KStars 2.8.3 aka Tommy is out!

The bugfix release of KStars 2.8.3 is available for all major platforms (Note: MacOS version is delayed to 2017-09-13). In this version, we finally managed to release translations for Windows & MacOS users, thanks to the efforts of Hannah and Kevin over at Craft, and the KDE translation team.

KStars in Arabic

A major bug that was fixed is inaccurate asteroid and comets positions. After exhaustive troubleshotting with the aid of JPL Horizon ephemeris, the problem was traced to imprecise Earth ecliptic longitude angle. The Earth coordinates are important if we want to calculate positions of solar system bodies from a geocentric point of view. Valentin traced the problem to problematic VSOP87 files and promptly generated new data files that solves the discrepancy in Earth ecliptic longitude.

However, while that greatly improved the accuracy, it was still a bit off. While checking KStars Florence (1981 ET3) asteroid position against that of Stellarium, I noted KStars epoch of date position exactly match the J2000 position reported in Stellarium! This was not a coincidence, it turns out we didn't account for precession in KStars. After that is taken care of, the comet and asteroid positions are now accurate on the order of arc-seconds! This is a 100-fold improvement in accuracy from previous versions.


Several fixes and improvement to Ekos with fixes in PHD2 support along with the ability to disable streaming from remote cameras right from the guide module. Another issue that was resolved is the focus module always running autofocus even when the HFR is below the threshold. This was tricky to trace down as it was due to a switch of HFR algorithms when the HFR check is first requested. For those using domes, the align module now properly waits until a slaved dome reaches its target before proceeding with image capture. More over, the Mosaic Tool was simplified and now dragging the mosaic grid produces precise jobs for all orientations.

Numerous stability improvements from GSoC 2017 projects made it into the release. GSoC 2017 student Csaba Kertesz concluded the project and KStars is now much more bullet-proof than before.

This release is named after my lovely loyal German Shepard Tommy! Isn't he a good boy?

Tommy

KStars 2.7.9 Released for Linux, Mac, Windows, and Android!

A new release of KStars is out! v2.7.9 is now available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. At the same time, we released an update to KStars Lite for Android.

This is mostly a bugfix release where we concentrated on fixing bugs as reported by our users. But that didn't stop us from creating new tools that were long requested by the community, including the Mount Control tool that facilitates motion and GOTO commands with a simple interface.

On the other hand, KStars GSoC 2017 project started with lots under the hood work taking place. Csaba went full throttle with migrating the C++ code to modern C++14 standards while updating the build process to be stricter, more secure, and efficient. The whole code base was formatted and countless warnings resolved. Furthermore, several enhancements were made to decrease memory usage and increase performance of tools such as Observation Planner.

For KStars Lite on Android, it now supports Automatic Mode where you can identify stars, planets, and constellations simply by pointing the phone toward the sky and looking at the live Sky Map within the App. Significant performance gains were made in FITS files that support WCS data. Since processing WCS is very CPU intensive, loading WCS data is now performed on demand. This is especially important for embedded devices where resources are limited.

Robert Lancaster implemented automatic download of Astrometry.net index files directly from the GUI. No longer the user have to go and hunt for index files, calculate FOVs for different equipment...etc. With the updated system, all the required index files are highlighted automatically by Ekos, and all you have to do is to click and download them!

Special thanks to all those who made this release possible. Outstanding work from KDE's Craft team, led by Hannah Von Reth, for making this great tool that enables KStars to reach users across all major platforms.

New Field Rotator Conrol

KStars 2.7.7 Released for Linux, Mac, and Windows!

The New What's Interesting Tool

I'm glad to announce the release of KStars 2.7.7 for Linux, Mac, and Windows!

In this release, Robert Lancaster dedicated a lot of time to improving KStars What's Interesting Tool (WIT). It is now significantly improved and offers a rich educational experience to explore the heavens! Users can now explore many naked eye and deep sky objects, in addition to addon catalogs offered by KStars such as the Sharpless Catalog.

Users wishing to have more fine control on what objects to observe and/or image should be using the Observation Planner that enable filtering of objects with custom constraints and limits. For casual users looking to find out what's interesting tonight, then this tool is the optimal choice.

Whether you're simply viewing the sky unaided with your eye or using binoculars/telescopes, find out which objects are available and how to locate them in the night sky.

The WIT fetches images and information on the objects and interest and can even fetch information from online sources like Wikipedia.

Mac Canon users will be glad to know the new release now enables them to fully control their DSLRs under OSX. Furthermore, the Mac release includes support for ZWO ASI cameras. We hope to add support for QHY for Mac in the next release.

Access to thousands of images like this

While KStars includes downloadable addons for images that appears in the detail dialog, John Sadler did a fantastic job of compiling images for over 18,000 NGC/IC objects!! These images are now available as downlodable addons, and now you can enjoy images of thousands of objects right within KStars. A small update to the Observation Planner enabled support for viewing images in there as well to help you plan what to observe and image ahead.

A few fixes were made to the Ekos Guide module to detect timeout in image captures and to take appropriate actions before giving up. Also, dithering failure does not necessary lead to autoguiding process failure. This behavior is now controlled by the user. By default, the autoguide process shall proceed even if dithering fails for whatever reason.

Finally, I added SkySafari support to INDI and now SkySafari users can enjoy using their app & KStars simultaneously to control their equipment without resorting to exotic hacks.

KStars 2.7.6 for Windows & OSX released

I am glad to announce the release of KStars 2.7.6 release for Windows & OSX. Linux users using the official PPA can install the latest release as well.

In this release, we introduce the Ekos Mount Modelling tool developed by Robert Lancaster. It's currently in Beta now and we would appreciate any feedback. The tool enables you to build a comprehensive mount model if supported by your mount. Any mount that improves its internal pointing model after a SYNC command is applicable. Furthermore, INDI mounts that supports INDI Alignment Subsystem (EQMod, Nexstarevo, Synscan..etc) are also applicable.

Along with the advanced mount modelling tool comes the new Solution Results plot in the Align Module. It displays the quality of your GOTO after each solve and it can help you to identify if there are issues with your mount or the quality of the image..etc.

You can zoom, pan, and drag to explore the plot in details. Annotation for the quality of each GOTO is available on mouse over.

Ekos Polar Alignment Assistant tool also received a few bug fixes from the community feedback. Most users were able to achieve impressive results using the this easy to use Polar Alignment tool.

While Ekos is designed for ease of use, it can be intimidating for new users unfamiliar with the architecture of Ekos/INDI on several operation systems. Therefore, a new Ekos Profile Wizard is now available to guide the users to setting up their equipment for the first time in Ekos across several operating systems and connection topologies.

With INDI v1.4.1+, figuring out which port to use for your mount & focuser is now trivial across Linux & OSX. INDI automatically scans ports on your system and can even automatically connect to all potential available ports as well until a successful connection is established.

Last, but not least, KStars' NEO (Near-Earth-Object) data query from NASA's JPL is now properly working again thanks to our newest KStars developer Valentin Boettcher. Valentin (aka Hiro) is only 18 years old but is quite brilliant and experienced with KDE/Qt development environment. Welcome abroad!

KStars 2.7.5 is released for MacOS and Windows

I'm very excited to announce the release of KStars 2.7.5 for MacOS and Windows!

This is the first official KStars release for MacOS 10.11+, and while we made sure to test it thoroughly, please treat it as a beta release and report any bugs to the KDE bug tracking website.

KStars for MacOS supports all the features of the Linux KStars release, including Ekos and INDI. It comes ready with astrometry.net support, xplanet, and ability to download and install General Star Catalog (GSC) data used for CCD Simulator stars.

Most INDI drivers are imported with the exception of few Linux-specific drivers; we are investigating different approaches to improve INDI 3rd party drivers support under OSX. This release would not have been possible if not for the tireless efforts of KStars developers and INDI forums members.

Specifically, I'd like to thank the following volunteers for their significant contribution to the MacOS release:

• Robert Lancaster: KStars latest developer and chief driver of the MacOS release. Robert greatly improved the usability and cross-platform capabilities of KStars while adding several very exciting and useful features to both KStars and Ekos.
• Stephane Lucas: Initiated the longest (110+ pages) INDI thread Ekos for OS X that resulted in this release. Stephane carried out extensive testing and suggestions for Ekos Scheduler and aided in the KStars OSX Port.
• Jamie Smith: Developed script to automate building of KStars using Craft, CMake, and XCode methods in addition to automating DMG builds.

Many INDI forums users also helped in testing this release, so I'd like to extend my thanks to all our users.

Along with the Mac OS release, a new KStars for Windows 64bit release is also available for download. You can download both release from KStars website.

KStars 2.7.2 for Windows is released

Less than a month from the release 2.7.0, KStars v2.7.2 for Windows 64bit is now available for download on KStars website! Get it now and give it a go.

The new release features many minor improvements and bug fixes including very fast startup time (about 300% faster) in addition to more streamlined Ekos GUI for capture and schedule modules. Images captured with Ekos on Windows would now conform to legal filenames in Windows when using ISO 8061 time stamped files.

Unfortunately, a few problems remain in this release most importantly is that KStars does not gracefully closes, it always remains in the background and must be terminated explicitly by the Windows task manager. This bug was supposed to be fixed by Qt 5.8 but alas it is still affecting Qt 5.8 in emerge. Once fixed by Qt/KDE, we shall make another release addressing this issue. 

KStars with Ekos arrives on Windows

The folks over at KDE for Windows have done a tremendous job providing support for Qt5 and KDE Frameworks 5 builds under Windows using the emerge tool. Just a couple of months ago, building a KDE application on Windows was quite challenging with emerge failing to build the necessary frameworks needed for development.

But a lot has changed in the last few months leading to a relatively stable and consistent build experience. Furthermore, in the process of migrating KStars to Windows, I ran across a few bugs in KF5 multi-platform support, which is to be expected given the complexity of KStars as it leverages several KDE technologies simultaneously.

The largest obstacle to KStars windows port was Ekos/INDI support. INDI is a framework for astronomical device control and is available primarily on POSIX systems. It is based on a server/client architecture whereas the server manages the drivers controlling the devices while the clients communicate with the server.

Ekos is one such client and it is KStars flagship product for observatory control and automation. Hence, its support under Windows was paramount. Since most of the Ekos client code is written using Qt5/KF5 frameworks, porting it to Windows only took a couple of days. While Ekos under Linux can start INDI servers locally, this is disabled under Windows and only remote INDI control is available.

Nevertheless, Windows users could still use Ekos locally on Windows but using INDI Server for Windows which is an ASCOM to INDI bridge. That is, you can establish an INDI server that runs ASCOM drivers and present them as INDI-compatible devices.

Over the last few days, a lot of under-the-hood changes took place in KStars code base to enable it to work correctly under multiple platforms, including utilizing Qt resource system. The next obstacle was INDI Client library which KStars uses to communicate INDI server. It is only available for POSIX systems and cannot be used under Windows. Therefore, I developed a Qt5 backend for INDI Client library while making only minimal changes to the API. The new Qt5 backend worked quite well after working out all the quirks, and now KStars supports both the POSIX and Qt5 INDI client backends.

So after a lot of effort, I present you with KStars on Windows with Ekos/INDI support!

A 64bit 72MB Windows alpha release is now available for testing. There are still a few bugs that needs to be squashed and optimizations to be made, but it is overall stable. Report any bugs on KDE bug tracking site.