systematic craft feedback for astrophotography — not a judgment, a mirror
what is astroscore?
astroscore uses Claude AI to analyse astrophotography images against a set of craft parameters and returns structured, systematic feedback calibrated against AstroBin's IOTD, Top Pick, Top Pick Nomination, and general image population.
v4 introduces scope type and aperture fields, a simplified processing workflow selector, an intentional decisions field, and score ranges in place of single values — all designed to make the feedback more contextually aware of your specific setup and creative choices.
This tool won't tell you whether your image moves someone emotionally — that's not its job. It analyses craft, not feeling. Disagree with it freely — that's the point.
the universe belongs to all of us, and each person's interaction with it is valid. you are made of this.
a note on costs and sustainability
astroscore is free to use. running it costs real money — api and cloud infrastructure on every analysis. if the community finds it useful and supports it via ☕ buy me a coffee, it stays free. monthly supporters help most.
no drama, no hard sell. just a tool built for the community, trying to stay that way.
what's new in v4
scope type
An optional dropdown lets you specify your telescope type (refractor, newtonian, ritchey-chrétien, dall-kirkham, mak-cass, mak-newt, SCT). The tool uses this to understand which optical characteristics are expected — for example, diffraction spikes from a newtonian or RC are a property of the design, not a flaw, and will no longer be flagged as such.
aperture
An optional aperture field (in mm) lets the tool contextualise resolution feedback. A 76mm refractor and a 500mm RC have very different resolution limits — the tool now factors this in, rather than giving feedback that assumes more resolving power than your instrument can deliver. Where resolution is constrained by aperture, the tool will look for whether your framing and subject choice are appropriate for that aperture, rather than penalising you for physics.
simplified processing workflow
The processing dropdown has been simplified to four categories — OSC broadband, OSC dualband, Mono broadband, Mono narrowband — plus combined options for hybrid workflows. A free-text palette field lets you specify the exact palette used (e.g. SHO, HOO, HaRGB) to prime the tool for your specific colour mapping.
intentional decisions field
A free-text field lets you flag deliberate creative choices before the analysis runs — for example: "the bright star is intentionally retained", "the composition is deliberate", "stars have been processed with StarXTerminator". The tool will treat these as intentional decisions rather than potential flaws, making the feedback more focused on what you actually want input on.
score ranges
Scores are now shown as narrow ranges (e.g. 8.0–8.1) rather than single values. This reflects the reality that aesthetic judgements cannot be expressed with false precision — the underlying score is well-calibrated, and the range simply acknowledges that a 7.8 and an 8.0 are genuinely within each other's uncertainty bounds.
the tool is a mirror, not a judge.
very novel software — comments were pretty close to my thoughts on my images and processing techniquesabout as good as asking an honest, experienced astrophotographer for feedbackalerted me to a slight residual background gradient which was picked up welldraws my attention to elements of my image I had not considered beforea great tooli'm very impressedi've been using it regularlyit provides a really valuable objective point of viewa heck of a tool — it will help both novice and experienced astrophotographersa great idea and a lot of work behind the appi learned a lot from reading the critique — found it helpfulthe feedback is clear, concise and constructivethis is a cool tool!!!like having an expert astro image processor looking over your shouldervery useful tool, the comments i got so far are very helpfuluploaded a two panel mosaic and was pretty impressed by the feedbacki'm going to try some reprocessing based on the ai recommendationsvery useful tool!it pointed out something i'd never noticed in my image before!very fair critiquegave me very relevant critics — excellent program!this is a very clever piece of software which prompts you to push your processing to a higher level. but it is also fun to use.great tool, thanks for creating itwhat a fantastic tool — very constructive and instant feedback, and quite fun toomany thanks for your great work — your tips are really helpful!a very useful tool for identifying potential areas for improvement in an imagea very useful tool to guide me in the early stages of learning to process imagesthe tool picked up on a couple of things i can't unsee nowa great tool for learning what to look out for and consider in an imagevery novel software — comments were pretty close to my thoughts on my images and processing techniquesabout as good as asking an honest, experienced astrophotographer for feedbackalerted me to a slight residual background gradient which was picked up welldraws my attention to elements of my image I had not considered beforea great tooli'm very impressedi've been using it regularlyit provides a really valuable objective point of viewa heck of a tool — it will help both novice and experienced astrophotographersa great idea and a lot of work behind the appi learned a lot from reading the critique — found it helpfulthe feedback is clear, concise and constructivethis is a cool tool!!!like having an expert astro image processor looking over your shouldervery useful tool, the comments i got so far are very helpfuluploaded a two panel mosaic and was pretty impressed by the feedbacki'm going to try some reprocessing based on the ai recommendationsvery useful tool!it pointed out something i'd never noticed in my image before!very fair critiquegave me very relevant critics — excellent program!this is a very clever piece of software which prompts you to push your processing to a higher level. but it is also fun to use.great tool, thanks for creating itwhat a fantastic tool — very constructive and instant feedback, and quite fun toomany thanks for your great work — your tips are really helpful!a very useful tool for identifying potential areas for improvement in an imagea very useful tool to guide me in the early stages of learning to process imagesthe tool picked up on a couple of things i can't unsee nowa great tool for learning what to look out for and consider in an image
tell us about your image — all optional, fill in before dropping image
pillar weights must sum to 1.0
sum: 1.00 ✓
drag a box around the area you want the tool to pay particular attention to
region of interest marked — click the button below for focused feedback on just this region
running this tool incurs api, software and function call costs — the ☕ buy me a coffee button helps keep it running, entirely optional
you can use finished images or work-in-progress images ·
this is a structured rubric, not a judgment ·
you are the only person who needs to be happy with your image ·
everyone's experience is valid