KStars v3.7.2 is released on 2024.08.03 for Windows, MacOS & Linux. It's a bi-monthly bug-fix release with a couple of exciting features.
A few members of the KStars development team were enjoying their summer holidays over the past few weeks, but we still have a couple of exciting features in this release!
Multi-Camera Support
Wolfgang Reissenberger devoted countless hours to bring this complex feature that required lots of architectural changes in Ekos. If you have double rigs (or even more), we have a new great feature: multi camera support! If you have more than one optical train on your mount, you now will be able to run capture sequences for each of your optical trains in parallel from the same KStars instance. You simply need to create an optical train for each of your telescopes on your mount, create camera tabs for each optical train, create their own sequence and let them run in parallel.
This new feature may also be used in combination with the scheduler: in this release, the scheduler itself will control the first camera. On top of that, you could configure additional cameras in the capture tab which could execute their own capture sequences. Enhancing the scheduler such that it could control multiple optical trains in parallel is already under development and will be part of one of the next releases. So stay tuned!
Focus Advisor v4
John Evans refactored the Focus Advisor to make it simpler while still offering a lot of insight on parameters tuning. It is now more accessible to new users and has added functionality to optimize values for 2 of the more difficult Focus parameters: Step Size and Backlash (or AF Overscan).
In addition, Focus Advisor contains a convenience tool to locate stars by searching the range of motion of the focuser and another convenience tool to highlight differences between current Focus parameter settings and those recommended by Focus Advisor.
KStars v3.7.0 is released on 2024.04.05 for Windows, MacOS & Linux. It's a bi-monthly bug-fix release with a couple of exciting features.
CI & CD Infrastructure
We say goodbye to KDE's binary factory as we transition to fully use Gitlab's CI/CD pipelines to build, test, and publish KStars. Over the last two months, Eric Dejouhanet worked with the KDE's Craft & System admin teams to transition KStars pipelines to the new framework.
Short status on pipelines:
Merge requests run the custom build and the CI builds
Master runs the CI build (though there could be other things we run, such as CVE scans)
Craft recipes are run from the last commit of the master or release branch, they require "build" and "build-and-test-stable" to be run manually beforehand.
Publishing to Microsoft store is available after the Windows Craft is run.
This is still an ongoing process and we hope to have this process fully automated by 3.7.1 release where we will automatically publish latest releases for both stable and master branches.
Donut Buster
Rejoice Newtonian, SCT, and RC owners! With KStars new Donut Buster feature, your donut focusing woes might be something of the past. John Evans implemented this experimental feature to help protect against outliers that might affect your autofocus routine. In addition to that, the Focus Advisor is now automatically applied when creating new profiles. Based on the type of equipment you have in your optical train, the Focus Advisor would try to guess the optimal focus settings for your setup. Both features are experimental and would benefit from your feedback.
Custom Views
Akarsh Simha introduced the ability to orient the sky map to match the view through any instrument.
A view is a collection of settings: the orientation of the sky map, how the orientation changes as the sky map is panned, whether it is mirrored or not, and optionally the field-of-view to set the map to.
If no views are defined, KStars introduces a set of standard / "demo" views by default. Existing views can be edited and new views can be added using the "Edit Views..." interface. They can also be re-ordered in the interface. The ordering of the views in the "Edit Views..." dialog defines the order in which views will be cycled through using the keyboard shortcuts Shift + Page Up and Shift + Page Down. Thus, you can set up the views for easily switching between naked eye / finder scope / telescope views for easy star-hopping.
Furthermore, there is a new option in the View menu that enables mirroring the sky map so as to be able to match the view through an erecting prism used for example on a Schmidt-Cassegrain or Refracting type telescope.
The rotation feature overlay now also marks East in addition to north and zenith, so as to know easily whether the display is mirrored or not.
Blinking
Hy Murveit added a very useful Blinking feature to the FITS Viewer tool. This adds several ways to blink; that is, compare multiple images.
In Analyze, one can now move from one session to the next (forward or backward). Keyboard shortcuts are provided for that.
Another set of keyboard shortcuts both advance and show the next image in the same FITS Viewer.
Thus, for example, one can advance through all the captured images of the evening, showing all the captures on the FITS Viewer by repeating a keyboard shortcut.
A useful complement to this might be adding the ability to delete bad captures, but for now that will have to wait for a rainy day.
In the FITS Viewer, the Open File menu command (both in the main KStars top menu, and in the FITS Viewer menu) now allows multiple files to be selected. If they are then the files are opened in individual tabs.
Shift-selecting would select files from the first to the shift-clicked file. Clearly one wouldn't want to select 100 files resulting in 100 tabs, but this can be used to, e.g. compare 10 images.
Going along with the above, keyboard shortcuts have been added to move to the next or previous FITS Viewer tab, Also helpful to the above is a new command to zoom in/out all tabs (not just the current one).
There is a new Blink Directory menu command (in both menus, as above) which will open a single tab with a list of all the images below the directory selected (that is, both in that directory, and in directories below it). It initially displays the first image, but new commands work in that tab to switch to displaying the next (or previous) image file in the list. This could be used to blink hundreds of files.
Sky Flats
DuĊĦan Poizl added an option to capturing sky flats. When shooting flats at sky it often end up in never-ending loop of adjusting exposure because intensity of light change and calculation of exposure break down. Adjust the tolerance to 2000 ADU to higher for a better chance at capturing sky flats.
Scheduler Refactor
Wolfgang Reissenberger continues with his work on Separating Business Logic from UI in Scheduler. Over the years the Scheduler has grown to one of the most complex classes. With this release we refactored the Scheduler class and separated the UI from the underlying state model and its business logic. This opens the door for future development of new scheduling features and a much modular approach towards more flexible sequencing approaches.
Standalone Editor
To add any job to the scheduler, you need at minimum the following:
Target
Sequence File
The sequence file contains all your sequence settings (e.g. Capture 20x15 LRGB images). To create this file, you first need to add sequence job in the Capture module and then save the corresponding sequence. While this facilitates re-usability across different sessions, some users wanted to create sequence on-the-fly in the scheduler.
Hy Murveit developed the standalone sequence editor in the scheduler module where it relies on settings saved from your last astrophotography session. Now it's easier than ever to plan scheduler jobs without having Ekos or your equipment profile running!
KStars v3.6.8 is released on 2023.12.03 for Windows, MacOS & Linux. It's a bi-monthly bug-fix release with a couple of exciting features.
Aberration Inspector
John Evans introduces the very exciting Aberration Inspector tool. The Aberration Inspector is a tool that makes use of Autofocus to analyze backfocus and sensor tilt in the connected optical train. It solves up to 9 virtual tiles on the sensor as defined by the existing Mosaic Mask.
The information is then used to analyze:
Back focus.
Sensor Tilt.
There are 4 sections:
V-curve for the each tile.
Table of data detailing the curve fitting results.
Analysis of back focus and tilt.
3D Surface graphic to explain the Petzval Surface intersection with the sensor.
This release provides display only functionality. In future it would be possible to add functionality to offer recommendations for adjustments using Octopi, PhotonCage, etc.
Sub-exposure Calculator
Joseph McGee continues to add improvements and fixes for the Sub-exposure calculator. For usability, the window is now re-sizeable, an issue with the display of tool tips was corrected, and an indicator has been added for the sensor type of the selected camera (Mono / Color). For functionality: the upper limit of the Noise Increase input parameter was increased, support was added for cameras with non-variable read noise, (cameras with CCD sensors).
Several new camera data files were added to the KStars source code repository, and a function to allow direct direct download of camera files from the repository was enabled. (Note: users who have created their own camera data files, may wish set the file attribute to read-only, and/or make a back up copy in case of an accidental over-write from the download function if the camera file has the same name).
A new experimental graphical tool to determine an appropriate number of sub-exposures for integration was added. This tool allows the selection of an exposure time to noise ratio for a stacked image; the tool will compute the number of sub-exposures required to achieve that value.
Hy Murveit added a very useful feature to the FITS Viewer: a built-in solver!
The FITS Viewer Solver is used to plate-solve the image loaded in the FITS Viewer's tab. It only works with the internal StellarSolver. You get the RA and DEC coordinates for the center of the image, the image's scale, the angle of rotation, and the number of stars detected in the image. Its main use case is debugging plate-solving issues in Ekos, though the information displayed can be generally useful. The controls and displays are described below.
This adds a new tool inside the splitter on the FITS Viewer. It plate-solves the displayed image, and allows the user to experiment with a number of plate-solving parameters, and thus help debug plate-solving issues.
How to test it out?
Open the sliding panel on the left part way, click on Plate Solving, and resize the windows appropriately.
Experiment with the parameters available (Use Scale, Use Position, the scale and RA/DEC positions, choose a profile and/or edit it)
Click Solve, and the image is solved and the solution presented in the Scale and RA & DEC and Angle boxes.
If you enable "Mark Stars" above the image window, you will also see the stars that were detected.
Quality of Life improvements
Make "Set Coordinates Manually" dialog more intuitive.
Telescope name specified in the optical trains are now saved in the FITS header (the mount name was saved before).
New placeholders for ISO, binning and pure exposure time added.
Add a new not-default scheduler option to disable greedy scheduling.
Reduce latency between captures, especially when guiding / dithering.
Fix issue with differential slewing.
Separate Business Logic from UI in Scheduler.
Fix bug in estimating job time, capture delays were misinterpreted.
Fixed guide start deviation was not saved properly in esq file.
Bugfix in one-pulse dither. Dither pulses were going the wrong way.
Fix Scheduler hangs when Focus does not signal Autofocus start failure.
KStars v3.6.7 is released on 2023.10.03 for MacOS & Linux. Windows build is still pending and should hopefully be released by 10th of October. It's a bi-monthly bugfix release with a couple of exciting features.
Image Overlay Component
Hy Murveit introduced a long requested feature: Custom Image Overlays!
With this new feature, a user can add their own processed/completed astro-images, and the system will display them scaled and rotated appropriately on the Sky Map.
The feature is controlled in the KStars Settings menu, in a new tab labelled Image Overlays. First the user needs to add files into a directory, parallel to the logs directory, called imageOverlays. Simply add the images there (typically jpegs). Ideally these aren't massive files for performance reasons, but probably width 1000 or 2000 are fine. I have been testing with larger files, which will also work be use more system resources on slower CPUs.
The user then uses the Image Overlays menu in KStars Settings to (one-time) plate-solve the images and check a box to enable the image display. Successful plate-solve info is stored in the user-db so that it doesn't have to be done again. The images should, from then on, appear in the SkyMap in the proper position. There is a way to easily navigate to the images without manipulating the SkyMap by selecting a row in the overlay table and clicking on the "Show" button. You can move from one image to the next with up/down arrow keyboard commands.
A user can adjust the plate-solve timeouts. As these are mostly blind solves (jpegs won't have any header info, and as currently implemented, no header info is used) the plate solving can be problematic. You can choose a default image scale (arcseconds-per-pixel) or leave that to 0.0 to not use scale. If there are files that won't solve, the user can add RA,DEC into the image's row in the table displayed, which would get the solver to use the sky position as a constraint. The user can also add the scale that way. In fact, if the user knows all the info for the image, he/she can populate all the fields on the image's row and simply set the status field to OK, and plate-solving would no longer be required.
Rotator Dialog Improvements
Toni Schribercontinued simplifying the Rotator Dialog. Rotator Flip Policy was introduced. This (global) policy is an answer to this question and to this wish. It's now possible to define how the rotator reacts after a flip or if the result of a solved reference image reports a different pierside respective to the actual mount pierside. Preserve Rotator Angle will keep the rotator position and the camera is virtually rotated by 180°. Preserve Position Angle will keep the camera position angle.
The rotator always turns the camera to the original position angle and the image will show the original star arrangement. Flip Policy can be altered in the StellarSolver Options under Rotator Settings.
More File Placeholders
Due to popular demand, Wolfgang Reissenberger added support for camera temperature %C, gain %G, offset %O and pier side %P.
This is not only applicable to locally captured images, but also for images captured on a remote INDI server.
KStars v3.6.5 is released on 2023.06.01 for MacOS, Linux, and Windows. It's a bi-monthly bugfix release with a couple of exciting features.
Sky Map Rotation
Akarsh Simha added a new feature to allow the user to rotate the sky map. It also allows some standard settings like inverted view. Here are some the highlights:
Rotate the sky-map freely: Shift + mouse drag on the sky map
Pick pre-defined orientations: Zenith Up / Zenith Down / North Up / North Down depending on the coordinate system being used
A magic mode for Dobsonians: The Erect Observer Correction feature, when selected along with Horizontal Coordinates / Zenith Down settings, will reproduce the orientation seen in the eyepiece of a Dobsonian. May need a one-time adjustment for your specific Dobsonian using the shift + drag feature.
Optimal Sub-Exposure Calculator
Joseph McGee made his first contributor to KStars with the Optimal Sub-Exposure Calculator. This is the first iteration of the calculator and only a handful of camera profiles is supported. There are different points of view within the astrophtography community on how optimal sub-exposure should be calculated and whether we should consider other factors such as processing time given the volume of data produced. Your feedback would be appreciated on this first iteration of the calculator.
Implementation of an optimal sub-exposure calculator based upon the work of, and presentation by, Dr Robin Glover. The calculator considers multiple inputs to determine a sub-exposure time which will provide minimal overall noise in the image:
A sky quality measurement (SQM) for light pollution
The optic focal length
A filter bandwidth
Camera read-noise (based upon gain/iso)
An optional adjustment to the allowable increase in noise from light pollution
As inputs are adjusted the calculator will refresh graphic presentation of potential exposure times of the range of gains, and update calculated outputs. The output values are separated into two sections: one for the sub-exposure, and another for image stacks of various integration times.
The sub-exposure outputs are:
the optimal sub-exposure time
the count of electrons produced from light-pollution
the shot noise, (noise from light pollution)
the total exposure noise, (the combined noise from light-pollution and camera read-noise)
The image stack information is presented in a table showing:
planned integration hours
the count of exposures to reach the planned integration hours
the actual stack (integration time) in seconds
the noise for the stack
a ration of stack time to noise, (as a indicator of quality)
An instance of the sub-exposure calculator can be started from a new 'clock' icon on the ekos capture screen. Multiple instances of the sub-exposure calculator can be started concurrently so that side-by-side comparisons can be made for variations in inputs.
Data for camera read-noise will be provided through individual xml files which will be user maintained and published in a repository. These camera data files persisted within a folder "exposure_calculator" under user/local/share/kstars. The calculator includes the capability to download camera files from a repository.
Upon the initial start of the calculator at least one camera data file download will be mandatory before the calculator can be instantiated.
The intent is that camera data file names will be used to allow the calculator to select an appropriate camera data file based upon the device id of the active camera. (But some of the initial camera files were named using educated guesses, and will likely need to be re-named).
Rotator Dialog Improvements
Toni Schriber merged improvements and fixes for the Rotator Dialog. As shown in the illustrations the user interface is very simple and there is only one parameter to set: The Camera Position Angle. It is a very consistent term and easy to understand. The same Position Angle (PA) is also used in Alignment, Scheduler, and the Sky Map.
In the gauge this angle is presented in the same color as the FOV in the planetarium sky and in viewing direction. This way one can relate and understand this angle intuitively. The rotator angle is presented in gray and also in viewing direction. This angle is calculated from the Camera PA and the Cameras Offset Angle which is calibrated each time a [Capture & Solve] or a [Load & Slew] is brought into action. For further clarity the rotator angle and the camera offset is displayed again in
a information window together with the current pier side.
The Rotator Settings can be accessed either in the Capture or Align modules.
Focus Linear 1 Pass Improvements
John Evans continued his phenomenal improvements to Ekos Focus module with L1P Phase 2 changes as detailed in the Linear Focus Phase 2 document. Here are the highlights:
Optimized curve fitting . Should be faster and more accurate and includes outlier rejection.
Currently HFR is the only fitting "measure" available. The following have been added:
a) HFR Adj (adjusted HFR to compensate for star brightness vs background variation)
b) FWHM
c) Number stars (max at focus rather than a min)
d) Fourier Power (alternative focus method not requiring star detection)
Focus units can be displayed in pixels or arc-seconds.
Critical Focus Zone - a calculator with 3 different algorithms has been added
Focus Offset Utility to automatically build focus offsets.
Take flats at same focus point as lights has been fixed.
Focus Adviser. Still working on this but a tool to help with focus parameters (since there are now so many).
SEP parameters suggestions for focus. Keen to get some feedback on this.
Adaptive focus to adapt the focuser position between Autofocus runs, aiming to keep optimum focus for each sub-frame. Adaptations for Temperature and Altitude are supported.
Adaptive focuser start . The starting position for an AF run can be filter and Adaptive Focus adjusted.
Focus walks added to control how the inward sweep of the AF process performs.
AF Overscan originally implemented in the Linear algorithm and then reused by Linear 1 Pass now extended to all focuser movements.
In addition to HFR, you can now use different measurements (FHWM, # of Stars, Fourier Power) that may work well with your setup and environment. Here are some focus runs with each of the new measurements types. You will notice that the solutions are very close to each other.
FWHM
# Of Stars
Fourier Power
Focus Aberration Inspector
Wolfgang Reissenberger introduced the mosaic view well known from PixInsight's AberrationInspector script that builds a mosaic from all image corners and center tiles such that they can be compared directly.
Supernovae are back
The last few releases was missing supernovae data since the online source that was providing the data decided to go offline. Thankfully, Philipp Auersperg-Castell communicated with the fine folks over the Transient Name Server (IAU Supernovae Working Group) to obtain daily supernovae updates and imported them to KStars. All Recent supernovae should be available now in KStars.
KStars v3.6.1 is released on 2022.10.02 for MacOS, Linux, and Windows. It's a bi-monthly bugfix release with a couple of exciting features.
Due to major changes in this release, we are releasing it as Early Preview. We hope to release final stable release in a few weeks given the user feedback.
Optical Trains
Ekos introduces a new method to configure equipment by organizing them into Optical Trains. An optical train is a collection of devices arranged in orders from the telescope/lens up until the last imaging element. It includes everything in between including reducers, barlows, OAGs, rotators, filter wheels and so forth.
You will no longer select individual devices in Ekos modules, you simply select which train you want to use. Settings are now saved per-train basis so you can have different settings for each train. This is all done automatically and no need to save or load settings yourself.
For further explanation, check out this YouTube tutorial
Dark Guiding
Sophie Taylor is a new contributor to KStars and a highly talented scientific developer. She is a PhD student and has contributed a new internal guider feature: Dark guiding.
One of the primary benefits of the GPG guiding system is the ability to predict the behavior of the mount at any point in time; not just when guide camera images are received. Dark guiding introduces a rapid control loop that occurs several times per guide exposure, to correct for the predicted error. This way, not only can the benefits of long duration guide exposures be taken advantage of (e.g. capturing fainter guide stars), but some of the benefit of short-term exposures too; namely, quicker corrections to the mount.
For example, you can configure 5 seconds guiding exposures with 1 second dark guiding updates. Dark Guiding is an improvement to GPG, and part of the GPG menu in the Guider menu.
Internal Guider
Hy Murveitincreased the number of usable MultiStar references. It was limited to 10 previously but now you can increase it as appropriate given the seeing conditions.
State Machines
WolfgangReissenberger continues work on dedicated state machines. This is the next step towards dedicated state machines for EKOS. This step contains:
Introduction of a dedicated meridian flip state machine encapsulating both the meridian flip state of the mount and the overall state. This state machine is shared between Capture and Mount, which avoids mutual state communication.
First functionality regarding the meridian flip is shifted from Capture and Mount to the state machine. Nevertheless, the complex operations are still part of the Capture code and will be addressed in one of the next refactoring steps.
KStars v3.6.0 is released on 2022.07.30 for MacOS, Linux, and Windows. It's a bi-monthly bugfix release with a couple of exciting features.
Linear 1 Pass Algorithm
John Evans contributed a new Focus algorithm: The Linear 1 Pass Algorithm. When using this algorithm, Ekos initially performs like the Linear algorithm in establishing the first pass V-Curve and fitting a curve to it to find the solution. Then, however, it moves directly to the calculated minimum. Key features include:
The algorithm compensates for focuser backlash, providing that backlash is consistent.
The algorithm is fast, taking 1 pass to identify optimum focus.
The algorithm uses more sophisticated curve fitting to pinpoint the optimum focus position.
The algorithm is highly configurable with user control over many parameters like step size and number of steps.
Early tests by various users shows very promising and stable results
Polar-alignment V3
Hy Murveit introduced a new Polar Alignment method based of plate solving. The original polar-alignment error measurement scheme has not changed. The user interface has changed slightly--different messages and a new LED display to indicate progress.
The original polar-alignment refresh/correction method still exists (if you choose the MoveStar or MoveStar & Cal Err refresh methods).
A new polar-alignment refresh/correction method is provided called PlateSolve. It allows for corrections of larger polar-misalignment in a single pass, does not depend on the image display, and may be more reliable if your plate solving is working well.
A new alternative to MoveStar is the PlateSolve method. This can polar align mounts with larger alignment errors in a single procedure. A similar triangle is displayed on the image display, but it is not central to this scheme.
Rather the user should concentrate on the Updated Error line at the bottom of the display, and attempt to zero the Altitude and Azimuth errors. Also, arrows display the direction the mount needs to move to reduce error.
The method works by plate-solving images as they are captured, and then estimating the user's knob-adjustments from the plate-solve solutions. Note that, since knobs may be moved during exposures, some images may have large star trails and plate solves may fail. Be patient and allow the system to capture a clean image before relying on the error estimate.
Image ROI Statistics
Madhav Prabhu made his first contribution to KStars by adding Region-Of-Interest (ROI) selection in FITS viewer where users may view statistics for a particular region of the image. The stats include average, median, and standard deviation.
You can select from existing probes of varying sizes (50x50, 100x100..etc), or you can simply hold down the Shift key and drag the mouse to create your own rectangle.
Profile Scripts
For complex equipment profile that have inter-dependencies requiring script execution or programmable delays, the new Script Profile edit provides complete control over the driver startup sequence.
You may define a Pre-Delay and Pre-Script before a driver is executed (e.g. script to turn on the observatory electricity), and define a Post driver delay and script if desired. For some drivers like Pegasus Ultimate Power Box, it is often desirable to start this driver before other drivers so that all configuration is loaded.
Geographic Map Update
Ed Lee made his first contribution to KStars by replacing the old geographic map from a new high quality version from NASA. This should play more nicely on larger monitors and high DPI displays.
Misc. Updates
Small but important quality of life improvements to KStars & Ekos.
Hy Murveit Show number of clipped pixels on fitsviewer status bar if show-clipping is enabled
Akarsh Simha Improve the manual focus dialog for the SkyMap
Sophie Taylor Correct nomenclature for Linear1 focus algorithm with "R2" -> "R²", and add a default and minimum value for R² limit
Akarsh Simha Further improvements to Add Catalog Object UI, including auto-filling data from text.
Sophie Taylor Improve tooltips for GPG expert settings
Akarsh Simha Various fixes and improvements related to DSO catalogs and visibility.
Akarsh Simha Refactor `DmsBox` widget and improve the Add Catalog Object form.
