuLDu objects (25 confirmed planetary nebulae / 21 likely planetary nebulae / 20 possible planetary nebulae)
131 vdB objects (Catalogue of Reflection Nebulae - Van den Bergh, 1966)
235 Sharpless (Sh2) objects (Catalogue of HII Regions - Sharpless, 1959)
149 RCW objects (H-α emission regions in Southern Milky Way - Rodgers, Campbell, Whiteoak 1960)
100 HCG objects (Hickson’s Compact groups of Galaxies - Hickson+ 1982-1994)
294 SNR objects (A Catalogue of Galactic Supernova Remnants - Green 2019)
66 objects PN candidates (Planetary nebulae candidates discovered by French amateurs - Ferrero+ 2015)
28 objects of uncertain nature like Ou 4 discovered by French amateurs - Ferrero+ 2015)
13 Asterisms like Little Orion, Napoleons Hat, Kemble 3 and others

File Formats

FITS

Implemented functionality to read compressed data into Framing Assistant and Camera Simulator
Introduced a new FITS keyword “CAMERAID” to uniquely identify the camera used.
- For the majority of native drivers, this field will be populated with the camera’s serial number, assuming it is accessible.
Added a toggle to use CFITSIO to write FITS files. This enables the following features:
- Introduced checksum support for enhanced data integrity.
- Expanded storage options to include compressed formats, utilizing RICE, GZIP1, GZIP2, PLIO, and HCOMPRESS algorithms. Notably, RICE offers an optimal balance of speed and compression efficiency
- Enabled the storage of compressed FITS files with the “.fits.fz” extension for improved file identification
- Added support for storing data in a 32-bit unsigned integer format

XISF

Added support for storing data in a 32-bit unsigned integer format
FITS Header Cards are now correctly enclosed with single quotes

Alpaca

ASCOM Alpaca discovery is now available in N.I.N.A. and discovered devices are selectable in the equipment choosers to connect to
- Discovery settings can be adjusted in Options > Equipment > ASCOM Alpaca Discovery

Bugfixes

Fixed SVBony Native driver that was sometimes showing the exposure before the latest one after a cancelled exposure
Fixed PlayerOne resolution not fully resetting to complete size after subframe or binning
Added automatic retry of exposure start when POA_ERROR_EXPOSING error happens
Selecting a date in sky atlas no longer sets the date one day earlier than selected
Radius will now always be calculated and displayed in the plate solver window
AF after Exposures will now properly consider previous autofocus runs and reset its counter accordingly
Dither after exposures will no longer fail to run when clearing the image statistics history
Sky Atlas date picker now correctly sets the selected date instead of the day before the selected one
For relative ASCOM focusers the MaxIncrement is now considered for move commands
SBIG native driver no longer stores (incorrect 0) Gain in image meta data
When an update notification in the app was available but after the initial pop-up a new version was published, it will no longer fail the checksum check
ASCOM Camera ImageArray can now properly transform Byte[,], Short[,], UShort[,] in addition to the existing Int[,] to the 16 bit data structure N.I.N.A. is using
Dragging an instruction below a sequence container when nothing else is below it will now work correctly
When switching profiles, the dock layout will be saved prior to switching

Version 2.3 Hotfix 2

Improvements

Framing tab will now remember the last selected rotation value between sessions
The method the application uses to store and recall the window’s position and size has been enhanced. This ensures that the window’s location is more consistently retained across sessions.
- Due to this update, please re-adjust the window to the desired position and size once after the upgrade. From then on, the application will remember the settings.

Bugfixes

Do not throw an error when TrackingRate SET is throwing a PropertyNotImplementedException - this time for real
Fix potential race condition in PlateSolvingStatusVM when setting platesolve result
Dither after exposures will no longer fail when clearing the image history
SkyAtlas: Date Picker will now set the correct date
FLICamera - Fix Exposure time that it can also set fractions of a second

Version 2.3 Hotfix 1

Bugfixes

Database migration and creation on first time upgrade or installation will now be much faster
Fixed Issue in QHY Driver when overscan area was being shown in video mode.
Side Of Pier during Meridian Flip will not be flipped when the current position is already a counter weight down position (e.g. when having a pause before meridian time set)
Do not throw an error when TrackingRate SET is throwing a PropertyNotImplementedException
Fixed an issue when changing the profiles that the ObjectTypes in Framing Assistant were duplicated
Exposure Info: When the total exposure time exceeds 24 hours, it will now be displayed properly.

Improvements

In Options it is now possible to specify custom plugin repositories. Only add software repositories from sources that you trust!
Sequencer Target Sidebar will now load much faster when having a large number of targets
A grid splitter is added to the plugin tab so that the list of plugins can be minimized and more room for the detail page is available

Version 2.3

Improvements

Autofocus triggers will now only trigger when the next exposure would be a LIGHT frame
When clicking on the load adv. sequence button, it is now possible to also load in a template or a target

Bugfixes

The profile chooser on startup did not remember the on/off selection to save the selected profile

Version 2.2

Bugfixes

Fixed Slew to Alt/Az instruction not considering changes to Latitude & Longitude values
Loading a FITS File that contains exponential notation for double values should now have its headers be correctly read
Fixed an issue where the sequence was not able to be loaded when a plugin was missing
Fixed an issue for plugin focusers to not show the plugin specific settings section
When simple sequencer was set to “Rotate Through” mode, the estimated time calculation was incorrect when partially finished. It should now reflect the correct estimate.
Sending an image to framing wizard without setting a name will no longer cause the caching to fail
Fixed an issue for Atik OSC cameras where debayering would crash the application.
Using TIFF without compression selected now properly saves the files without any compression
“Clear all” button on notifications will now also properly clear all pending notifications
Image file patterns will now remove trailing and leading white spaces for directories and file names.

Features

Added new Instruction “Set USB Limit” to control the usb limit inside the sequencer (if available)
A new toggle in options > general > advanced is available to disable hardware acceleration. Disabling this can be useful if you are experiencing graphic glitches or the application goes blank when using a remote client to connect to the pc.
In Options > Imaging > Image File Pattern it is now possible to set different patterns per image type. When no pattern is set for a specific image type the main image pattern will be taken.
NMEA GPS import now also imports the site elevation

Improvements

The Field of View value in the Framing Tab is now limited to two decimal places
Camera simulator can now set arbitrary values for Offset and USB limit
Conditions now log on info level when they are done
Options > Equipment > Telescope > “Do not sync” is renamed to “Automatic Sync” and the toggle value is reversed. To not send syncs to the mount this should be turned off. The behavior is unchanged, only the UI shows it in reversed logic.
Snapshot panel in imaging tab now has a targetname field to enter a value manually to be used for the TARGETNAME image pattern when the toggle to save the image is enabled

Altair, Mallincam, Omegon, Risingcam and Touptek

Added High Fullwell Mode control for cameras that support it (also added for custom device actions)
Added target dew heater strength control to be able to reduce the strength of the dew heater if supported (also added for custom device actions)
High Gain, Ultra Mode, High Fullwell and Dew Heater Strength settings are now stored in the profile and will be restored on next connect

PlayerOne

Added temperature control for cooled camera series
Cooled cameras can now control dew heater and fan strength
Native driver for Player One Filter Wheels is now available
Fixed an issue that USB limit could not be set correctly

Version 2.1

Bugfixes

When an interrupt happens during a meridian flip it in a sequence it is no longer ignored while the flip is running
Fix an issue where for some coordinates, the coordinates were off by one arcminute after reloading it into the sequence from file, due to double precision rounding issues
Prevent unhandled exception popup to be visible more than once in parallel
Flat wizard should no longer try to set a negative brightness value in dynamic brightness mode
Focuser tab should no longer clip the “Move” button when window size is small
ASCOM Switch target values now adhere to the step size of a switch and round to the nearest value if the user provided a value outside of the step size
Fixed an issue where SynchronizeDomeTrigger would run into an exception when evaluating if it should trigger when the dome and telescope is not connected

Improvements

Player One Cameras that support different sensor modes can now switch between these via ReadoutModes when using the native driver
Player One Cameras that have a temperature probe but not cooler will now show the temperature
Solve & Sync instruction will now also sync the sky angle with a rotator when connected
Slew instructions will now show a failure when the telescope is parked
When a platesolver is not set up the message “Executable not found” will now also tell that this is about the plate solver not being set up
Options > General > Profiles are now ordered by Name with the active profile being on top
Layout of Switch Tab has been overhauled for a more compact and readable overview
Framing Assistant will no longer update the altitude chart on the left while the rectangle is dragged around to be able to drag it more smoothly. The chart will update once the dragging is stopped.

Plugin Enablement

New Plugin Eventhook to react on GuidePulses
GuiderInfo now includes current RMS Error values
Add access to the device instances

Version 2.0 Hotfix 2

Bugfixes

Fixed QHY Camera selection being lost on rescan
Imaging Platesolve Panel will preset initial gain from platesolve settings
Flat Wizard not showing results until N.I.N.A. restarted for some filters
Flat Wizard Sky Flat Mode no longer closes a flat device cover when connected
AutofocusAfterTemperatureChangeTrigger did not set initial temperature correctly when focuser was not connected on sequence start

Improvements

Guide Chart Colors can now be customized in the guider tab
Plugin load times have been improved
Framing Assistant now accepts fractional second inputs for RA and declination and will display them out to the tenth of a second.
Added instance number setting to PHD2 to be able to have N.I.N.A. autostart PHD2 with multiple instances and not just the first one
Changed Message Box Instruction to include “Stop Sequence” button along with “Continue” to be able to stop the sequence in case this is used as a checkpoint
When PHD2 Configuration Changes happen, N.I.N.A. will now requery the pixel scale in case the focal length or pixel size setting of the guider has changed
Improved layout of plate solve pop up during centering and added a status indicator inside the window as well
Plate solve pop out from solve button above the image inside the imaging tab now shows the thumbnail and also keeps the solve history
Aberration inspector no longer pops up a new window but is instead a toggleable button and replaces the image itself. This also allows for looping exposures and keeping the inspector updated.
Framing Assistant Cache list has a button added to delete individual entries
Atik native driver improvements:
- Full support for Apx26/Apx60 exposure speeds and presets
- Fast readout/preview mode may be selected on CCD models that support them
- Window heater may now be controlled on models that are equipped with one
- 16bit output is now explicitly configured on CMOS models that support both 12bit and 16bit output
- Many thanks to Atik Cameras, Ltd. for loaning a 428ex camera for use in the testing and improvement of the native driver

Features

Enhanced Meridian Flip options with a toggle to automatically rotate the target in the imaging tab for displaying purposes
Added an option in the filter wheel options to disable guiding during a filter change. This can be useful when having filter focus offsets and overshoot backlash compensation enabled to prevent losing guide stars.
Custom Action to toggle Low Noise, High Gain, Fan Speed and Average Binning via custom device actions added to Altair, Mallincam, Omegon, Risingcam and Touptek cameras. This action can be controlled via plugins.
- Valid parameters for Low Noise, High Gain and Average Binning are “0”, “off”, “no”, “false”, “f”, “1”, “on”, “yes”, “true”, “t”
- Valid parameters for Fan Speed are integer values from 0 to Max Fan Speed
Added additional options that relate to dome or roll-off-roof shutter operation. Please review the notice in the Shutter Coordination area of Options > Dome settings.
In the Sequencer Sidebar inside the Instructions Tab a new button is added to enter a Settings Mode - There individual instructions can be disabled to be shown in the sidebar or in the context menus. For example when you have no dome, you can hide all dome instructions to not clog up space.
Collapse and Expand all button is added to the sequencer sidebar for the Instructions Tab

Plugin Enablement

Added interfaces that allow plugins to provide device drivers
- Each device type can also provide dedicated settings in the equipment setting sections
- This change will make it necessary for plugins to be loaded completely before being able to connect to the devices.
Plugins can now query for Telescope “DestinationSideOfPier”
New Plugin Eventhooks to react on Befor/After MeridianFlip and After Dithers

Version 2.0 HF 1

Bugfixes

Changed the default value for ASCOM Camera BayerOffsetX/BayerOffsetY to be 0, instead of -1, when not available via the driver
Corrections made to assorted entries in the NINA object database
Fix an issue where for some coordinates, the coordinates were off by one arcminute after reloading it into the sequence from file, due to double precision rounding issues
Touch input is now working properly when dragging the rectangle in framing assistant
When the filter is changed while the Smart Exposure or Simple Sequencer Exposure is already running, the first exposure afterwards no longer uses the previous filter but switches to the expected new filter
Fixed an issue where the Camera Cooling Charts could get stuck and not update anymore

Improvements

Improved error message presentation if the selected sky survey image serivce fails to accept a request
The image save queue size can now be adjusted to allow for more concurrent image processing and save operations. Do be careful when changing this, as it will increase overall system resource usage during fast image captures
Wait For Time | Loop Until Time - When no dusk/dawn is available at the current date the instructions will now show an error instead of falling back to the current time
Wait For Time | Loop Until Time - When the date changes (at noon) the instructions will now automatically redetermine the times
Altitude charts across the app should now automatically update on a new date (at noon with a maximum of ~10 minutes delay)
Replaced old FITS library for reading FITS files with CFITSIO. Opening FITS files should now be much faster
Plugin initialization now shows a status in the application status bar
Framing mosaics can now also be done with overlapping pixel count instead of an overlap percentage
Guider settings could only be set when being connected. Now these settings are also available in the setup screen of each guider without requiring a connection
When cloning a profile, the dock config for that profile will be cloned too
Simple Sequencer - “Cool Camera” toggled to on will also turn on dew heater when available as well as “Warm Camera” toggled to on will turn off the dew heater when enabled
“Wait For Time”, “Wait for Timespan” and Settle reports now count down instead of up in the progress report
Standard Autofocus: Break out of autofocus when a large number of points were taken without success or when the focuser hits the zero position
When loading a file for framing that needs to be platesolved the prompt that shows up now has more details and values can be adjusted if required. This should make it more clear of what is happening.

Features

Added interfaces and capabilities so that plugins can inject custom image meta data and image file patterns
Added missing Sharpless, LBN, Collinder, and Caldwell designations to existing entries in NINA’s object database
AstcamPan cameras can now be controlled via a native driver implementation
The last plate solve failure in each session, target and solver type will now be kept for further error analysis and automatically cleaned up after seven days
Added a toggle in Options > General > Advanced to only have one imaging tab layout for all profiles instead of it being profile dependent
In Options > Imaging > Layout two new buttons have been added to backup and restore the imaging tab layout
Added interfaces for plugins to register to FailureEvents inside the SequenceRootContainer to react on all failures that are raised during a sequence
Deep Sky Object Containers now also show a section with exposure times done on that particular target.
- When a target is saved these recorded exposure times are also stored with it to be reloaded at a later point
- Furthermore this info will also be used to set the $$FRAMENR$$ for exposures in the context of that target to have a continuous increment
- Rows can manually be removed and the counter will reset
In the Imaging Tab above the image preview, a new button to rotate an image by 90° per click is added. Each following image will then also be rotated. This rotation is for display only and doesn’t affect the data.

Version 2.0

The changelog contains the most prominent changes of Version 2.0. In summary this version has tons of improvements and almost every aspect of the application has been touched and improved. A big thank you to everyone that participated in this long release cycle!

Important change of existing settings and panels

Options page tab location is moved to the left instead of the top to be similar to main tabs
Sequencer end options have been moved into the simple sequencer tab
Sequencer is split into the old style sequencing and a new much more adjustable advanced sequencer
Meridian Flip settings show no longer an enabled flag, but must be enabled in the simple sequencer screen or added as a trigger into the advanced sequencer instead
Autofocus options have been moved into a separate tab
PHD2 specific settings are now available in the equipment guider tab after connection
Sky Atlas altitude search is reworked to specify a duration for a time range instead of needing the target to be above for the whole time frame
Optimal exposure calculator is removed from the core application, but available as a plugin

X86 Deprecation

The x86 version of N.I.N.A. will be phased out after version 2.0. It is already reduced in capabilities, due to the limitations of the x86 platform, and will be removed completely in future.
Parallel saving and processing of images is disabled for x86. They will be processed and then saved sequentially
Debayering and related settings are disabled for x86
Plugins might not be compatible with x86
Nikon offers no more x86 SDK libraries
Offline Sky Map Image Cache rendering is not available for x86

Complete Sequencer Rework

Old Sequencer has been renamed to “Simple Sequencer”
The internal engine for the simple sequencer has been completely revamped. The simple sequencer will use the advanced sequencer framework internally while exposing a similar user interface that was used previously
If required a simple sequence can be generated into the advanced sequence for fine tuning
Instead of loading an empty target by default, the UI will show a separate UI when no target was set, where the user can choose which kind of sequence should be loaded instead or jump directly into the advanced sequencer
End of sequence options are moved from the options tab to the sequence tab
Introduced new start of sequence options to be used
A new toggle to “Rotate Target” to the desired orientation has been added. Previously this was always done when a rotator was connected and skipped when it was not connected. The new approach should be much more intuitive for the user to understand when rotation will be considered or not.
Removed external command and flat panel items from the simple sequencer UI, as these are only for advanced usage and not used by the majority that use the simple sequencer
Added support for fetching sky view and location coordinates from the C2A and SkytechX planetarium programs
Sequence mode loop has been changed sligthly to not define a number of exposures on each row but rather on the whole sequence instead to loop through.

New Advanced Sequencer

In this area a custom sequence can be built completely from scratch by individual small building blocks
Each user has a different flow of how a sequence should look like. This advanced planning can serve most requirements that a user might have.
The building blocks consist of these categories
- Instruction Sets
  - These sets group together different instructions
  - Templates can be generated out of these sets to be used later with the same parameters
- Instructions
  - These are the individual steps to automate the sequence
  - Each item has a different operation, like switching to a filter or taking an exposure
- Trigger
  - Triggers are part of an instruction set and are evaluated after each instruction is processed
  - They have certain conditions that are checked and when these are fullfilled the triggers will fire
  - Examples for these are autofocus after certain parameters, merdian flip or dithering after an amount of exposures
  - Triggers are always cascading. So a trigger on an instruction set on a higher level than the currently executed instruction set will also be evaluated
- Loop Conditions
  - These conditions are attached to an instruction set and drive the behavior of the set
  - As long as a condition is fullfilled, the instruction set will be looped
  - Once a condition is not fullfilled anymore, all remaining instructions inside an instruction set will be skipped
  - Loop conditions are always cascading. So a conditions on an instruction set on a higher level than the currently executed instruction set will also be evaluated
- Templates
  - Each instruction set can be saved as a template
  - These templates store all info that has been set inside the instruction set and can be restored for later usage
  - Furthermore these will be stored physically inside the default sequence folder and can be reorganized there
  - Sub folders inside the default sequence folder are possible and will group these templates together
- Targets
  - Each Deep Sky Object Sequence be saved as a target
  - These target store all info that has been set inside the deep sky object sequence and can be restored for later usage
  - Furthermore these will be stored physically inside the default sequence folder and can be reorganized there
For more details on the usage refer to the documentation

New Plugin Tab

With the introduction of the advanced sequencer, a sequence can be planned with individual building blocks. These blocks have been designed to work like small plugins that will be initialized on startup. This opens up the possibility for specialized custom plugins that can be installed independently on demand.
To manage these custom plugins for the advanced sequencer a new application tab page has been introduced. There a user can setup and see all installed plugins as well as having the possiblity to see, install and update plugins from the official online plugin repository.
Plugins can currently hook into the advanced sequencer, add new dock panels in the imaging tab or add different behaviors for autofocus, star detection and star annotation. More areas to be pluggable are planned for the future.
The main benefit of these plugins are the possibility to create very specialized behavior, that would only benefit by a smaller user base, without cluttering the application with these capabilities for users that do not need this special behavior.

Framing Tab

Instead of sending the current target to the sequencer, the user will be prompted to either choose the simple sequencer or directly send the target to the new advanced sequencer while also being able to choose from different templates
Replacing of the complete targets is removed, as this is not necessary.
Possibility to manually enter target rotation
A new multi action button replaces the slew button. This button can either “slew”, “slew and center” or “slew, center and rotate” your current framing
Improved precision when dragging the rectangle around, especially for longer distances
Added a new option to preserve the alignment when being far away from celestial equator where panels won’t be perfectly aligned to a rectangle anymore when having the same rotation
Visually show the misalignment when having the same rotation for each panel when being further away from the celestial equator
Added a new grid showing the mosaic panel coordinates and orientations
Added a center dot for the framing rectangle
A new toggle is available to toggle the sky background instead of the framing rectangle
The Sky Object Annotation will now properly draw elliptical objects when position angle and size information is available instead of always showing them as circular
Offline Sky Map can now show images from the cache (x64 only). The “Sky Atlas Image Repository” could unfortunately not be lifted for this, but existing images from the cache in framing will can be used.

Imaging Tab - Sequence Panel

As the new sequencer has a dynamic operation mode, the old summary is not feasible anymore when using the advanced sequencer
Instead the sequence panel will show a minimized representation of the advanced sequence, where you can see the instructions with basic details
When using the simple sequencer the old style will still be shown instead

New hardware support

SkyGuard

Integration of SkyGuard in NINA
Added of SkyGuard Guider and its setup
Implementation of the Connect, Disconnect, StartGuiding, StopGuiding and Dither methods

MGEN3

Full control of the MGEN3 by mirroring the controller display into N.I.N.A.’s user interface
Automatic power-on when connecting
Starts guiding on sequence start
Performs calibration and star auto-selection when required
Displays star drift during guiding in a graph
Dithering during sequencing

MetaGuide

MetaGuide is now available as an option for a guiding application

SVBony

Added a native driver for SVBony cameras. Tested with SV305M Pro and SV405CC.

SBIG

Added a native driver for SBIG cameras.

MallinCam

Added native driver for MallinCam cameras.

Risingcam

Native support for Risingcam added

Player One

Native support for Player One Cameras

ASCOM Dome

ASCOM Domes are supported throughout the application
- Natively provides azimuth synchronization with the telescope, so no additional applications are needed (such as ASCOM Device Hub)
- Lateral offsets supported, enabling side-by-side telescope setups
- When synchronization is enabled, telescope slews wait for the dome to synchronize before next actions, such as imaging and plate solving
- Homes the dome prior to parking, which can improve the reliability of arriving precisely at the park location. This can be important if a shutter motor battery charges in the park position
Dome actions provided in the new sequencer
Enable dome synchronization
Open/Close shutter
Park dome

ASCOM CoverCalibrator

With the ASCOM Platform Version 6.5 a new type of interface was added called “CoverCalibrator”.
These are basically flat panel devices which will now be available to choose from in the application under the flat panel section

ASCOM SafetyMonitor

An ASCOM device to monitor safe conditions for an imaging run
These devices can be used inside the sequencer to interrupt an imaging run, when they report unsafe conditions
Option to automatically close the dome shutter immediately when the safety monitor reports unsafe conditions

Native support for Atik EFW2/3 and internal Filterwheels

The integrated filter wheels for Atik cameras like the Atik One 9.0 are now natively supported
This allows usage of native camera drivers for Atik cameras with integrated filter wheels
The Atik EFW2 and 3 can also be natively connected without using the ASCOM driver

Improvements for Altair, Touptek, Omegaon, Mallincam and Risingcam native drivers

Native driver implementation unified for a common interface, as the underlying SDKs are similar
Additive binning can be turned on
Fan speed can be controlled when available
Binning info for these cameras are now properly inserted into Metadata

PHD2

Dither will be skipped when not actively guiding or the guide star was lost
Settle time will now correctly be considered when starting guiding
Guiding start timeout will not consider calibration time and will also be used when “Guiding start retry” is off
Guiding start retry will not retry more than three times to prevent an infinite loop
A ROI percentage can now be set for PHD2 to be considered during guidestar search
Profiles can now be switched from the list of available PHD2 profiles

Canon: Automatically send request to increase shutdown time, when camera is about to shutdown
Nikon: Fixed an issue where cancelling an exposure would lead to unexpected bulb exposure times
Flat Device Brightness is no longer expressed in percentage, but rather in the absolute values the flat panel supports
Flat Device trained brightness levels will be automatically migrated from percentage to absolute values after first flat panel device connection.
Filter Wheel List of Filters are now all using the list from the profile instead of having a mix of filters from the ASCOM driver and those from the profile. De-Sync of these lists can’t happen anymore.
Some mount drivers have reversed primary and secondary axis implementation for manual movements. Now a reverse flag is available to manually correct this behavior.
ASCOM Camera driver can now handle odd sensor width & height for mono sensors. A setting to enable this new behavior is available.
ASCOM connection and disconnection logic is now unified between all devices to ensure same bahvior
ASCOM connection that is lost without any raised error will now be tried to be reconnected one time. If an error happens due to that the application will disconnect like before.
ASCOM get and set methods use a unified logic to ensure same behavior for all devices
FLI: Background flush is now disabled prior to readout to prevent a hung readout
FLI: Filter wheel driver now removes any extraneous / character from single-filter positions on CenterLine filter wheels
MGEN2 now supports unattended guide star selection and calibration, and automatic meridian flips
Altair, MallinCam, Omegon, RisingCam and ToupTek subsampling is now available

Application Improvements

General

The application distribution is now code signed
Application window will now remember its placing and state
Application initialization is utilizing more parallel processing to startup faster.
Application logs are vastly improved to log a lot more info of what is happening at the various levels. INFO level will also contain a lot more info of what is happening at a high level.
It is now possible to change the application font in the options
It is now possible to start, resume and cancel sequences from the preview window
Options menu has been restructured to adhere to the Equipment layout
Auto-focus is now its own tab in the Options menu
Empty gain and offset settings will now always reflect the settings set in Equipment - Camera (valid for imaging, sequence and auto-focus)
Any active field of view or ocular rotation angle is now imported along with coordinates from Stellarium and TheSky X
New translation for Czech (Čeština) has been added
New translation for Norwegian Bokmal (Norsk bokmål) has been added
New translation for Korean (한국어) has been added
Can send the sequencer target coordinates to the Framing Wizard
Improved Meridian Flip reliability by retrying when changing the pier or slewing close to the meridian fails. NINA now provides a warning suggesting to increase the meridian wait time if this hapens
Guider settings moved to the guider equipment page making them easier to find and exposing only settings relevant for each type of guider
Connect all button now connects all devices in a sequential order to prevent collisions with com port scanning that could happen
After hitting connect all button, it will show highlighted and when hit again it will disconnect all devices instead
Meridian Flip now allows for a time range instead of a single point in time to allow for less time lost
Some areas where the user interface was clipped on lower resolutions (down to 720p) are now showing all details
Telescope panel in imaging tab now shows an indicator when the telescope is not unparked
Telescope Park action will now wait for the scope to reach park position
Profile chooser on startup can now be re-activated in options again once it is disabled
Guiding gets stopped before any telescope-moving sequencer command gets executed
Gain/Offset fields will now show the default values as a hint text, rather than being populated inside the textbox itself. Having this approach, a user can directly enter specific values without having to clear the default value first.
The imaging tab layout is now saved per profile, instead of one layout for all profiles
Most options and values now also display a unit of measure if applicable
Weather information in equipment tab now shows correct wind direction.
Various layout improvements and redesign of controls
Flat Wizard page controls are streamlined with the rest of the application by replacing the sliders with steppers
When closing a dock panel in the imaging tab and reopening it again, the position is properly restored
Cooling charts in the camera equipment tab have been merged into one single chart with the history size increased from 100 to 1000
On web requests the user-agent header is now filled properly
An autofocus indicator in the HFR history will no longer change the Y-Axis scale
The automatic roll over to a blind solver can now be switched off in the plate solver tab
For the first image in an image view control, the image will now be shown as size to fit instead of 1:1 by default
Profiles can now store an arbitrary description
Pixel inspector on imaging tab (by holding right click on an image) now also includes min, max and mean of the pixel area

Subsampling

The sub sample button above the image panel has been removed
In the imaging camera control panel when subsampling is enabled a new control will be visible to adjust the subsampling directly there
This should be more intuitive to use and does not require a certain order of operations and an active non sub sampled image to set up

Local Horizon Display

It is now possible to define a custom horizon to be used and displayed in the altitude charts
Using these custom horizons will make target planning a lot more convenient when only a portion of the sky is available
The horizon file consists of a simple mapping of azimuth to altitude values
The sky atlas has a new entry for altitude filter to filter for the object to be above the horizon for the specified time range

# Example horizon file content
# A line starting with # is treated as a comment
# The horizon file consists of a pair of azimuth and altitude values
# Azimuth values that are not explicitly defined will interpolate the altitude by using the existing datapoints
# A minimum of two points have to be defined
0 10
100 30
150 35
250 30
300 20
350 15

Sky Atlas

The sky atlas has a new entry for altitude filter to filter for the object to be above the horizon for the specified duration
Filter for time from/through is now only showing time without a day
Altitude filter is changed to use a duration instead of a start and end time
Moon distance is now shown in the list for each object. Furthermore a new filter is added to filter by moon distance.

Auto-focus system

Auto-focus can now have different settings for gain, offset and binning per filter
When using an autofocus filter with offsets this filter will now also be used for the first and last measurement instead of the filter prior to starting the auto focus
During an auto-focus run while taking an image, if the download fails it will be automatically retried up to two times to try to recover
A new optional setting R² threshold can now be set. When this threshold is non-zero, the autofocus run has to fullfill a minimum required R² - Coefficient of determination - above this threshold to be considered as successful.

File name patterns and FITS keywords

Keyword list to choose from is now grouped by category
Added CENTALT, and CENTAZ keywords
Added AIRMASS keyword, calculated from mount altitude using Gueymard 1993
Added $$CAMERA$$ file pattern
Added $$TELESCOPE$$ file pattern
Added $$ROTATEANGLE$$ file pattern
Added $$STARCOUNT$$ file pattern
Added $$TEMPERATURESETPOINT$$ file pattern

Included Camera SDK Versions can now be found inside the about page of N.I.N.A.

Version 1.10 HF3

Improvements

The camera temperature setpoint is now displayed only when the cooler is active
A secondary HIPS2 server will be attempted if the main HIPS2 image server is not available
Canon cameras will now be kept awake to avoid camera auto-shutdown
Meridian flip will now be considered on objects traversing through their lowest altitude too

QHYCCD native driver improvements

IMPORTANT: NINA 1.10 HF3 (and later) require at least QHY System Pack version 21.02.20.19 to be installed
Improvements to reliability
Seamless switching between 11M and 47M modes for the QHY294 Pro
QHY CCDs that have fast and slow readout modes can now select the mode
QHY cameras that have sensor chamber air pressure and humidity sensors will display their readings on the Equipment > Camera screen
QHY camera firmware and FPGA versions are now displayed on the Equipment > Camera screen
The integrated filter wheels of A-Series cameras should now operate correctly
Live View function has been disabled for QHY cameras. It was functionally inoperative and will be discontinued for all but Canon and Nikon in 1.11
The version of the QHY USB driver will be checked and a warning will be presented if it is not the minimum recommended version

Bug fixes

Nikon: Cancelled or aborted exposures are now properly handled
FLI: Stop background flush prior to reading out the sensor
ASCOM camera: SensorType is no longer considered to be a mandadory property
Fixed an issue when the location for ASTAP and ASPS where entered manually the validation was incorrect to assume a folder instead of a file
When subsampling selection was still active after the app already subsampled an image it would further try to subsample. In some occasions this could cause a crash. The subsampling rectangle is now disabled after the first additional capture.

Included Camera SDK Versions:

Altair Astro: 48.18830.20210423
Atik: 2020.08.3.642
Canon: 13.13.0.6408
FLI: 1.104.0.0
Nikon: 1.3.2.3000
Omegon: 39.15325.2019.810
QHY: 21.02.19.19
ToupTek: 48.18081.2020.1205
ZWO: 1.16.3

Version 1.10 HF2

Improvements

Rotator now displays mechanical position as well as sky position. Sky position will be displayed once the rotator is synced at least once.
Updates to various vendor-supplied SDKs for bug fixes and new model support in the respective native drivers
QHY: Legacy CCD and A-series cameras can now select Normal or Fast readout speeds when using the native driver

Bugfixes

The telescope will no longer go on a journey to the celestial pole before going to the park position
Parking the telescope from the Equipment > Telescope screen will no longer cause the UI to freeze while the telescope is in the process of parking
When rotator reports final position too early while still reporting IsMoving as true, N.I.N.A. will now still wait for the movement to complete
SkyAtlas File Source will now consider binning for solving
Fixed issue with filter wheel filter import in options when filters have the same name
The MGEN2 guider can now auto select a guide star unattended, with a new calibration just downstream of that, which enables auto meridian flips
The timeout values for the MGEN2 guider can now be overridden in the implementations of IMGENCommand
The MGEN2 guider drift values are now correctly reported in fractional pixels
ASCOM devices are now properly disposed after calling the setup dialog
The MGEN guider now doesn’t autoselect guide stars that lie too close to the sensor edge, based on a stand-off distance that the user can set in the UI
All guiders now report when a successful connection happens
Disconnecting Atik Cameras from other applications on startup or scan for new devices will not happen anymore
Fixed an issue in Framing Assistant when solving a file, that the near solver was incorrectly used as the blind solver
QHY: QHY294M/C Pro is properly handled by the QHY native driver

Included Camera SDK Versions:

Altair Astro: 48.18421.20210202
Atik: 2020.08.3.642
Canon: 13.13.0.6408
FLI: 1.104.0.0
Nikon: 1.3.2.3000
Omegon: 39.15325.2019.810
QHY: 21.02.19.19
ToupTek: 48.18081.2020.1205
ZWO: 1.16.3

Version 1.10 HF1

Features

Ability to inspect pixel area and pixel values in detail by holding right click
Relative Focusers can now be connected and will be simulated to behave like absolute focusers
It is possible now to import Telescopius Observing Lists and Telescopius Mosaic Plans via CSV
Added Ultra Mode and Dew Heater Controls for supported Altair Cameras.
New translation for Greek (Ελληνικά) has been added
Added a new sky survey Hips 2 Fits as an option in framing assistant. This survey seems to provide a much faster image compared to the other surveys.

Improvements

Canon CR3 image format is now supported (use FreeImage as your RAW converter)
Adding support for the EOS R5 and EOS R6
Added $$CAMERA$$ file pattern
Added $$TELESCOPE$$ file pattern
Added $$ROTATEANGLE$$ file pattern
Added $$STARCOUNT$$ file pattern
Telescope views now display the side of pier when available
Replaced LZ4 library with a more optimized one for faster XISF compression
Save target set in sequence screen is now enabled also when sequence is running
Added info logs for start exposure, download location and star detection
Rotators will now display the sky angle as the current position, when rotation via plate solving was invoked
Added toggle to reverse direction for rotators

Bugfixes

When using a DSLR and Astrometry.net the uploaded file is now correctly sent as FITS instead of raw format
Log files now show correct operating system version
Cancelling a sequence that is paused, will no longer throw a semaphore error
Set white balance and gamma to 50 for ASI native driver on connection
FITS header parsing can now deal with keywords that don’t have any comment at all
Safeguard against NaN values for Hfr Std Deviation which could ruin an autofocus run
Fix issue for QHY cameras to dither too early when camera was still exposing
Images that are mirrored (e.g. on a scope like a hyperstar) now have a correct rotation inside the framing wizard
Fixed a problem with Nikon Shutterspeeds between 1s and 30s not being parsed correctly in certain locale settings
Fixed an issue when using the file camera together with dithering, where the dither signal was triggered directly after starting the exposure, as the file camera directly switched to download state. Instead the file camera will wait for the exposure time instead before switching to download state.

Included Camera SDK Versions:

Altair Astro: 48.18195.2020.1222
Atik: 2020.08.3.642
Canon: 13.12.31
FLI: 1.104.0.0
Nikon: 1.3.1.3001
Omegon: 39.15325.2019.810
QHY: 20.8.26.3
ToupTek: 46.17309.2020.616
ZWO: 1.16.3.0

Version 1.10

New hardware support

Flat Panel control and automation

Control supported flat panel devices from within N.I.N.A.
Flat Wizard can specify a specific panel brightness to attain optimal flat frame exposures
Flat panels or covers that open and close will automatically do so at the beginning and end of a sequence
The following flat panels are supported, with no additional software required:
- All-Pro Spike-a Flat Fielder
- Alnitak Flip-Flat, Flat-Man, and Remote Dust Cover
- Artesky USB Flat Box
- Pegasus Astro Flatmaster

Omegon veTEC and veLOX series cameras

Native support for the line of veTEC and veLOX cameras from Omegon

Native support for QHY integrated and CFW filter wheels

The integrated filter wheels that are in A-series cameras (QHY695A, QHY16200A, etc.) or are a CFW1/2/3 that is connected to a monochrome camera using the 4-pin cable, are now natively supported
This allows the native QHY camera driver to be used with these cameras and filter wheel configurations.

Lacerta MGEN-2 Autoguider integration

Full control of the MGEN-2 by mirroring the controller display into N.I.N.A.’s user interface
Automatic power-on when connecting
Starts guiding on sequence start
Performs calibration and star auto-selection when required
Displays star drift during guiding in a graph (currently only measured in pixels)
Dithering during sequencing
MGEN-3 support will appear in a future release

Native support for Pegasus Astro Ultimate Powerbox V2

Connect to and control the Ultimate Powerbox V2 from within the application
Monitor input voltage and power consumption
Turn power and USB ports on and off via the Switch interface
Set the output voltage of the variable power port
Control the dew heater ports, including the Auto-Dew feature
Support for using the Powerbox’s sensors as a weather device
Support for using the stepper motor driver as a focuser

Expanded native camera support

Altair Astro: Added support for Altair Astro Hypercam 269 PRO TEC and other new cameras
Atik: Updated vendor SDK for new camera support and bug fixes
Canon: Added support for EOS M6 Mark II, EOS 90D, and EOS M200. CR3 RAW file is not supported at this time but is expected to be in a future release
Nikon: Added support for the Z-series, D780, and D6
QHYCCD: Added support for QHY268C, QHY600M/C, QHY367C-PRO, QHY4040 and others
ZWO: Added support for the ASI533MC-Pro, ASI2600MC-Pro, and ASI6200MC/M-Pro
Plus many bug fixes and feature enhancements in the respective camera vendor SDKs. Refer to the bottom of this release’s section for the version numbers of the included vendor SDKs.

Localization

N.I.N.A. is now available on Crowdin! This powerful online translation management tool allows users to easily contribute to the translation of N.I.N.A.’s user interface to any language. To help with localization and translation efforts, details may be found at nina.crowdin.com. Feel free to participate in the ongoing effort to provide multiple languages for N.I.N.A.! This is a great way to contribute to the project
Thirteen new languages are included in this release:
- Dansk (Danish)
- Español (Spanish)
- Français (French)
- 日本語 (Japanese)
- Nederlands (Dutch)
- Polski (Polish)
- Русский (Russian)
- 简体中文, 中国 (Simplified Chinese, China)
- 繁体中文, 台灣 (Traditional Chinese, Taiwan)
- 繁体中文, 香港 (Traditional Chinese, Hong Kong)
- Türk (Turkish)
- Galego (Galician)
- Portugese (Português)

Application Improvements

General

Added the ability to record flat frame exposure times with the Flat Wizard, which may be later used in a sequence
The Flat Wizard’s limit of 50 exposures has been eliminated, but we’re still not sure why you would want more than that
The telescope will now stop tracking after being commanded to slew to zenith in the Framing Wizard
Added the name of the active profile to the application title bar
Warning notifications are now appear for 30 seconds instead of 3 seconds before automatically dismissing. Error notifications still display until they are dismissed by the user
Logs older than 30 days are now automatically cleaned up when N.I.N.A. starts
The timestamps in N.I.N.A.’s log file now have millisecond resolution and use the 24 hour time format
In the Equipment > Camera window, the camera cooling is now activated only by using the Snowflake button, and what was the Cooler On/Off control now only reflects current state of the camera’s cooler
UI for temperature control has been split into cooling and warming sections. To cool the camera the user can specify a temperature and an optional duration, while for warming only an optional duration is required
Clicking on warming or cooling without specifying a duration will show the cooling/warming progress based on target temperature and current camera temperature
The current Earth Rotation Parameter data tables are now automatically downloaded from the IERS for use in various calculations. The check for new data tables happens at application start and if an internet connection exists
An occasional miscalculation of the moon’s current phase has been corrected
The object altitude chart in Sequence and Sky Atlas now renders tick marks in half-hour increments instead of some random increment
Added an empty entry in the Constellation filter in Sky Atlas to allow for its deselection
Clean-ups of the status text in the status bar at the bottom of the main window
Various spelling and grammar fixes throughout the application
Added or clarified several missing tool tips
Gain/Offset controls now display the current gain/offset the camera is set to when no gain/offset is specified

Auto-focus system

Auto-focus has been enhanced to support multiple curve fitting methodologies:
- Parabolic fitting, weighted by standard deviation
- Hyperbolic fitting, weighted by standard deviation
- A combination of parabolic or hyperbolic fitting, with trend lines. The averages of fitting minimum and trend line intersection are then used
A contrast detection auto-focus routine has been added. Instead of analyzing stars to determine the point of best focus, the routine will analyze the overall contrast of the image using various contrast detection methods. A Gaussian fit is then performed on the obtained focus points. On some systems, this process can employ shorter exposure times compared to Star HFR and produce results faster
The single backlash compensation system has been improved and split into two selectable behaviors:
- Absolute, where the focuser is moved in or out by the specified number of steps plus any additional steps for backlash. This is the same system that has existed before
- Overshoot, a new method, where the focuser is moved in or out by the requested number of steps, plus any “overshoot” number of steps, and is then moved in the opposite direction by the same number of “overshoot” steps. This is suitable for optical systems such as SCTs, which might benefit from this method in order to eliminate mirror flop
The “Crop Ratio” setting has been changed to “Inner Crop Ratio”, and an additional “Outer Crop Ratio” setting has been added. This allows users to define a centered ROI, or a centered “square doughnut”, which will be used by star detection. This allows for avoiding stars in the center and at the edges of the camera’s FOV when a frame is analyzed during auto-focus
HFR calculation is now computed using the mean background surrounding the star instead of the entire image’s mean
HFR calculation has been enhanced to provide more accurate results, especially for imaging systems that have central obstructions
Auto-focus trend lines now use a weighted fit based on HFR standard deviation in each image rather than an unweighted fit. This provides much better slopes and final derived focus point
A filter for use in auto-focusing can be set if “Use filter offsets” is set to true. When defined, the auto-focus routine will use the specified filter instead of the current imaging filter. Initial baseline HFR and final HFR (used to determine whether the auto-focus run was successful) will still use the intended imaging filter.
Added the ability to keep guiding active during auto-focus operations
The auto-focus routine has been changed so that it doesn’t attempt to measure the focus twice for the same point on the curve
If it is turned on, a focuser driver’s internal temperature compensation feature is now turned off before an auto-focus operation starts and is turned back on when the operation completes
Meridian Flip now has an option to trigger an auto-focus operation after a meridian flip while a sequence is running
Backlash compensation will no longer be applied more than once if focuser movement is canceled during focuser settle time
An auto-focus operation will not be performed if it might interfere with a pending meridian flip
All auto-focus operations and their data points are now logged to their own JSON-formatted file located in %LOCALAPPDATA%\NINA\AutoFocus. This allows one to retrace what was measured at a later time

Sequencer

Parameters in rows that are added to a sequence will now default to the parameters specified in the row above it
A user-specified command (batch script, Windows/DOS executable, etc.) may be ran at the conclusion of a sequence. This command may be specified under Options > Imaging > Sequence
Sequence Gain and Offset settings can now be entered without having any camera connected. The values will be validated on sequence start in case an incompatible value was specified
The pre-sequence checklist has been enhanced to check whether the telescope is parked. If it is parked, and the user affirms the action, N.I.N.A. will unpark the telescope before beginning the sequence
Added a pre-sequence check to ensure that enough disk space is available to store the whole sequence’s amount of images. The calculation does not take any file compression into account as that is unpredictable.
End of Sequence operations are now done in parallel
The “Auto-focus after % HFR Change” option has been enhanced to not be triggered by a single bad frame which might have been caused by a temporary condition such as wind or a passing vibration
“Auto-focus after % HFR Change” now resets its reference index on sequence start, a target change, or any auto-focus operation that is caused by other criteria
“Auto-focus After Number of Exposures” now correctly triggers after the specified number of exposures
When the camera fails to indicate that an image is available for download after exposure time + 15 seconds, the exposure will be canceled and skipped
When using filter offsets, NINA will no longer pause a sequence for any specified focuser settle time if there was no change in the focuser’s position after switching filters
Camera Gain and Offset are now saved as integers and are no longer saved with decimal places
Added estimated target start and end times to sequence view. This is useful for multi-target sequence sets
Guiding was improperly stopped when performing an auto-focus operation at start of sequence, even if the Disable Guiding option was false
Sequence file names are now saved with valid file name characters. Invalid characters are replaced with a hyphen (-)
Various sequence window presentation and layout improvements
HFR calculation is enforced for light frames when autofocus after HFR change is enabled to ensure that the trigger will always work

Plate Solving

Additional information has been added to the plate solve pop-up window that appears during sequencing
A camera gain and binning setting may be configured for use during automated plate solves
Removed the “Repeat until” option from the Imaging > Plate Solve tool window. This action will be always occur when “Reslew to Target” is enabled
Plate solvers will now receive an unstretched FITS image instead of a JPEG. This can allow for a quicker and more reliable solve result
Any WARNING FITS keyword that a plate solver inserts into a solved image will result in a warning notice in N.I.N.A. that contains the keyword’s text
A custom Astrometry.net API URL may be configured
Improved status feedback and logging for Astrometry.net plate solve jobs
Plate Solving window’s Sync and Reslew settings will be saved
Reworked the plate solving code completely for cleaner operations

Guiding

Improved the resiliency of StartGuider when PHD2 is unable to detect a guide star when guiding is started due to temporary clouds or other factors. An auto-retry mechanism has been added to command PHD2 to attempt to select guide star after a configurable timeout
The guiding graph will now pause during dithering to avoid displaying guide pulses that are not actual corrections
The guiding graph now displays a gray triangle icon along the X axis at the point where a dither action occurred
The drawing of lines in the guiding graph will now pause when guiding itself is paused
The scaling of lines in the guiding graph will now be consistent even if there are missing data points
Guiding graph settings are now stored in the profile and are loaded when application is started

Framing Wizard

NASA Sky Survey images now are automatically adjusted for brightness and contrast, depending on each image’s characteristics
When importing FITS or XISF files, any metadata they contain concerning the RA and declination of the image will be used to hint the plate solver. This can drastically speed up the importing of images into the Framing Wizard by avoiding blind solves
If a FITS or XISF file contains WCS (World Coordinate System) information due to it already being plate solved externally, Framing Wizard will now retrieve and use that information instead of running its own plate solve on the image, resulting in instant positioning and rendering of the image
The font size of the mosaic panel ID numbers is now scaled based on the imaging rectangle size and zoom level
Coordinate input fields in the Framing Assistant and Sequence windows now allow for -0 to be entered for declination
When loading an image file into the Framing Assistant, the rectangle dimensions are now correctly calculated

The following camera settings are now saved to the active profile: USB Limit, Offset, Gain, Binning, Readout Mode, Temperature, Cooling and Warming Duration
Images from OSC cameras now use their advertised bayer pattern instead of RGGB being assumed all the time
N.I.N.A.’s camera simulator will now assume the pixel size, bayer matrix, and sensor temperature attributes of any FITS or XISF file that is loaded into it
The equatorial system reported by the mount driver is now used, and the Epoch setting under Options > General > Astrometry has been removed. N.I.N.A. will default to J2000 when a mount’s driver reports an epoch of “other”
Wait and check to see if the mount flipped automatically at the meridian when “Use Telescope Side of Pier” is on
A short timeout after mount sync operations has been added as some mounts may not immediately report updated coordinates after a Sync command is sent to them
N.I.N.A.’s File Camera can now watch folders for Sony’s .ARW and Olympus’ .ORF RAW file formats
Reintroduced a “No Guider” option under the Equipment > Guiding device list so that unguided setups do not suffer through unwanted PHD2 executions or unnecessary errors when the “Connect All Devices” button is pressed
When a sequence is in the centering stage, rotators will now rotate to nearest orientation even if it results in an image that is upside down. An image’s vertical orientation is not relevant for framing due to the corrective action of star alignment in post-processing
Focuser control buttons are now disabled while the focuser is reporting that it is moving
A new option is available to prevent sending any Sync command to the mount. The centering logic will then use offset a coordinate calculation instead. This new logic will also be called when a Sync command fails
Added button to the Equipment > Telescope window to set the current position of the mount to be its park position. This button is available only if the connected mount’s ASCOM driver supports setting a park position
Canon camera support has been improved and many common errors have been fixed
Atik cameras that have mechanical shutters will now close those shutters when taking BIAS, DARK, or DARKFLAT images
FLI cameras no longer sit idle for the length of the exposure time prior to actually initiating the exposure
QHY native camera driver now retrieves only the non-overscan area (the “effective area”) of the sensor by default. A Camera option now exists to include the overscan area, if desired
QHY native camera driver now supports selecting readout modes if the camera offers any
QHY cameras that have mechanical shutters will now close those shutters when taking BIAS, DARK, or DARKFLAT images
QHY native camera driver now optimizes image file size based on the actual image dimensions, resulting in slightly smaller image file sizes
Binned exposures now finish on QHY cameras that have overscan areas
ZWO cameras now properly handle odd bin dimensions (e.g. 3x3)
Added a bit scaling option under Options > Equipment > Camera > Advanced Settings, intended for users of Altair Astro, Omegon, and ToupTek cameras, to bit-shift the raw sub-16 bit data camera data that N.I.N.A. receives to 16 bits in order to improve file compatibility with other capture software
FreeImage library upgraded to 3.18 for improved DSLR raw file display
ZWO cameras now write correct EGAIN values when switching Gain
ZWO cameras reset the FLIP STATUS to NONE in case it was altered by another software
Time to meridian flip is displayed in telescope windows when enabled

Imaging window changes

Added more southern hemisphere stars to the Manual Focus Stars tool
Zooming to high magnification inside the Image viewer will no longer show smeared pixels. Sharp pixel edges will be shown instead
The mid-tone stretch algorithm no longer inverts blown-out pixels
The HFR History graph now displays indicators that denote when an auto-focus operation has occurred. Hovering over an indicator with the mouse pointer will reveal details for that operation, including the previous focuser position, the newly calculated focuser position, and the focuser’s temperature at the time
Optimal Exposure Calculator (OEC) has been moved out of the statistics window and into its own tool window for improved user experience, with improved calculations
OEC can now load SharpCap Sensor Analysis files to populate fields for the camera’s full well and read noise parameters with measured values
The camera snapshot control window will now save its parameters across application sessions
Added a layout reset button for the Imaging window, located at Options > Imaging > Layout
Images from OSCs are no longer debayered for presentation twice

Planetarium software integration

All Planetarium options have been moved to their own section in the Options > Equipment tab and the Options > Planetarium tab has been removed
When using Stellarium, N.I.N.A. now takes current view’s center coordinates when no target is selected
Added an option to retrieve the coordinates of the center of the sky chart instead of any selected object when using TheSkyX
Increased reliability when parsing coordinates that are retrieved from Cartes du Ciel and Stellarium, especially in cases where the user’s locale uses characters other than the decimal point as the decimal separator
Reworked the Planetarium interfacing to be more robust

FITS and XISF support

XISF files may be created with optional compression or shuffled compression of the image data using the LZ4, LZ4-HC, or ZLib (deflate) lossless compression algorithms. Decompression of compressed XISF files is also supported
XISF files may be created with optional embedded checksums of the image data using SHA1, SHA-256, or SHA-512 hashing algorithms. Checksums are verified when opening a XISF file that includes one
Opening XISF and FITS files that have non-16 bit data is now supported. This benefits the Framing Wizard and N.I.N.A. Simulator Camera
XISF image properties for aperture and focal length now correctly state values in meters rather than millimeters

File name patterns and FITS keywords

$$DATEMINUS12$$: Shifts the current date and time to 12 hours into the past. This allows for all images from a day-crossing session to be saved into the same date folder
$$READOUTMODE$$: Allows the camera’s readout mode to be used in file or folder names
$$SQM$$: Allows the current reading from an attached sky quality meter to be used in file or folder names
$$USBLIMIT$$: Allows the USB Limit setting for the camera, if available, to be use in file or folder names
The $$FRAMENR$$ pattern now creates a 4 digit number, padding with zeros. Example: 0004
The “Image File Pattern” setting will now correctly save its state to the active profile when file patterns are dragged from the list into the “Image File Pattern” field
A new example preview of the currently-assembled file pattern appears below the “Image File Pattern” field. Any folder separators that are specified are denoted by a › character
File pattern values are now scrubbed for leading and trailing white spaces and other illegal characters to prevent the creation of an invalid file or folder name
Added the READOUTM keyword to FITS and XISF files to record the name of the readout mode used to create the image
Added the BAYERPAT, XBAYEROFF, and YBAYEROFF keywords to FITS and XISF files when using color cameras. A menu under Options > Equipment > Camera allows the user to override the driver-specified Bayer pattern with an alternative pattern. This allows for automatic debayering in some processing applications, including the use of the “Auto” setting in PixInsight’s Debayer process.
Added the USBLIMIT keyword to FITS and XISF files to record the USB Limit setting of the camera
The FITS XPIXSZ and YPIXSZ keywords (and related XISF properties) now correctly account for the binning factor

Special Thanks

The N.I.N.A. team would like to sincerely thank:

The staff at Teleskop Austria for providing an MGEN-2 unit as well as a detailed communication protocol document for implementing and fully testing MGEN-2 support in N.I.N.A.
QHYCCD for providing a QHY183M and CFW3 filter wheel to test and verify NINA’s native QHY camera and filter wheel drivers

These items helped a lot during development and testing.
Thank you for your support!

Included Camera SDK Versions:

Altair Astro: 46.16909.2020.404
Atik: 2020.6.18.0
Canon: 13.12.10
FLI: 1.104.0.0
Nikon: 1.3.1.3001
Omegon: 39.15325.2019.810
QHY: 20.6.26.0
ToupTek: 46.17309.2020.616
ZWO: 1.15.6.17

Version 1.9

Features

Camera Control

Native support for Finger Lakes Instrumentation ProLine/MicroLine cameras and color filter wheels

Switch Hubs

A new equipment type “Switch” has been added which can connect to an AscomSwitch or to a PrimaLuceLab EAGLE PC

Dither without guiding

A new Direct Guider has been added, which doesn’t require a guide camera. It can only perform random dithers. It connects directly to the telescope, and will if required perform a dither via a Pulse Guide of a user-provided duration in a random direction.
Enhanced direct guider will accept decimal durations (e.g. 0.5s), and perform random angle selection in a way that minimizes target deviation from center, even after many dither operations.

Plate Solving

Added interface for ASTAP, the Astrometric STAcking Program, astrometric solver and FITS viewer as a plate solver
Mid-sequence plate solve operations (when slewing to target, or after Meridian Flip) have been enhanced to have the following behavior:
- If plate solve fails, it automatically falls back to blind failover
- If blind failover also fails, plate solve can be set to await a certain time period (by default 10 minutes) before trying again, up to a certain number of attempts (user-defined)
- If all attempts fail, or Meridian is getting close, plate solve will be considered failed, but sequence will continue as usual
Added options to adjust downsample factor and maximum number of considered stars for ASTAP and local astrometry.net solvers

GPS Assisted Location

Added a NMEA GPS interface to retrieve the current location

Interfacing with planetarium programs

NINA can interface with Cartes du Ciel, HNSKY, Stellarium, and TheSkyX through their repsective TCP services to import the selected object for use in the Sequence Editor and Framing Assistant, as well as setting the observing location to match that which is set in those programs

Manual Camera

Inside the camera selection there is a new entry for “Manual Camera”.
This simulated camera will enable the use of cameras which lack an SDK, while still using the whole N.I.N.A. workflow.
It will watch a specified folder for newly created files. These files will be stored inside an internal queue.
Each time the application wants to download an exposure from the camera, the first item of this file queue is resolved and loaded into N.I.N.A.
Additionally a manual Bulb Mode trigger can be activated, so it will use the selected Bulb Mode in Settings->Equipment->Camera on Exposure Start.
When this trigger is deactivated the application will just skip the Start Exposure and wait for another file to roll into the specified folder

Weather data sources

The existing OpenWeatherMap implementation has been replaced with a full weather data interface.
The new interface allows devices with ASCOM ObservingConditions class drivers to supply N.I.N.A. with weather data and other conditions.
Native OpenWeatherMap functionality is maintained, and any configured OWM API key is retained and utilized by the new native OWM client.
Weather data sources are now configured under the Equipment section.
Any available weather data types (air temperature, pressure, wind speed, etc.) are inserted into images as FITS keywords and/or XISF image properties.

Focusing

Quick focuser movement buttons have been added (fine/coarse move IN/OUT) to the focuser views
A new focuser settle time parameter has been added, in case the focuser shifts the image when moving (SCT, lens belt focusing, etc.). This should help with auto-focus in particular.
Backlash can be compensated using two methods. Absolut and Overshoot. Absolut will add absolute backlash values to the movement while overshoot will overshoot the position by a larger amount and move backwards again.
Focuser backlash (in and out) can now be specified. The backlash will be applied to focuser movements depending on the method specified.
Sequence Auto-Focus can now be triggered if measured HFR of any frame is X% worse than the first frame taken after the previous auto-focus routine.
More resilient autofocus:
- Ability to automatically reattempt autofocus from scratch several times in case it failed
- Automatically go back to original focus position if obtained HFR is significantly worse than original
- Ability to take multiple autofocus exposures per focus point and average their HFR. This leads to smoother autofocus curves.
- A crop ratio has been added to the autofocus, letting users autofocus only on the center of the frame
- Autofocus can now be set to use only the top brightest stars, so the same stars are used throughout the autofocus routine. This will work best on sparse star fields, and for stable, well-aligned equipment (e.g. so stars don’t move between auto-focus exposures)
- Ability to use binning for autofocus

Sequencing

End of Sequence Options are now available, which include:
- Parking the telescope - This will stop the guiding, and invoke the mount Park method if available, otherwise the mount will slew to near the celestial pole (on the same side of Meridian it last was) and stop tracking. Before using this in production, test out the feature at the telescope, with your finger on the power switch. This is to avoid any crash into the pier for mounts that do not have limits.
- Warming the camera - the camera will be slowly cooled, with the cooler eventually turned off
A pre-sequence check is now triggered, and will notify end users of a variety of potential issues (camera not cooled yet, guider not connected, telescope not connected but slew enabled, etc.) at sequence start
It is now possible to reset the progress of a sequence item, or of a whole sequence target. If an item that occurred prior to the active sequence item is reset, stopping and starting the sequence will get back to it, but pausing/playing will keep going from the current item.
The sequence start button is unavailable if an imaging loop is in progress in the imaging tab
If telescope is capable of reporting SideOfPier there will now be a new option to consider this for calculating the need for meridian flips
It is now possible to set the Offset in addition to the Gain within each sequence item
Added buttons to move sequence row up and down the list
File handling now changed so that:
- the default folder for sequences is set under Options -> Imaging
- a ‘modified’ status is maintained for each target
- targets can be loaded from any xml file
- targets can be saved back to the file it was loaded from
- a ‘Save as’ option is added to save to a new file
- a warning is issued if a target is closed without saving when it has been modified. This also applies when the application is closed.
Controls to change order of targets in a multi-target sequence
Ability to save and load ‘target sets’ (a set of targets in a certain sequence)

Flat Wizard

Progress bars have been added for remaining filters and exposures
A new Slew to Zenith button has been added for easier flats. This includes an option for east or west pier side, depending on which side of pier the mount should approach zenith from.
A new option to pause between filters has been added. This is to allow the user the chance to set lightbox settings

Interface

Imaging tab - Equipment specific views will only show the “Connected” flag when the device is not connected to save space
Added a layout reset button to the imaging tab to restore the default dock layout.
Equipment chooser dropdowns are now grouped by driver categories to easily distinguish between for example ASCOM drivers and other vendor drivers

File Handling

All FITS keywords now have descriptive comments with units of measurement noted if applicable
FITS keyword DATE-OBS now has millisecond resolution, eg: 2019-03-24T04:04:55.045
Additional FITS keywords are now added to images if their associated data is available:
- DATE-LOC: Date and time of exposure adjusted for local time
- FOCRATIO: Focal ratio of the telescope, user-configurable under Options->Equipment->Telescope
- SET-TEMP: The configured CCD cooling setpoint
- SITEELEV: Elevation of the observing site, in meters
- SWCREATE: Contains N.I.N.A. <version> <architecture>
- TELESCOP: Telescope name if provided under Options->Equipment->Telescope. Falls back to ASCOM mount driver name

OSC Camera Handling

Debayering is now applied prior to plate-solving or auto-focus star detection
An Unlinked Stretch option has been added. When enabled, color channels will be stretched separately, helping hide the sky background. This results in more visible celestial objects, and helps enhance both autofocus and platesolving reliablity, especially in light polluted areas. Processing time is however increased.
A Debayered HFR option has been added. When enabled, the HFR computation will be made on the Debayered image rather than the Bayered array, providing better Auto-focus results

Star Detection Sensitivity

Star Detection has been enhanced to detect more stars more accurately, while avoiding picking up noise by checking that the star is a local maximum and has sufficient bright pixels
In addition, a new Star Sensitivity Parameter is available in the Imaging options. It has three settings:
- Normal: use standard NINA star detection
- High: More sensitive method, with little to no performance impact. Typically picks up 1.5x - 2.5x more stars than Normal
- Highest: Most sensitive method, with some performance impact. Typically picks up 1.5x - 2.5x more stars than High
The higher the detection level, the more likely lumps of noise are liable to be picked up (despite rejection parameters to avoid that)
A noise reduction parameter has been added for better star detection in fairly noisy images, which can be important if using High or Highest star sensitivity levels, although the Normal sensitivity level will also benefit from it. Several settings are available:
- None: no noise reduction on full size image done before star detection
- Median: a Median filter is applied to the full size image before star detection. This is good if the sensor has many hot pixels, but time consuming
- Normal: a standard fast Gaussian filter is applied to the full size image before star detection. This is good for smoothing out the thermal and bias noise of the sensor
- High: a strong fast Gaussian filter is applied to the full size image before star detection. This is for fairly noisy images, but can make star detection more difficult
- Highest: a very strong fast Gaussian filter is applied to the full size image before star detection. This is for noisy images, although star detection may suffer

Bugfixes

Fixed when FramingAssistant was not opened before and a DSO was selected from the SkyAtlas as Framing Source an error could occur
Fixed scrolling through Framing Assistant Offline Sky Map while cursor was inside Rectangle ignored zooming
Fixed Alitude charts displaying wrong Twilight/Night predictions for some scenarios
Manual focus target list was not updating in some scenarios. Now it will always update. The interval for updates is one minute.
Fixed an issue in FramingAssistant when reloading the image and having multiple panels selected, that the orientation was not considered properly resulting in wrong coordinates
Fixed an issue in the Telescope Equipment tab that could potentially slew to the wrong Declination if the declination angle was negative
Fixed issues in the subsampling logic for ASCOM, ZWO, and QHY cameras - the origin coordinates are now properly set, and take binning into account
Fixed a race condition that caused HFR to not be computed for frames right before autofocus in some instances
Fixed an issue for Nikon SDK that looked into the wrong folder for the external md3 files.
Fixed a bug where Platesolve Orientation was displayed as negative and also throwed of the rotation centering when using rotators.
Fixed a bug in Autofocus routine that could wrongly declare an autofocus run a failure if the starting point couldn’t detect any stars
Fixed custom color schema not saving properly and resetting to default when reloading the application
The backlash measurement routine has been fixed so that the focuser is properly recentered before the backlashOUT measurement procedure
Some Sky Surveys did not work in some locales due to decimal pointer settings
Fixed race condition when using DCRaw when the previous temp image was not finished processed and the new image tried to replace the previous temp image

Improvements

When EOS Utility is running in the background, the x64 N.I.N.A. client will scan for this app and prevent a crash due to the EOS utility being open. Instead a notification will show up to close the EOS Utility.
N.I.N.A. SQLite Database will be created on demand and migrated to new versions on application startup instead of just being overwritten by the installer.
Setup Installer can be run in fewer clicks and is also capable of launching the application after successful installation.
Image History Graph will only contain statistics from sequence items
Further increased parallelism during sequencing.
- After capture during image download: Parallel dither and change filter (if required)
- After download: Parallel image saving and processing to display the image
Image HFR is now available as an image file name token ($$HFR$$)
Focuser Temperature is now available as an image file name token ($$FOCUSERTEMP$$)
Added a clear button on HFR History graph. The button will be displayed when hovering the control.
A new button is added in the options to directly open the log destination folder
Added option to adjust USBLimit for Altair and Touptek cameras. This can prevent potential black preview screen issues. More details on this topic described at altair: https://altaircameras.com/black_preview_screen/

Special Thanks

The N.I.N.A. team would like to sincerely thank: - The staff at Cloud Break Optics and Finger Lakes Instrumentation for arranging a ProLine PL09000 and CFW1-5 to assist in integrating native FLI camera and filter wheel support. - Filippo Bradaschia from PrimaLuceLab for providing an EAGLE unit to implement direct interfacing with the EAGLE Manager

Included Camera SDK Versions:

Altair: 46.17427.2020.704
Atik: 8.7.3.5
Canon: 3.8.20.0
FLI: 1.104.0.0
Nikon: 1.3.0.3001
QHY: 0.5.1.0
ToupTek: 30.13342.2018.1121
ZWO: 1.14.7.15

Version 1.8 Hotfix 1

Prevent an unnecessary profile saving on application start
Profiles where always saved after a sequence exposure, which slows down the image saving process. During sequence capture the profile saving is disabled now.

Version 1.8

Features

Sequence

Enable/Disable sequence entries

Plate Solving

Added interface for All Sky Platesolver

Camera Control

Altair native driver support
ToupTek native driver support
QHYCCD native driver support
Added support for anti-dew heaters in ZWO cameras
On ASCOM drivers support for setting readout modes

Framing Assistant

Add SkyAtlas image source which allows for framing based on offline SkyAtlas data

Flat Wizard

Supports you taking flats

Imaging

Added a list of manual focus targets (bright stars) that are currently visible in the sky

Framing Assistant Offline Sky Chart

Based on Sky Atlas data a basic sky chart showing objects can be displayed
Instead of dragging the rectangular through the initial image like in the other framing sources the background itself will be moved like in an orrery

Guiding

Added Synchronized PHD2 Guider (experimental)
Synchronized PHD2 Guider will synchronize your Dither requests between multiple instances of N.I.N.A.
- Known limitations: Dithering will happen every possible synchronized frame and is not changeable

Auto-Update Channels

Previously the auto update was always just looking for released versions. Now multiple sources (Release, Beta and Nightly) can be selected and the auto updater updates to the respective version accordingls.
Additionally the changelog for the new version will now be displayed prior to updating, too.

Bugfixes

Corrected Max Binning level for ASI Cameras
Focuser move command fixed where lots of move commands where sent by accident
Rotation value now considered for sequence import|export
Canon: Fixed bulb mode for exposure times <30s
Canon: All shutter speeds now correctly added when step set custom function is set to 1/3
Meridian Flip window does not get stuck anymore when clicking on cancel
Log Level will now be set on application start based on profile settings.
ASI Cameras will not shut down their cooling and progress on opening multiple instances of NINA
In some cases the application stayed open in the background after closing. This should not happen anymore
$$DATETime$$ and $$TIME$$ will now use timestamp on exposure start, not on exposure end
Fixed Meridian Offset default values for plate solved polar alignment
On sequence target guiding will be paused, prior to slewing to a new target
Autofocus will not trigger a pause/resume command anymore, as this was not reliable in some cases. Instead PHD2 is stopped and started, similar to what is done during meridian flip.
Fixed Platesolve result reporting wrong Dec Error.
Platesolve recenter now considers proper angular distance calculation instead of relying just on Right Ascension.

Improvements

Clear button for PHD2 Graph
Hide camera cooler controls when not available for current camera model
Zero Floating point numbers now displayed as “0.00” instead of “.00”
Show better exception message when an ASCOM Interop Exception occurs
Canon: Errors are now shown to users in a readable format if any occur
Removed hard requirement of ASCOM platform. Application can now function without it
Improved UI Style.
- New logo
- Better version display
- Tweaked some color themes for more consistent colors
- Better spacing between elements to reduce wasted space
- Two new background colors to better pronounce some ui elements
- Reworked Imaging tab to have a common style.
- Imaging tab tools pane (to hide/show panels) moved to the top and split into two separate categories
Profiles don’t get overriden when using multiple instances of N.I.N.A. with each one having a separate profile active
Autostretch replaced by a better midpoint transformation function
Autostretch now has black point clipping options
Vastly improved image statistics calculation time.
Estimated Finish Time will automatically update in the sequencing view
Added copy button for existing color schemas to copy over to custom and alternative custom schemas
Framing tab:
- Moved coordinates out of framing boxes to not obscure target
- Added a new button to be able to add the framing target to a sequence instead of replacing
- Control to adjust opacity of framing box
Improved Framing Assistant and Sequence Target Textboxes by giving up to 50 target hints based on input to select from
Framing Assistant now can annotate DSO
Sensor offset is now available as an image file name token ($$OFFSET$$)
Attempt to start PHD2 and connect all equipment when connecting to guider and PHD2 is not running
Automatically import filter wheel filters to the profile on connection when profile filter list is still empty
Load a default imaging tab layout in case the layout file is corrupted or not compatible anymore
Removed Altitude Side combobox from plate solved polar alignment. It will be automatically determined based on alt/az coordinates.
Changed log file format. Each application start will write to a separate log file for better distinction
Improved XISF save speed and resulting file size by not embedding the image as base64 string, but instead as attached raw byte data
Additional FITS keywords are now added to images if their associated data is available:
- OBJECT: The name of the target, as supplied in the active Sequence
- DEC and RA: The DEC and RA of the telescope at the time of the exposure
- INSTRUME: The name of the connected camera
- OFFSET: The sensor offset, if applicable
- FWHEEL: Name of the connected filter wheel
- FOCNAME: Name of the connected focuser
- FOCPOS and FOCUSPOS: Position of the focuser, in steps
- FOCUSSZ: Size of a focuser step, in microns
- FOCTEMP and FOCUSTEM: Temperature reported by the focuser
- ROTNAME Name of the connected rotator
- ROTATOR and ROTATANG: Angle of the rotator
- ROTSTPSZ Minimum rotator step size, in degrees
- Applicable XISF Image Property analogs of the above, as defined by XISF 1.0 Section 11.5.3

Special Thanks

The N.I.N.A. team would like to thank

Nick Smith from Altair Astro for providing a GPCAM2 290C to integrate Altair SDK
Elias Erdnuess from Astroshop.eu for providing multiple Toupcam Cameras to integrate ToupTek SDK
The staff at QHYCCD dealer Cloud Break Optics for lending a QHY183C to integrate QHYCCD SDK

These items helped a lot during development and testing.
Thank you for your support!

Version 1.7

Features

Framing Assistant

Mosaic planning for framing assistant
Added multiple new SkySurveys to choose from for framing
DSLR RAW files can now be loaded into framing assistant

Sequences

Sequence multiple target planning. Import/Export also available
Consider Rotation for framing assistant when set for a sequence during platesolves

Filter Wheel

Added a manual FilterWheel for users without a motorized wheel or with a filter drawer. There will pop up a window and prompt the user when a filter change is requested

Rotators

Support for ASCOM Rotators added
A manual rotator option is added, for users without an automatic rotator. A pop up will show with the current angle and target angle for a user to manually rotate to

Imaging

DSLR Users: Images will now always be saved as RAW to prevent any loss of data due to conversions
Aberration inspector added to imaging tab. It will show a 3x3 Panel containing the current image
Battery display for DSLRs

Settings

Added ImageParameter $$RMSARCSEC$$ and $$FOCUSPOSITION$$
Latitude and Longitude can now be synced from application to telescope and vica versa (when supported).
Serial Relay (via USB) interaction for Nikon Bulb

Bugfixes

Fixed Canon issue that a second exposure is accidentally triggered, causing the camera to be stuck
Fixed memory leak when using Free Image RAW Converter

Improvements

Guider is also connected when pushing “Connect All”
Changed FilterWheel UI for switching filters
Some improvements to memory consumption
Automatically triggered Autofocus and Platesolving now spawns inside a separate window
Guiding Dither thresholds now configurable
Flipped + and - for Stepper Controls
Minor UI Layout improvements
Made SkySurvey Cache directory configurable
Local astrometry.net client will now downscale image for faster image solving
ImagePatterns inside options can now be dragged from the list to the textbox
Major code refactorings for better maintainability
Lots and lots of minor bugfixes and improvements
Launch NINA with a specific ProfileId via cmdline
Integrated with Windows JumpList feature to launch instance with specific profile loaded
Enhanced Altitude Check to permit imaging of targets that are below the configured altitude when they are rising in the sky and display a visual cue to distinguish rising versus setting targets

N.I.N.A. - Nighttime Imaging ‘N’ Astronomy Changelog

Version 3.2

Bugfixes

Improvements

Commandline Options

Plugin Development

AssemblyLoadContext

Version 3.1 Hotfix 2

Improvements

Bug Fixes

Version 3.1 Hotfix 1

Improvements

Bug Fixes

Version 3.1

Behavioral Changes

Improvements

Bugfixes

Plugin Development

New Feature: IMessageBroker Interface

Introduction of IMessageBroker Interface:

Publishing Messages:

Subscribing to Messages:

Event Additions

Platesolve Measurements

New Control “Browser”

Version 3.0

Important Changes

.NET 8

Improvements

Commandline Options

Flat Wizard Rework

Flat Wizard screen

Trained Flat Exposure List

New Instructions for advanced sequencer

Object Database Additions

File Formats

FITS

XISF

Alpaca

Bugfixes

Version 2.3 Hotfix 2

Improvements

Bugfixes

Version 2.3 Hotfix 1

Bugfixes

Improvements

Version 2.3

Improvements

Bugfixes

Version 2.2

Bugfixes

Features

Improvements

Altair, Mallincam, Omegon, Risingcam and Touptek

PlayerOne

Version 2.1

Bugfixes

Improvements

Plugin Enablement

Version 2.0 Hotfix 2

Bugfixes

Improvements

Features

Plugin Enablement

Version 2.0 HF 1

Bugfixes

Improvements

Features

Version 2.0

Important change of existing settings and panels

X86 Deprecation

Complete Sequencer Rework

Sequence Tab changed to show a sequence navigation first

New Advanced Sequencer

New Plugin Tab

Framing Tab

Imaging Tab - Sequence Panel

New hardware support

SkyGuard

MGEN3

New Feature: `IMessageBroker` Interface

Introduction of `IMessageBroker` Interface: