[Kstars-devel] Further ideas

[Wildi Markus KStars]

Hello


I'd like to present an idea - it isn't yet a proposal.
It is obvious, that Kstars evolves to an application 
which covers many aspects of amateur astronomy, including 
the "classical" projection of the celestial objects, 
remote control of the hardware components, planing 
of an night session etc. Why not thinking a step beyond
to that what is currently already achieved?

There are ray tracing programs which use the laws of 
geometrical optics, refraction and dispersion to form 
images of point like sources as a function of the angle with 
the optical axis.

A third component could be the simulation of celestial
photograph. Included are the optical properties of the air 
(refraction, dispersions, spectral extinction, sky glow and 
probably the seeing among others) together with the geometrical 
set up of the telescope (polar alignment, focal length, diameter 
of the opening, tube flexure, orthogonality of the mount among 
many others) and its physical properties (diffraction etc.). 
Finally the photons will arrive at the detector (CCD, analog film, 
eye). 

The result, combined with existing components of Kstars 
and eventually ray tracing programs will provide a realistic 
view what the sky's limit really is. 

I wrote an isolated piece of software, which fit my personal
needs and produces meaningful results. I'm unhappy with this 
state and like to discuss my ideas with you, the developers
of Kstars.

For further details and pictures see the sections 
Simulation->Basics and Gallery->Simulation on my web 
server http://leq.one-arcsec.org.

Let me know what you think, kind regards, 

Markus Wildi