June 2021 update
📜 UpdatedTerms of Service
💨 Even more speed!
🌌 Ability to specify what user groups can see your images at full-size
👷♂ Work in progress on the new equipment database
🏆 Slight change in the IOTD/TP process
📺 I will present at TAIC (The Astro Imaging Channel) on YouTube!
I hope you find this interesting!
May 2021 update
Before I kick-off with what what is new on AstroBin this May, I want to mention one last time, for those who missed it, that this is a very special time for me (and, by extension, for us all).
Thanks to AstroBin's growth in 2020, and the trust of so many of you who bought the Ultimate membership tier, starting from May 2021, after ten and a half years of working on AstroBin on the side, I was finally able focus on AstroBin full-time!
This is great news not only for me, as it's the coronation of a dream I have chased for 10 years, but for everybody: I have a lot of interesting things in the pipeline, and from now, AstroBin will continue improving at an accelerated pace!
Thank you so much again for your support!
Salvatore
April 2021 update
The list of new things in April is not huge, as I was very busy wrapping up my day job, dealing with a higher than normal volume of user support requests, and doing some home renovations. But without further ado, here it goes.
March 2021 update
Dear AstroBin user,
Every month I'm sending out updates on what's new on AstroBin, and this month is no exception. But this time, I have very exciting news to share, so I'll do it first thing!
2020 has been a hard year for many people, and I have taken this hardship as an opportunity: I doubled-down on my work on AstroBin, and I stayed up working until 1 or 2 AM pretty much every night, in order to make it better, faster, more robust and reliable, and add a ton of new features. I'm not going to go thru the new features again (please see the January 2021 newsletter for that), but we can all agree that AstroBin has improved a lot.
This work has not been fruitless, as many of you have continued to renew your subscriptions, and many of you reading are new members. AstroBin has seen a lot of growth in the past year, and this brings me to the really good news.
Last year, as I announced the Ultimate subscription tier, I told everyone that after 10 years of hard work, I was dreaming of making AstroBin my full-time job.
Well, your support has worked: starting from May 2021, after ten and a half years of working on AstroBin on the side, I will finally be able to quit my day job and focus on AstroBin full-time!
This is great news not only for me, as it's the coronation of a dream I have chased for 10 years, but for everybody: I have a lot of interesting things in the pipeline, and from now, AstroBin will continue improving at an accelerated pace!
Thank you so much again for your support!
February 2021 update
February has been another month of intense work on AstroBin, continuing on the 2020 trend that saw an average of 7 software changes per day.
In this short message, I'd like to quickly recap what's new:
Planning of the new Equipment database
Infratructure improvements
"Like" button on full size view
Chinese localization and AliPay are coming!
January 2021 update
2020 was a year of very intense work on AstroBin, and the platform benefitted from a vast number of improvements and fixes, including:
the new Ultimate subscription tier which brings a few new features to the plate, the most notable of which is the advanced plate-solving provided by PixInsight.
The support for embedded ICC color profiles.
The beginning of the process to modernize the frontend via a new webapp (already available for the upload pages, notification pages, subscription pages, and 2 of the 3 pages of the IOTD process).
The click-and-zoom on the large image view.
An improved hosting and deployment infrastructure for better stability.
Lots of other small fixes and improvements!
AstroBin's 2020: a review of this roller coaster.
I would like to take you on a trip thru 2020, to share what happened on AstroBin. This email is mostly going to be about the updates that the platform received, so, If you're interested, please get comfy and read on!
2020 has been a roller coast of a year, and everybody can testify to that. Some of us were lucky, some not so much. I have been very lucky in that nobody in my family and close circle was infected or affected by Covid-19 too much.
Celebrating 10 years of AstroBin
On this day 10 years ago, on the 27th of November, 2010, I sat down and wrote the first line of code for AstroBin.
I had been moving my first steps in astrophotography for a few months, and when I realized how much work went into every astrophotograph, I could not accept that fact that there wasn't a dedicated place to share this work, other than generic image hosting platforms and forums.
Online retailer integration in collaboration with Tolga Astro
AstroBin benefits from a vast database of equipment items, and with its position as the most popular world-wide hub for Astrophotography, there has been a demand for integration of the AstroBin equipment database with existing online retailers of astronomy and astrophotography products.
Since October 2020, AstroBin is very proud to join a collaboration with Tolga Astro for AstroBin visitors in the USA.
New: embedded color profiles, sharpening, default cropping
Today I released a few new noteworthy additions to AstroBin. I am very excited to have finally addressed the big elephant in the room: embedded color profiles.
From now on, AstroBin will rendition the correct colors in all modern browsers when you submit an image with an embedded color profile. This is achieved by applying the color profile to thumbnails in the sRGB colorspace.