Cygnus Release Notes
Cygnus 1.0.8 (July 8, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Grouped Body Selection Lists: The body selection lists now organize celestial bodies under collapsible groups — Diurnal Angles, Planets, Barycenters, Lunar Axis, Asteroids, and Centaurs. Click a group's row (or press Space or Enter on it) to open or close the group, with the chevron rotating to show its state. The Planets and Lunar Axis groups start open, and each group's open/closed state is remembered while the study remains open; a group's checked bodies are always preserved, even while the group is closed.
• Animated Chevrons: The chevron indicators on the dropdown, date picker, and time picker controls now animate smoothly as they open and close, giving clearer visual feedback.
The following bugs were fixed:
• Records Columns Out of Sync: Fixed an issue where the records grid columns could stop matching the selected bodies and metrics. For example, after generating an ephemeris, unlocking it, then deselecting some bodies and changing which metrics were shown, some bodies could keep displaying the wrong columns — such as a Sign column that stayed visible after Sign Position was turned off. The visible columns now always reflect the current body and metric selections.
Cygnus 1.0.7 (July 4, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• House System Removed from Default Settings: The House System option has been removed from the Default Settings editor. No studies use a house system, so the setting had no effect.
• Start Time, Interval, and Time Unit Added to Default Settings: The Default Settings editor now includes the Start Time, record Interval, and Time Unit for both the Application and Workspace defaults, so new studies are initialized with your preferred chronological settings.
• Cygnus Command-Line Interface: A new headless companion tool, cygnus-cli, runs all six ephemeris study types from the command line or from scripts — no desktop app required. It can generate ephemeris tables, look up positions for a set of bodies at a single moment, and run every study in an existing workspace file (optionally saving the results back so the desktop app opens them ready-made). Output is available as JSON, CSV, or TSV, and results are numerically identical to the desktop app's.
Cygnus 1.0.6 (June 29, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Improved Look & Feel: The user interface has received a visual refresh, with tidier layouts and more consistent styling throughout the application for a smoother, more pleasant experience.
The following bugs were fixed:
• Time Interval Numeric Entry on macOS: The Time Interval field in study settings now correctly rejects non-numeric input on macOS, matching the behavior on Windows. Typing letters, signs, or other symbols no longer enters them into the field, and pasting mixed text keeps only the digits — so the field always holds a positive whole number.
• Click to Select a Date or Time: Clicking into a date or time field now highlights the whole value so you can immediately type a new one — the same as tabbing into the field. Clicking a second time places the cursor where you click, so you can still edit just part of the date or time.
Cygnus 1.0.5 (June 20, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Date & Time Controls: New date and time entry controls have been added for defining study parameters. They use the same source code as the equivalent controls in the Natal Records Editor. This ensures a consistent data entry experience within the application and across applications.
• Clear All Bodies: The body selection lists now offer a Clear All command in the right-click menu, directly below Deselect. Selecting it unchecks every body in the list at once, regardless of which rows are highlighted. The option is available whenever at least one body is selected.
• Clear All Metrics: The metric selection lists — including the body metrics and aspect metrics lists in the ephemerides studies — now offer the same Clear All command in their right-click menus. It unchecks every metric in the list at once, regardless of which rows are highlighted, and is available whenever at least one metric is selected.
• Dark Theme by Default: On first launch — before any theme preference has been saved — the application now starts in the dark theme instead of the light theme. Your saved theme preference is still remembered and applied on later launches, and you can switch between light and dark at any time.
• Application Colors: A critical review of the application color scheme was done.
• Faster Study Switching: Switching between studies is now near-instantaneous. Previously, selecting a different study unloaded the current study's results and rebuilt the next one from scratch — a noticeable delay for studies containing many records. Each study's results are now kept ready in the background, so switching is immediate, and a study's column layout and selected row are preserved when you return to it.
• Code Maintainability: An extensive refactor of the application's source code was completed. It introduces no change to how the application looks or behaves, but it streamlines the underlying code so the application can be maintained and enhanced more easily going forward.
The following bugs were fixed:
• Workspace Memory Leak: Closing or replacing a workspace did not release all of its study-creation commands — the commands for the heliocentric and topocentric aspect ephemerides studies were kept in memory until the application exited. All commands are now released when a workspace is closed.
• Editing Date & Time Fields: Highlighting only some of the digits within a segment of a date or time field — a day, month, year, hour, minute, or second — and typing now replaces just the highlighted digits in place. Previously this cleared the entire field and the typed digits landed at the very beginning. For example, with the year 2152 you can now highlight the "15" and type "26" to get 2262.
Cygnus 1.0.4 (May 31, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Keyboard Navigation: Improved keyboard navigation behaviour when tabbing from one control to another for mutliple control types.
• Spacebar Toggle: When one or more rows are selected (highlighted) in a list of selectable items (e.g. list of bodies), pressing the spacebar will now toggle the checkbox state.
• Metrics List Keyboard Behaviour: The selectable Body Metrics and Aspect Metrics lists now share the same keyboard behaviour as the selectable bodies list: tabbing in highlights the focused row, Space toggles the highlighted rows, and toggling a row's checkbox or running Select / Deselect from the context menu no longer drops focus to the main menu.
• System Updates: All software components have been updated to the latest versions.
The following bugs were fixed:
• Location Editor: Fixed a bug that put the first row of the location editor into edit mode when the user initially clicked on the row to select it.
• Row Highlight: Fixed a bug where tabbing onto a selectable bodies list (or other selectable items list) left the focused row unhighlighted until the user pressed an arrow key.
• Recent Files: Fixed a bug that left the application in an unusable state when opening a workspace from the Recent Files menu whose containing folder no longer exists.
Cygnus 1.0.3 (April 7, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Update Notifications: When a new version of Cygnus is available for download, a toolbar button with a download glyph will appear next to the theme toggle button in the top-right region of the application window. Clicking on the button opens the download page for Cygnus in the user's default web browser.
• System Updates: All software components have been updated to their latest versions.