[Kstars-devel] Caldwell catalog in Kstars?

[Akarsh Simha]

Also, the custom catalog creation process in KStars is arcane and has
not been explained clearly anywhere.

The most confusing part is the numbers for the various types of
objects (the "Tp" field). This can be found in the code in
skyobject.h:

    enum TYPE { STAR=0, CATALOG_STAR=1, PLANET=2, OPEN_CLUSTER=3,
GLOBULAR_CLUSTER=4,
                GASEOUS_NEBULA=5, PLANETARY_NEBULA=6,
SUPERNOVA_REMNANT=7, GALAXY=8,
                COMET=9, ASTEROID=10, CONSTELLATION=11, MOON=12, ASTERISM=13,
                GALAXY_CLUSTER=14, DARK_NEBULA=15, QUASAR=16,
MULT_STAR=17, RADIO_SOURCE=18,
                SATELLITE=19, SUPERNOVA=20, TYPE_UNKNOWN };

The rest of it is somewhat more straightforward. One creates a small
pre-amble that has the vita of the catalog and the color to use to
render it. This is followed by an abbreviated description of fields,
which in my experience I've found to be case-sensitivie.

The format is space-delimited with quoted text fields.

ID, RA, Dc, Nm, Mg, Mj, Mn, PA, Ig, Tp are the field headers for the
columns containing ID (number of the object in the catalog), RA (right
ascension, I usually stick to the HH:MM:SS.s format and it works),
Declination (I stick to ±DD:MM:SS), Name (long name in quotes),
Magnitude, Major Axis (in arcmin), Minor Axis (also arcmin), Position
Angle, Ignore (can be used multiple times for fields to be ignored),
Type (from the numbers above).

Then once you've formatted, give it the extension .cat so you can
identify it, and then use Settings -> Configure KStars -> Catalog tab.
click the "Load catalog" button, and point it to the file. Then, watch
the console for output.

Regards
Akarsh