[Kstars-devel] Re: Kstars observtion Field Notes

[DancesWithWords]

On January 19, 2011 07:29:23 pm Akarsh Simha wrote:
> Hi Bruce
> 
> > I has asked a month or so ago about at printable field notes page and I
> > said I see what other astronomy programs are doing.  I've just put
> > together a rough outline of what I envision based on what I've see and
> > what Kstars can do.
> > 
> > The left side has your basic observing field note segements.  I'm aware
> > that they are not align etc...
> > 
> > The right is side I envision as being generated by kstars from a menu
> > selection made by the user as to what star field FOV's he/she wish to
> > see.  My sample use a basic 22 degree FOV at the top...  My second image
> > is base on the FOV of my finderscope and lastly the FOV of the eye I
> > propose to use on that image.
> > 
> > Since I'm not sure if the list accepts attachments I've put my sample
> > here.
> > http://faintfuzzies.ca/v/hobbies/astro/KSTARS_OBSERVATION_FIELD_NOTES.PN
> > G.html
> > 
> > I'd love to hear what you think.
> 
> Well, I get the idea. It's one more of those nice things that we
> should implement. Probably we should also allow the user to print out
> his/her own observations (which he/she has already filled into
> KStars).
> 
> The problem we have is manpower. There are a whole bunch of things
> we've been wanting to do. I think the most important of them all, in
> my opinion, would be the code architecture fork that I mentioned in an
> earlier mail. I wonder if this will happen in the near future.
> 
> However, I think this can be done (although a bit slowly) with
> scripting support. KStars does have scripting support, although I
> don't know of good documentation on it. In principle you should be
> able to generate this using a combination of ImageMagick, LaTeX or
> some other sort of typesetting language and KStars.
> 
> Although I wonder why you'd want to use KStars rather than DSS / SDSS
> queries which provide actual images.
> 
> It makes a lot of sense to have such a feature in KStars, particularly
> if we fix our observation planner and logger.
> 
> Regards
> Akarsh

Akrash,

I do understand the manpower issues I've follow the kstars dev list as an 
observer for a while.

I'll take your word on it that scripting might be a solution.  But outside of 
basic bashshell scripting that is out of my league.

Oh, and absolutely yes to the ability for printing of exsiting logs would be 
totally awesome.

The reason I chose to use the kstar sky atlas (I should have used the chart 
mode).  Goes back to the reason I asked the request.  I'm a visual observer.  
I don't use computers in the field.  My experience with computers is the screen 
are too bright even when adding a red acetate cover on the screen, which 
ultimately reduce ones night vision.  Photos are not night time friendly in my 
opinion.  I'm using the various FOV's as a method to make sure I'm in the 
right location etc...  I used three FOVs, but I've seen 2 and even one from 
some programs.  Also some programs give you a chose of formats.

I know that most of the big windows based astronomy programs have this 
feature, Starry Night, The Sky, DeepSky2000 etc.  This was part of there 
orginal programming because most of them started development before is was 
common to have a laptop in the field.  So there users had to have a way to 
input there logs after each observing sessions.


Thanks for taking the time to look into the issue and the response.

-- 
DancesWithWords