[Kstars-devel] GSoC 2016 project proposal: KStars as a star chart generation service?

[Akarsh Simha]

Producing a star chart requires the following aspects of KStars:

1. Ability to load and hold RA/Dec/data of many catalogs (including the
dynamic loading baggage of the USNO NOMAD catalog) in memory on a spatial
index
2. Ability to project equatorial coordinates onto pixel values in a number
of ways
3. Ability to draw the shapes corresponding to various types of deep-sky
objects.
4. Ability to draw guides and overlays (esp. RA/Dec grid, constellation
lines, constellation boundaries, milky way, FOV symbols)
5. Ability to pull data from the internet (eg: DSS images)
6. The star hopper?

These aspects are not necessary:

1. Sun/Planet/Moon dynamics and drawing
2. All the extra modules (Observation Planner, Jupiter Moons tool... the
list goes on)
3. Computation of Horizontal coordinates, atmospheric refraction,
precession, nutation, aberration, proper motion corrections...

So I'm wondering if it is possible to write a separate application that
uses the relevant aspects of KStars to provide a star-chart generation
service. The motivations for such a project are as follows:
1. A lot of manual effort has been put towards creation of observing guides
by various amateur astronomers.
2. The only effort in automatic sky chart generation software has been
http://pp3.sourceforge.net/ and it hasn't been developed for a long while
now. It might be good to investigate what goes into using pp3.
3. We already have an expansive catalog system and other things that are
very useful features.
4. A lot of amateur astronomers would benefit from a custom chart
generation service (BTW, I'm not one of them), so this might be a way to
expand the user base of KStars-technology.

The dream is to then provide this as a service.

Your thoughts?

Regards
Akarsh
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