Richard S. Wright Jr

A reminder that I have 50 blogs on beginning astrophotography over @SkyandTelescope that are free. skyandtelescope.org/astronom…

My latest YouTube video is a presentation on Lunar Libration. All animations were made with a future edition of #TheLunartic. youtu.be/hf8mOPUdYk8

I did a Zoom talk the other night about SmartEye and some other projects I'm working on. You can watch it after the fact here: app.astrobin.com/u/Jimmy2K63…

Can your Lunar Atlas do this? The Lunartic can. apps.apple.com/us/app/the-lu…

#TheLunartic uses @VulkanAPI for it's rendering and compute to simulate viewing the Moon with a telescope. I added a benchmark to the upcoming desktop version (currently iOS only) and compared performance between LavaPipe, MoltenVK, and KosmicKrisp. There's a lot of compute to trace the shadows, and there's a relief only option without shadows. KosmicKrisp is about twice as fast as MoltenVK for this use case for both modes.

Tonight’s lunar journey was courtesy of my 180 @svtelescopes refractor “Gandalf”. It was a great trip. Now it’s time for sleep.

We are a few months from prime Mars observing season, but I wanted to re-validate my Mars rendering in #TheWandersAlmanac. I spent a lot of time making sure Jupiters GRS was correct, so I wanted to make sure Martian features were right too. Here's some comparisons between some images I got from the BAA site taken from Earth by Amateurs and the rendering in my dedicated planet observing app. Okay, that'll do. #Astronomy #Mars

Here’s a sneak peek at a new feature coming soon for #TheWanderersAlmanac and #TheLunartic. You’ll be able to add your own observation logs while scope side. Manage equipment lists, etc.

KosmicKrisp raises the bar for @VulkanAPI on Apple hardware. Conformant, fast, stable. Open Source.

New video! Time Control in #TheLunartic to see changes to shadows and libration effects. youtu.be/7hdrbEhtihE?si=l-Lq… via @YouTube

Better late than never, I pushed a 1.21 version of #TheWanderersAlmanac that adds opposition and inferior conjunction times to the planet ephemeris.

Saturn is at opposition! Looking at it tonight? Get The Wanderers' Almanac to identify those moons, check for future shadow events, etc. #TheWanderersAlmanac #Saturn #Astronomy starstonesoftware.com/wander…

The Wanderers' Almanac just got a version bump with some cool new features I hope you will like! youtu.be/y7_H3zeD_Io?si=79EC… via @YouTube

A LOT of work went into this. KosmicKrisp is pretty solid now.

I’m very excited to see this come about. We’ve been packaging it in the Vulkan SDK for a while now and it’s my primary desktop driver for Vulkan on macOS. For the astro work I’m doing its also significantly faster than MoltenVk.

Short notice, but I'm going to be on @SkyWatcherUSA webcast in a little bit talking about #TheLunartic and The Wanderers' Almanac. Of course you can always watch it later... youtube.com/watch?v=b0jH-EN-…

A quick blog this morning about #TheLunartic, my lunar atlas simulator and observing tool. eveningshow.com/2026/09/intr…

I did get to see the Moon last night! The view matched #TheLunartic experimental shadow simulation feature almost exactly. I could see the tiny peak of Tycho’s central peak visually, but it doesn’t show up here. 99.9% is not bad, I’ll be working to close that gap though.

Happy International Observe the Moon Night! I hope everyone gets a chance to get out and see our nearest celestial neighbor. If you can't may I suggest the next best thing - an accurate simulation on your iOS device? #TheLunartic is now on the App store. apps.apple.com/us/app/the-lu… If you search by name, it still shows up 2nd behind an astrology app... come'on gang we can't let that stand can we? ;-)

I've made an introductory video about The Lunartric. This is an interactive lunar atlas and exploration tool. I'm pretty pleased with the realism I've managed to achieve on a mobile device. Check it out! #TheLunartic #Moon youtu.be/gntlxRJiXO4