Saturday, September 23, 2017

KStars 2.8.4 aka Juli is released!

Less than two weeks after the release of KStars 2.8.3 comes another minor bugfix release. Download KStars 2.8.4 for Windows, MacOS, and Linux.

Major highlights:

  • Robert Barlow submitted a patch to add elevation information for all cities. The information was built from Google data. It closes Bug #382462. The elevation data is also now sent to the INDI drivers.
  • Stars and Deep Sky Objects labels are now zoom-dependent so they appear larger when zoomed in which improves usability.
  • Rotators are now fully tested and supported with Ekos capture and align module. In Ekos align module, use Load & Slew to go to any arbitrary target, and then have your rotator exactly match the orientation of the target in the image!
  • Fixed several issues with internationalization of some strings discovered by Khalid AlAjaji. Khalid also submitted significant translations for KStars in Arabic!
  • Jérôme Sonrier submitted a fresh new updated Daylight Saving rules. He is also working on getting rid of the static TZ rules in KStars and using the ones provided by the system.
  • Added PSF (Point Spread Function) convoluted star detection algorithm adapted from PHD2 to improve auto-selection of stars during guide module calibration phase.
  • Fixed bug in processing Load&Slew data when some keywords are missing.
  • Fix layout issues for RTL languages.

This release is dedicated to Juli, my lovely German Shepard companion for the last 7 years. She is accompanied here by Tommy when he was just a small puppy back then. Long live and prosper my good girl!