About
Where Mundil comes from
A name from Norse myth, three apps with three dedications, and a small company that makes things by hand.
The name
Mundilfari and his children
In Norse myth, Mundilfari named his children Sól and Máni after the Sun and the Moon. Mundil takes its name from him.
That fits how these apps were named. Each one is dedicated to someone in my family: Helia is the Sun, Annora is the Moon and the planets, and Valerian is the long quiet hours of the deep sky.
Who makes it
Hello, I’m Laurence
I’m Laurence Horrocks-Barlow. I work in high-performance computing, and I like to let a machine do the waiting. My own astronomy pictures used to go through a pile of scripts I wrote for myself. These apps are that pipeline turned into software anyone can use.
They share one core: registration, frame scoring and stacking, written in Rust.
Dedications
Three apps, three dedications
These are the words from each app’s About page, kept exactly as they are. The dedication is part of the licence terms, so it travels with every copy.
Helia
Helia is dedicated to my daughter, the light of my life. Her middle name is Helia, because she has an energetic spark. She has not stayed still since the day she was born, which suits software whose whole job is catching the sharp moments in something that never stops moving.
Annora
Annora is dedicated to my wife, Laura Ann Horrocks-Barlow. Its name joins her middle name, Ann, with aurora, light in the night sky; she shares that sky with me, and her patience outlasts every cloudy night.
Valerian
Valerian is dedicated to my son Xaviar. His middle name is Valerian, because he was a very sleepy child, which suits software made for the long, quiet hours of the night sky.
The company
12hobbies Ltd
12hobbies Ltd is the umbrella for what Laura and I make by hand in the UK: arts, woodwork, electronics, 3D printing and astronomy. Mundil is its astronomy strand.
The apps are downloaded from 12hobbies.studio, where you can also see everything else we make.