Laminar
Native planetary imaging capture for macOS and Apple Silicon
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Andrew Burwell

Laminar - Native planetary imaging capture for macOS and Apple Silicon

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Laminar
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Laminar is the first planetary imaging capture app built natively for macOS. Record high-framerate SER video of Jupiter, Saturn, the Moon, and the Sun through your telescope with real-time frame quality analysis, atmospheric seeing scores, and automatic target tracking. Built in Swift with Metal GPU acceleration for Apple Silicon. Supports ZWO ASI and PlayerOne cameras. Free to download with an optional one-time Pro upgrade. A native Mac alternative to FireCapture and SharpCap.

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Andrew Burwell
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Hey Product Hunt! I'm Andrew, a designer who taught himself Swift to solve a problem that's bugged me for years: there's no good native Mac app for planetary astrophotography. Planetary imaging is a specific workflow -- you record thousands of video frames through a telescope, then stack the sharpest ones to cut through atmospheric turbulence. On Windows there are solid capture tools (FireCapture, SharpCap). On Mac, your options have been Wine wrappers or nothing. Laminar is my answer to that. It's a native Swift/SwiftUI app that handles the capture side with a few things the Windows tools don't offer: a live frame quality graph so you can confirm focus while you're still at the telescope, atmospheric seeing scores before you set up, and automatic planet tracking that follows your target frame-by-frame. This is a 1.0 -- I've kept the scope tight on purpose. No filter wheel or mount control yet. I'd rather get capture right first. I'm also building a companion stacking app called Strata (currently in beta) so the full pipeline can stay on Mac. Free to download, one-time $34.99 Pro upgrade for the advanced features. No subscription. Happy to answer any questions about the app or the dev journey -- this was my first Mac app and building it with Claude Code has been quite an experience.
swati paliwal

@andrew_burwell1 How does the live frame quality graph change the setup process in practice? Does it save time tweaking focus under the stars?

Andrew Burwell
Maker

@swati_paliwal What it does it give you the only information you have on how in focus you are for any given moment of seeing. Even if seeing is poor, you can achieve focus, so that when seeing clears up, you'll be a the optimal focus point. It's mainly of benefit to anyone who doesn't have a motorized focuser, and is focusing by hand. Hope that helps!

Alex J Jemmy

Hello Andrew 👋
This looks amazing. I’ve struggled with planetary imaging on Mac for years and always had to use windows tools through workarounds. Finally having a native app feels like a game changer.

Andrew Burwell
Maker

@alex_j_jemmy I've been running my personal site where I catalog all applications available on the Mac, and I've been doing it for close to 10 years now. I knew there were gaps in the planetary imaging and processing area, and really wanted to address them with something uniquely Mac. My stacking application is in beta right now, but hope to close out that gap as well, and have a nice pair of Mac native tools. Glad you like it!