Mac Observatory Suite
Strata
Professional planetary stacking and sharpening for macOS. From SER capture to publication-ready image — in one app.
Requires macOS 14 or newer and an Apple Silicon Mac.
Planetary imaging on Mac shouldn't require a Windows partition.
Today's planetary workflow means bouncing between three or four Windows-only tools — AutoStakkert for stacking, RegiStax for sharpening, maybe PIPP for preprocessing. Each has its own interface, its own quirks, and none of them run natively on your Mac. You're stuck with virtual machines, Boot Camp, or hoping someone ports a Python script.
Strata replaces the entire chain. Drop in a SER file, and Strata handles quality analysis, multi-point alignment, stacking, sharpening, and export — all in one native macOS app built for Apple Silicon. No emulators. No command-line tools. No guesswork.
Guided Workflow
Seven phases. One linear path. Zero guesswork.
Strata guides you through every step of planetary processing — from raw SER video to a publication-ready image. Each phase builds on the last, with smart defaults that work out of the box and expert controls when you need them.
Navigate freely between completed phases. Go back to adjust your stack percentage, re-tune your sharpening, or try a different stacking method — your work is preserved. Keyboard shortcuts (⌘1–7) jump directly to any phase.
Already stacked in another app? Drop a TIFF or PNG and Strata skips straight to the Sharpen phase. It works as a complete pipeline or a standalone sharpening tool.
SER video in → publication-ready image out
Metal GPU Acceleration
Every pixel processed on the GPU. Every operation accelerated.
Strata is built from the ground up on Metal compute shaders. Quality analysis runs at 1,500 frames per second. Stacking is 93× faster than CPU. Wavelet sharpening updates in real time as you drag sliders — no waiting, no render button.
Unified memory means zero bottleneck. On Apple Silicon, the CPU and GPU share the same memory pool. There's no copying frames back and forth — data stays where it is and gets processed at full speed.
Traditional planetary tools were built for CPUs a decade ago. Strata was designed for the hardware you actually own.
Benchmarked on Apple M1 — faster on M2, M3, M4
Stacking Engine
Three stacking methods. From quick preview to maximum detail.
Strata includes three GPU-accelerated stacking methods, each designed for a different tradeoff between speed and quality. Choose Simple Average for a fast look, Multi-Point for full local alignment, or AP-Dewarp for pixel-precise stacking with zero interpolation blur.
Multi-Point stacking is where the magic happens. Strata divides your planet into a grid of alignment points, measures atmospheric distortion independently at each one, and stacks the sharpest frames region-by-region. The result: detail that a global average simply can't recover.
All three methods use per-AP frame selection, sub-pixel parabolic refinement, and feathered blending with linear ramp weights. Quality-ranked frames are selected automatically — you just choose the percentage.
All methods: GPU accelerated · per-AP frame selection · quality ranked
Sharpening & Enhancement
Three sharpening engines. Real-time preview on every adjustment.
Strata ships with three GPU-accelerated sharpening engines — each suited to different targets and goals. Drag any slider and the preview updates instantly. No render button, no waiting. Split view, side-by-side, or toggle comparison lets you see exactly what each adjustment does.
Wavelet sharpening is the planetary standard — six layers of à trous decomposition with independent sharpen and denoise per layer. Strata processes luminance only (YUV mode) to sharpen detail without introducing color noise.
Wiener deconvolution reverses optical blur mathematically — effective on well-stacked data where the PSF is consistent. WOW Solar uses wavelet whitening to reveal structure across the entire dynamic range of solar captures.
All engines: real-time preview · split comparison · GPU accelerated
Color Science
Color correction and target-specific enhancement — built in.
Strata doesn't just stack and sharpen. It understands what you're imaging and applies the right color science automatically — from atmospheric correction to mineral-mapping the Moon.
Automatically detects atmospheric dispersion and realigns the RGB channels to sub-pixel precision. Removes the color fringing that appears on planets imaged at low altitudes — no hardware ADC required.
One-click white balance that neutralizes color casts from camera sensor response and atmospheric extinction. Gets you to a natural starting point before any creative adjustments.
Enhances the subtle color differences across the lunar surface to reveal mineral composition. Titanium-rich maria glow blue, iron-rich highlands shift warm. The colors are real — just invisible to the eye at normal saturation.
Dedicated color treatment for white-light solar imaging. Brings out sunspot umbra and penumbra detail, granulation texture, and limb prominences across the full dynamic range of the solar disk.
Analyze, Stack & Sharpen
Everything else that makes Strata complete.
From frame analysis to multi-image derotation — every tool a planetary imager needs.
Quality Analysis
Two quality metrics — Laplacian variance and Sobel gradient — rank every frame at 1,500 fps. Interactive histogram lets you set the cutoff visually.
Target Detection
Automatically classifies planets vs. surface targets (Moon, Sun) using edge brightness analysis, then applies the right alignment strategy for each.
AP Grid Overlay
Visualize exactly where alignment points are placed. Staggered grid with brightness, contrast, and structure filtering — only valid regions get measured.
Multi-Image Derotation
Combine multiple captures taken over an extended session. Optical flow registration with centroid pre-alignment corrects rotation between stacks.
Split Comparison
Three comparison modes — split with draggable divider, side-by-side, and toggle (press T). See your sharpening changes against the original at any zoom level.
Color Adjustment
Dedicated color phase with histogram visualization and white balance controls. Fine-tune after sharpening — the right place in the workflow for color work.
Metadata & Templates
Every export embeds full processing metadata — target, frames stacked, settings, software version. Configurable filename templates with date, target, and method tokens.
Multi-File Sessions
Import up to 10 SER files per session for batch stacking and derotation. Scrollable thumbnail cards with per-file dimensions, frame counts, and status.
Zoom to 8×
Inspect your result at up to 800% magnification. Pan freely across the image, check limb detail, verify cloud band sharpness — at the pixel level.
Mac Observatory Suite
One ecosystem. From photons to archive.
The Mac Observatory Suite is a family of native macOS applications built for amateur astronomers. Each app is designed from the ground up in Swift and SwiftUI, taking full advantage of Apple Silicon, Metal GPU acceleration, and macOS features like Quick Look, Spotlight, and SwiftData.
Laminar captures planetary video with real-time frame quality analysis — so you know your session is sharp before you stack. Strata replaces the entire Windows stacking workflow with one GPU-accelerated app that processes 1,500 frames per second. Meridian turns years of scattered FITS files into a searchable, visual archive — no internet required.
Each app works independently, but they're built to complement each other.
SER video → stacked image → cataloged archive
Each app available separately on the Mac App Store
Compatibility
SER video in. Publication-ready images out.
Supported Formats
System Requirements
Pricing
Free to sharpen. One purchase to unlock everything.
Already stacked in another app? Use Strata's sharpening and color tools for free — forever.
Mac Observatory Suite
Planetary processing, native on your Mac.
From SER capture to publication-ready image — stacking, sharpening, and color in one GPU-accelerated app.
Requires macOS 14 or newer and an Apple Silicon Mac.
FAQ
Common questions
Strata takes raw planetary video captures (SER files) and turns them into sharp, publication-ready images. It handles the entire processing pipeline: frame quality analysis, alignment, stacking, sharpening, color correction, and export. It replaces the multi-app workflow of AutoStakkert + RegiStax (or similar) with a single native macOS application.
AutoStakkert handles stacking and RegiStax handles sharpening — two separate Windows-only applications. Strata combines both into one app that runs natively on your Mac with full GPU acceleration. It includes three stacking methods and three sharpening engines, plus features those tools don't have: software ADC correction, Mineral Moon enhancement, solar enhancement, and multi-image derotation.
The biggest difference is speed. Strata's Metal GPU pipeline analyzes frames at 1,500 fps and delivers real-time sharpening preview as you adjust sliders — no render button, no waiting.
Yes. Strata reads standard SER video files — 8-bit and 16-bit, Bayer and RGB. Any capture application that outputs SER files will work, including FireCapture, SharpCap, Laminar, and ASIStudio. You don't need Laminar to use Strata.
Absolutely — and it's free. Drop a TIFF, PNG, or FITS image into Strata and it skips straight to the Sharpen phase. You get all three sharpening engines (Wavelet, Wiener, WOW Solar), color tools, and export — with no purchase required. It's a great way to try Strata if you're still stacking in another app.
Strata requires an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) and macOS 14 Sonoma or newer. The GPU acceleration pipeline is built on Metal compute shaders optimized for Apple Silicon's unified memory architecture. Intel Macs are not supported.
Strata is designed for high-resolution solar system imaging — planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Venus, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune), the Moon, and the Sun. These are "lucky imaging" targets captured as video, where stacking the sharpest frames overcomes atmospheric seeing.
It is not designed for deep sky (DSO) imaging, which uses a different workflow of long-exposure FITS frames processed in tools like PixInsight or Siril.
Simple Average is the fastest — it averages your best frames with no local alignment. Good for quick previews and well-tracked captures with stable seeing.
Multi-Point is the recommended method. It divides the planet into a grid of alignment points and corrects atmospheric distortion region-by-region, stacking the sharpest frames at each point independently.
AP-Dewarp uses integer-pixel shifts with zero interpolation. It avoids any blur from sub-pixel resampling — what you stack is exactly what was captured.
Planets rotate. Jupiter makes a full rotation every ~10 hours, so if you capture multiple SER files over a session, surface features shift between captures. Derotation uses optical flow registration to align and combine multiple stacked images, compensating for that rotation. The result is higher signal-to-noise than any single capture can achieve.
No. Strata works entirely offline. All processing happens locally on your Mac using the GPU. There are no cloud services, no subscriptions, and no data leaves your machine.
No. Strata is a standalone application. It reads standard SER files from any capture tool. Laminar and Strata are companion apps in the Mac Observatory Suite, and future versions will share metadata via sidecar files — but neither requires the other.