From murveit at gmail.com Sat Mar 15 05:47:42 2025 From: murveit at gmail.com (Hy Murveit) Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2025 22:47:42 -0700 Subject: Issues with KStars data downloads Message-ID: I wanted to document some issues I've been having with our data downloads (the "Data -> Download New Data" menu) in hopes someone has insight in how to fix it or who to contact to help. This has been an ongoing issue for several months now, with previous updates to this data. The issue is that though I've uploaded a new data catalog for the Imaging Planner (version 2) I, and presumably some of you, but presumably not all of you) still see Version 1 in the download menu. Here's a screenshot [image: Screenshot 2025-03-14 at 10.29.07 PM.png] Please note in the screenshot that the description says "Catalog 1 for the KStars ImagingPlanner tool". Though KStars displays that, when I chase down all the web links using curl I do get the right data. This is shown below. As an explanation to the below, here's how things work. - We use the KNewStuff3 library to manage all this downloading. It is configured as described in the following bullets. I don't know when that got implemented, though it's been working for a long time. There are more recent versions of that library, but they probably depend on moving to Qt6. - We store a kstars.knsrc "KNewStuff file" in data/kstars.knsrc that tells KNewStuff where to look for a "providers file", - This providers file gives links to "providers download files", - and those files show the titles, descriptions, and payload urls for the actual data. All that looks configured fine to me when chasing the urls using curl. See details below. Hy *The kstars.knsrc file says the providers can be found at https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/providers.xml * > cat ~/Projects/kstars/kstars/data/kstars.knsrc [KNewStuff3] ProvidersUrl=https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/providers.xml TargetDir=kstars Uncompress=true *Accessing providers.xml shows one of the two providers at https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/main.xml * > curl -O https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/providers.xml % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 607 100 607 0 0 3668 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 3678 > cat providers.xml KStars Data KStars Data *That main.xml contains the right "Catalog 2" description and payload url* > curl -O https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/main.xml % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 6236 100 6236 0 0 25844 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 25875 > cat main.xml ... ImagingPlanner Catalog1 ImagingPlanner Hy Murveit Free noncommercial ShareAlike use with credit. Creative Commons license. Credit for individual images in .csv files. Catalog 2 for the KStars ImagingPlanner tool. 2.0 1 2025-03-12 9300 https://www.indilib.org/jdownloads/knewstuff/imagingplanner-screenshot.jpg https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/ImagingPlanner-catalog-2.0.tar.gz 5 0 ... *So why does kstars not display the right description? I've tried clearing the cache in * *~/.local/share/knewstuff3/* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Screenshot 2025-03-14 at 10.29.07 PM.png Type: image/png Size: 695173 bytes Desc: not available URL: From murveit at gmail.com Sat Mar 15 08:42:39 2025 From: murveit at gmail.com (Hy Murveit) Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2025 01:42:39 -0700 Subject: Issues with KStars data downloads In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Ben Cooksley got me part of the way to an answer. The problem was that kstars was keeping a cache in ~/.cache/kstars/knewstuff/... On Mac, the equivalent directory is ~/Library/Caches/kstars/knewstuff/... Once I removed those directories, then the "Data->Download New Data" menus worked fine for my new catalogs on both Mac and Linux. The next question is, how can we get users to clear that cache when we update new stuff? If anyone has tried the ImagingPlanner tool, then they won't get the latest catalog but rather will be stuck with the old cached versions. Perhaps I need to re-name each version of my catalog? Hy On Fri, Mar 14, 2025 at 10:47 PM Hy Murveit wrote: > I wanted to document some issues I've been having with our data downloads > (the "Data -> Download New Data" menu) in hopes someone has insight in how > to fix it or who to contact to help. This has been an ongoing issue for > several months now, with previous updates to this data. > > The issue is that though I've uploaded a new data catalog for the Imaging > Planner (version 2) I, and presumably some of you, but presumably not all > of you) still see Version 1 in the download menu. > > Here's a screenshot > > [image: Screenshot 2025-03-14 at 10.29.07 PM.png] > > Please note in the screenshot that the description says "Catalog 1 for > the KStars ImagingPlanner tool". > > Though KStars displays that, when I chase down all the web links using > curl I do get the right data. This is shown below. > > As an explanation to the below, here's how things work. > > - We use the KNewStuff3 library to manage all this downloading. It is > configured as described in the following bullets. I don't know when that > got implemented, though it's been working for a long time. There are more > recent versions of that library, but they probably depend on moving to Qt6. > - We store a kstars.knsrc "KNewStuff file" in data/kstars.knsrc that > tells KNewStuff where to look for a "providers file", > - This providers file gives links to "providers download files", > - and those files show the titles, descriptions, and payload urls for > the actual data. > > All that looks configured fine to me when chasing the urls using curl. See > details below. > > Hy > > *The kstars.knsrc file says the providers can be found > at https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/providers.xml > * > > cat ~/Projects/kstars/kstars/data/kstars.knsrc > [KNewStuff3] > ProvidersUrl=https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/providers.xml > TargetDir=kstars > Uncompress=true > > *Accessing providers.xml shows one of the two providers > at https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/main.xml > * > > curl -O https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/providers.xml > % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time > Current > Dload Upload Total Spent Left > Speed > 100 607 100 607 0 0 3668 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- > 3678 > > cat providers.xml > > > > nouploadurl="https://edu.kde.org/contrib/" > icon="http://edu.kde.org/pics/projects/cr32-app-kstars.png"> > KStars Data > > nouploadurl="https://edu.kde.org/contrib/" > icon="http://edu.kde.org/pics/projects/cr32-app-kstars.png"> > KStars Data > > > > *That main.xml contains the right "Catalog 2" description and payload url* > > curl -O https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/main.xml > % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time > Current > Dload Upload Total Spent Left > Speed > 100 6236 100 6236 0 0 25844 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- > 25875 > > cat main.xml > > ... > > ImagingPlanner Catalog1 > ImagingPlanner > Hy Murveit > Free noncommercial ShareAlike use with credit. Creative Commons > license. Credit for individual images in .csv files. > Catalog 2 for the KStars ImagingPlanner tool. > 2.0 > 1 > 2025-03-12 > 9300 > > https://www.indilib.org/jdownloads/knewstuff/imagingplanner-screenshot.jpg > > > https://cdn.kde.org/edu/kstars/ImagingPlanner-catalog-2.0.tar.gz > 5 > 0 > > ... > > > *So why does kstars not display the right description? I've tried clearing > the cache in * > *~/.local/share/knewstuff3/* > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Screenshot 2025-03-14 at 10.29.07 PM.png Type: image/png Size: 695173 bytes Desc: not available URL: From mutlaqja at ikarustech.com Mon Mar 17 03:51:29 2025 From: mutlaqja at ikarustech.com (Jasem Mutlaq) Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2025 06:51:29 +0300 Subject: Akshay--a New Volunteer In-Reply-To: References: <8530BD2B-724A-4DAA-8DE4-1449A615471E@gmail.com> Message-ID: Hello Akshay, Welcome abroad! I find that Machine Learning powered guiding is indeed very exciting but as you rightfully indicated, very challenging for a first time task! You are indeed correct, we used AI+RAG to answer FAQs and other knowledge based articles related to StellarMate. The binning statistics sound good. There are also many KStars issues reported here that would be of interest: https://invent.kde.org/education/kstars/-/issues Regarding the ML Guiding, I'm not sure if this is something we can crowdsource per se. My intuition is that it should learn on the user's own setup due to many contributing factors in seeing, mount, camera, and optics that can vastly differ from one user or another. It would be possible to start "training" after a guiding session is over for example, or while it is running, or in a special "train mode". At any rate, I am by no means an expert on this, so feel free to suggest a better model to approach this issue! -- Best Regards, Jasem Mutlaq On Mon, Mar 17, 2025 at 4:52 AM Akshay Subramaniam wrote: > Hi all, > > Firstly, I want to say I really appreciate all of your work developing > kstars and INDI and for putting out a ton of education material as well. > And thanks for all the suggestions on how to get started. Just as a > warning, I've never contributed to a full stack application and have no > clue how frontend development works so I might be very slow to implement > things in kstars 😅 > > The AI based guiding algorithm sounds fun but also daunting as a first > effort. I assume the biggest challenge would be inferencing the model in > real time faster than a single guide exposure at the very least. Maybe the > first step to tackle that would be to add a harness that outputs a bunch of > guiding data along with all the relevant mount parameters. That way, we can > crowd source data from people that would be willing to share. That would be > necessary to train a base model which folks can then finetune that model > for their specific mount either as an offline step or on the fly. I'd also > imagine there would need to be some guardrails around the predicted guiding > pulses just so things don't go off the rails because of some instability > mode of the model. Another idea is a simple LLM+RAG model that a kstars > user can chat with to answer simple questions like "What should my meridian > flip settings be for an OnStep based mount?". I believe Jasem and the > Stellarmate folks already have something similar and it can even take > actions based on natural language commands! > > The binning conditional statistics enhancement seems like a simpler > starting point so I can maybe start with that. > > Thanks, > Akshay > > On Sun, Mar 16, 2025 at 6:10 PM Hy Murveit wrote: > >> Akshay, >> >> and I'll throw one in too, related to John's suggestion. How about a >> adaptive guider based on machine learning? E.g. it decides on the >> correction pulses based on how well recent pulses have corrected the guide >> error--so presumably learns about periodic error and backlash. I suppose it >> could be pre-trained and/or adapting on the fly, or more likely both. I'd >> be happy to collaborate on that. >> >> Hy >> >> >> On Sun, Mar 16, 2025 at 1:28 PM John Evans >> wrote: >> >>> Hi Akshay, >>> >>> Welcome to the project, great to have you on board! >>> >>> I had a quick look at the links Hy enclosed and see you’re working on AI >>> related topics. I’m sure there are some interesting things in this area >>> that could be brought to KStars. I personally know very little about this >>> field but would be very interested to collaborate if you think it would be >>> appropriate. >>> >>> Regards, >>> John. >>> >>> On 16 Mar 2025, at 18:53, Hy Murveit wrote: >>> >>>  >>> Folks, >>> >>> I bumped into Akshay (cc'd) today at a local astro-club function. >>> >>> Akshay is an aeronautical engineer at NVidia, with a PhD in physics from >>> Stanford >>> and a KStars user, who's interested in contributing to our project. >>> If you have any suggestions on projects which might help start to >>> contribute, please feel free to reach out to him at akshaysubr at gmail.com >>> >>> https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/author/akshay-subramaniam/ >>> https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=hNhELoYAAAAJ&hl=en >>> >>> Hy >>> >>> Hey Hy, >>> >>> Nice meeting you today and I really enjoyed our chat. You mentioned a >>> kstars framing workflow video you had made, I’d love to watch that >>> incorporate that into my process. >>> >>> Also, I’m enthusiastic about contributing to kstars/ekos. If anything >>> specific comes up, let me know. Maybe something simple to start with so I >>> get a bit more familiar with the kstars development process before trying >>> to tackle anything more complicated. I was thinking adding an offset >>> between plate solving and the mount location might be a nice easy one so >>> one could use a guide camera and finder scope for plate solving with the >>> main scope used for visual. >>> >>> Thanks, >>> Akshay >>> >>> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akarshsimha at gmail.com Mon Mar 17 06:30:05 2025 From: akarshsimha at gmail.com (Akarsh Simha) Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2025 12:00:05 +0530 Subject: Akshay--a New Volunteer In-Reply-To: References: <8530BD2B-724A-4DAA-8DE4-1449A615471E@gmail.com> Message-ID: Hi Akshay Nice to see you join team KStars! Akshay and I went to college together way back in 2008 or so, and we used to be in the astronomy club together. On a side note HiPS overlay is crawling on my friend’s 2019 MacBook Air and after some time KStars hangs. Makes it unusable. Any idea what’s going on? Regards Akarsh On Mon, Mar 17, 2025 at 09:21 Jasem Mutlaq wrote: > Hello Akshay, > > Welcome abroad! I find that Machine Learning powered guiding is indeed > very exciting but as you rightfully indicated, very challenging for a first > time task! You are indeed correct, we used AI+RAG to answer FAQs and other > knowledge based articles related to StellarMate. > > The binning statistics sound good. There are also many KStars issues > reported here that would be of interest: > https://invent.kde.org/education/kstars/-/issues > > Regarding the ML Guiding, I'm not sure if this is something we can > crowdsource per se. My intuition is that it should learn on the user's own > setup due to many contributing factors in seeing, mount, camera, and optics > that can vastly differ from one user or another. It would be possible to > start "training" after a guiding session is over for example, or while it > is running, or in a special "train mode". At any rate, I am by no means an > expert on this, so feel free to suggest a better model to approach this > issue! > > -- > Best Regards, > Jasem Mutlaq > > > > On Mon, Mar 17, 2025 at 4:52 AM Akshay Subramaniam > wrote: > >> Hi all, >> >> Firstly, I want to say I really appreciate all of your work developing >> kstars and INDI and for putting out a ton of education material as well. >> And thanks for all the suggestions on how to get started. Just as a >> warning, I've never contributed to a full stack application and have no >> clue how frontend development works so I might be very slow to implement >> things in kstars 😅 >> >> The AI based guiding algorithm sounds fun but also daunting as a first >> effort. I assume the biggest challenge would be inferencing the model in >> real time faster than a single guide exposure at the very least. Maybe the >> first step to tackle that would be to add a harness that outputs a bunch of >> guiding data along with all the relevant mount parameters. That way, we can >> crowd source data from people that would be willing to share. That would be >> necessary to train a base model which folks can then finetune that model >> for their specific mount either as an offline step or on the fly. I'd also >> imagine there would need to be some guardrails around the predicted guiding >> pulses just so things don't go off the rails because of some instability >> mode of the model. Another idea is a simple LLM+RAG model that a kstars >> user can chat with to answer simple questions like "What should my meridian >> flip settings be for an OnStep based mount?". I believe Jasem and the >> Stellarmate folks already have something similar and it can even take >> actions based on natural language commands! >> >> The binning conditional statistics enhancement seems like a simpler >> starting point so I can maybe start with that. >> >> Thanks, >> Akshay >> >> On Sun, Mar 16, 2025 at 6:10 PM Hy Murveit wrote: >> >>> Akshay, >>> >>> and I'll throw one in too, related to John's suggestion. How about a >>> adaptive guider based on machine learning? E.g. it decides on the >>> correction pulses based on how well recent pulses have corrected the guide >>> error--so presumably learns about periodic error and backlash. I suppose it >>> could be pre-trained and/or adapting on the fly, or more likely both. I'd >>> be happy to collaborate on that. >>> >>> Hy >>> >>> >>> On Sun, Mar 16, 2025 at 1:28 PM John Evans >>> wrote: >>> >>>> Hi Akshay, >>>> >>>> Welcome to the project, great to have you on board! >>>> >>>> I had a quick look at the links Hy enclosed and see you’re working on >>>> AI related topics. I’m sure there are some interesting things in this area >>>> that could be brought to KStars. I personally know very little about this >>>> field but would be very interested to collaborate if you think it would be >>>> appropriate. >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>> John. >>>> >>>> On 16 Mar 2025, at 18:53, Hy Murveit wrote: >>>> >>>>  >>>> Folks, >>>> >>>> I bumped into Akshay (cc'd) today at a local astro-club function. >>>> >>>> Akshay is an aeronautical engineer at NVidia, with a PhD in physics >>>> from Stanford >>>> and a KStars user, who's interested in contributing to our project. >>>> If you have any suggestions on projects which might help start to >>>> contribute, please feel free to reach out to him at >>>> akshaysubr at gmail.com >>>> >>>> https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/author/akshay-subramaniam/ >>>> https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=hNhELoYAAAAJ&hl=en >>>> >>>> Hy >>>> >>>> Hey Hy, >>>> >>>> Nice meeting you today and I really enjoyed our chat. You mentioned a >>>> kstars framing workflow video you had made, I’d love to watch that >>>> incorporate that into my process. >>>> >>>> Also, I’m enthusiastic about contributing to kstars/ekos. If anything >>>> specific comes up, let me know. Maybe something simple to start with so I >>>> get a bit more familiar with the kstars development process before trying >>>> to tackle anything more complicated. I was thinking adding an offset >>>> between plate solving and the mount location might be a nice easy one so >>>> one could use a guide camera and finder scope for plate solving with the >>>> main scope used for visual. >>>> >>>> Thanks, >>>> Akshay >>>> >>>> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From murveit at gmail.com Wed Mar 19 20:37:25 2025 From: murveit at gmail.com (Hy Murveit) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2025 13:37:25 -0700 Subject: Slowness in SkyMap In-Reply-To: References: <8530BD2B-724A-4DAA-8DE4-1449A615471E@gmail.com> Message-ID: Responding to (and moving) Akarsh's note below. I don't know what's going on, but I can second that. Every now and then I get this incredible slowness drawing the terrain overlay. Right now, kstars is unusable with terrain enabled on my dev Linux VM. When I turn terrain off (which takes a while because of the extreme slowness) all is ok. It seems to working ok natively on my Mac. I haven't changed anything in the terrain code in years. Seems likely to be related to the issue you're reporting. Anyone else see this? Hy ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Akarsh Simha Date: Sun, Mar 16, 2025 at 11:30 PM Subject: Re: Akshay--a New Volunteer To: Jasem Mutlaq Cc: KStars Development Mailing List , Akshay Subramaniam Hi Akshay Nice to see you join team KStars! Akshay and I went to college together way back in 2008 or so, and we used to be in the astronomy club together. On a side note HiPS overlay is crawling on my friend’s 2019 MacBook Air and after some time KStars hangs. Makes it unusable. Any idea what’s going on? Regards Akarsh -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sterne-jaeger at openfuture.de Wed Mar 19 20:41:17 2025 From: sterne-jaeger at openfuture.de (Wolfgang Reissenberger) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2025 21:41:17 +0100 Subject: Slowness in SkyMap In-Reply-To: References: <8530BD2B-724A-4DAA-8DE4-1449A615471E@gmail.com> Message-ID: <2FF907B8-3BCF-463B-A718-04591BB9F825@openfuture.de> I’ve observed a similar problem. When I’ve zoomed in very heavy (FOV 1-2 deg), KStars becomes very slow and EKOS hangs. > Am 19.03.2025 um 21:37 schrieb Hy Murveit : > > Responding to (and moving) Akarsh's note below. > > I don't know what's going on, but I can second that. > Every now and then I get this incredible slowness drawing the terrain overlay. > Right now, kstars is unusable with terrain enabled on my dev Linux VM. > When I turn terrain off (which takes a while because of the extreme slowness) all is ok. > It seems to working ok natively on my Mac. > I haven't changed anything in the terrain code in years. > Seems likely to be related to the issue you're reporting. > > Anyone else see this? > Hy > > ---------- Forwarded message --------- > From: Akarsh Simha > > Date: Sun, Mar 16, 2025 at 11:30 PM > Subject: Re: Akshay--a New Volunteer > To: Jasem Mutlaq > > Cc: KStars Development Mailing List >, Akshay Subramaniam > > > > Hi Akshay > > Nice to see you join team KStars! Akshay and I went to college together way back in 2008 or so, and we used to be in the astronomy club together. > > On a side note HiPS overlay is crawling on my friend’s 2019 MacBook Air and after some time KStars hangs. Makes it unusable. Any idea what’s going on? > > Regards > Akarsh > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From murveit at gmail.com Wed Mar 19 21:26:47 2025 From: murveit at gmail.com (Hy Murveit) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2025 14:26:47 -0700 Subject: Slowness in SkyMap In-Reply-To: <2FF907B8-3BCF-463B-A718-04591BB9F825@openfuture.de> References: <8530BD2B-724A-4DAA-8DE4-1449A615471E@gmail.com> <2FF907B8-3BCF-463B-A718-04591BB9F825@openfuture.de> Message-ID: For me it's not limited to heavy FOV, but rather always. On Wed, Mar 19, 2025 at 1:41 PM Wolfgang Reissenberger < sterne-jaeger at openfuture.de> wrote: > I’ve observed a similar problem. When I’ve zoomed in very heavy (FOV 1-2 > deg), KStars becomes very slow and EKOS hangs. > > Am 19.03.2025 um 21:37 schrieb Hy Murveit : > > Responding to (and moving) Akarsh's note below. > > I don't know what's going on, but I can second that. > Every now and then I get this incredible slowness drawing the terrain > overlay. > Right now, kstars is unusable with terrain enabled on my dev Linux VM. > When I turn terrain off (which takes a while because of the extreme > slowness) all is ok. > It seems to working ok natively on my Mac. > I haven't changed anything in the terrain code in years. > Seems likely to be related to the issue you're reporting. > > Anyone else see this? > Hy > > ---------- Forwarded message --------- > From: Akarsh Simha > Date: Sun, Mar 16, 2025 at 11:30 PM > Subject: Re: Akshay--a New Volunteer > To: Jasem Mutlaq > Cc: KStars Development Mailing List , Akshay > Subramaniam > > > Hi Akshay > > Nice to see you join team KStars! Akshay and I went to college together > way back in 2008 or so, and we used to be in the astronomy club together. > > On a side note HiPS overlay is crawling on my friend’s 2019 MacBook Air > and after some time KStars hangs. Makes it unusable. Any idea what’s going > on? > > Regards > Akarsh > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hans at lambermont.dyndns.org Wed Mar 19 22:16:21 2025 From: hans at lambermont.dyndns.org (hans at lambermont.dyndns.org) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2025 23:16:21 +0100 Subject: Slowness in SkyMap In-Reply-To: References: <8530BD2B-724A-4DAA-8DE4-1449A615471E@gmail.com> <2FF907B8-3BCF-463B-A718-04591BB9F825@openfuture.de> Message-ID: Hy Murveit wrote on 20250319: > For me it's not limited to heavy FOV, but rather always. For me slow/not responding as well. I'm imaging now (rare clear skies here) and a mouse wheel action in the star view does not respond at all (it should zoom) while the mouse wheel in ekos over the tabs happily immediately switches tab views. -- Hans > On Wed, Mar 19, 2025 at 1:41 PM Wolfgang Reissenberger < > sterne-jaeger at openfuture.de> wrote: > > > I’ve observed a similar problem. When I’ve zoomed in very heavy (FOV 1-2 > > deg), KStars becomes very slow and EKOS hangs. > > > > Am 19.03.2025 um 21:37 schrieb Hy Murveit : > > > > Responding to (and moving) Akarsh's note below. > > > > I don't know what's going on, but I can second that. > > Every now and then I get this incredible slowness drawing the terrain > > overlay. > > Right now, kstars is unusable with terrain enabled on my dev Linux VM. > > When I turn terrain off (which takes a while because of the extreme > > slowness) all is ok. > > It seems to working ok natively on my Mac. > > I haven't changed anything in the terrain code in years. > > Seems likely to be related to the issue you're reporting. > > > > Anyone else see this? > > Hy > > > > ---------- Forwarded message --------- > > From: Akarsh Simha > > Date: Sun, Mar 16, 2025 at 11:30 PM > > Subject: Re: Akshay--a New Volunteer > > To: Jasem Mutlaq > > Cc: KStars Development Mailing List , Akshay > > Subramaniam > > > > > > Hi Akshay > > > > Nice to see you join team KStars! Akshay and I went to college together > > way back in 2008 or so, and we used to be in the astronomy club together. > > > > On a side note HiPS overlay is crawling on my friend’s 2019 MacBook Air > > and after some time KStars hangs. Makes it unusable. Any idea what’s going > > on? > > > > Regards > > Akarsh From murveit at gmail.com Thu Mar 20 06:00:43 2025 From: murveit at gmail.com (Hy Murveit) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2025 23:00:43 -0700 Subject: Slowness in SkyMap In-Reply-To: References: <8530BD2B-724A-4DAA-8DE4-1449A615471E@gmail.com> <2FF907B8-3BCF-463B-A718-04591BB9F825@openfuture.de> Message-ID: It's coming back to me...A while back I was having issues like this, and I traced it to something odd in the way kstars dealt with star catalogs. Akarsh and I looked at it but never resolved it, but as I recall, the symptom was that even though the code that was supposed to only look at data from a small part of the sky (a particular trixel) when looking for stuff to display from the catalogs, it wound up instead looking through the whole star catalog, which can be very very slow for large catalogs. Though I could reproduce that for a while back then, I stopped being able to reproduce it, and we couldn't debug it--the problem went away and we went on to other things. So, here's my theory. That problem, whatever it was, is (occasionally) back. [Of course, now my system is working well again with terrain enabled, so I can't look into it.] So, if any of you run against that issue, I suggest you try the following, based on my vague memory of that old debugging session: If it is happening to you, go to ~/.local/share/kstars and move the file USNO-NOMAD-1e8.dat to your home directory (if you have that file) and restart kstars and see if the problem goes away. Then, of course, put it back and see if the problem returns. Then debug ;) I think a possibility is that you'll find that the code that renders stars, starcomponent.cpp::draw(), is taking a long time searching through that large catalog because the trixel filtering it uses is somehow no longer effective (that is, line 304 of that file, "MeshIterator region" is just returning ALL regions of the sky, not just the ones visible in the skymap). Hy On Wed, Mar 19, 2025 at 3:16 PM wrote: > Hy Murveit wrote on 20250319: > > > For me it's not limited to heavy FOV, but rather always. > > For me slow/not responding as well. I'm imaging now (rare clear > skies here) and a mouse wheel action in the star view does not > respond at all (it should zoom) while the mouse wheel in ekos > over the tabs happily immediately switches tab views. > > -- Hans > > > On Wed, Mar 19, 2025 at 1:41 PM Wolfgang Reissenberger < > > sterne-jaeger at openfuture.de> wrote: > > > > > I’ve observed a similar problem. When I’ve zoomed in very heavy (FOV > 1-2 > > > deg), KStars becomes very slow and EKOS hangs. > > > > > > Am 19.03.2025 um 21:37 schrieb Hy Murveit : > > > > > > Responding to (and moving) Akarsh's note below. > > > > > > I don't know what's going on, but I can second that. > > > Every now and then I get this incredible slowness drawing the terrain > > > overlay. > > > Right now, kstars is unusable with terrain enabled on my dev Linux VM. > > > When I turn terrain off (which takes a while because of the extreme > > > slowness) all is ok. > > > It seems to working ok natively on my Mac. > > > I haven't changed anything in the terrain code in years. > > > Seems likely to be related to the issue you're reporting. > > > > > > Anyone else see this? > > > Hy > > > > > > ---------- Forwarded message --------- > > > From: Akarsh Simha > > > Date: Sun, Mar 16, 2025 at 11:30 PM > > > Subject: Re: Akshay--a New Volunteer > > > To: Jasem Mutlaq > > > Cc: KStars Development Mailing List , Akshay > > > Subramaniam > > > > > > > > > Hi Akshay > > > > > > Nice to see you join team KStars! Akshay and I went to college together > > > way back in 2008 or so, and we used to be in the astronomy club > together. > > > > > > On a side note HiPS overlay is crawling on my friend’s 2019 MacBook Air > > > and after some time KStars hangs. Makes it unusable. Any idea what’s > going > > > on? > > > > > > Regards > > > Akarsh > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mutlaqja at ikarustech.com Tue Mar 25 05:41:59 2025 From: mutlaqja at ikarustech.com (Jasem Mutlaq) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2025 08:41:59 +0300 Subject: New KStars documentation website Message-ID: Hello, We have a new KStars Documentation website written in Sphinx. We'd like to host it here: https://invent.kde.org/documentation Once this is done, we will remove the KStars docs folder that has the Docbook-based documentation and any translations under po that are for docs, so that the translation team can only concentrate on the new documentation website for the docs. The compressed documentation is here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/671mh2g66f7omev100r4x/docs-kstars-org-03.zip?rlkey=2nedrq54te2ddnh6xfoby6es2&dl=0 Let me know what needs to be done next. -- Best Regards, Jasem Mutlaq -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bcooksley at kde.org Tue Mar 25 10:15:22 2025 From: bcooksley at kde.org (Ben Cooksley) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2025 23:15:22 +1300 Subject: New KStars documentation website In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Mar 25, 2025 at 6:43 PM Jasem Mutlaq wrote: > Hello, > Hi Jasem, > > We have a new KStars Documentation website written in Sphinx. We'd like to > host it here: https://invent.kde.org/documentation > > Once this is done, we will remove the KStars docs folder that has the > Docbook-based documentation and any translations under po that are for > docs, so that the translation team can only concentrate on the new > documentation website for the docs. > > The compressed documentation is here: > https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/671mh2g66f7omev100r4x/docs-kstars-org-03.zip?rlkey=2nedrq54te2ddnh6xfoby6es2&dl=0 > > Let me know what needs to be done next. > Normally this is worked on in a GIt repository in a developer's personal namespace, which is then followed by a request to Sysadmin to move that repository to it's final home. Can you please push the code to a Git repository then file the corresponding ticket and we can go from there? > > -- > Best Regards, > Jasem Mutlaq > > Regards, Ben -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mutlaqja at ikarustech.com Tue Mar 25 12:31:34 2025 From: mutlaqja at ikarustech.com (Jasem Mutlaq) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2025 15:31:34 +0300 Subject: New KStars documentation website In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Sure, it's done here: https://invent.kde.org/mutlaqja/kstars-doc -- Best Regards, Jasem Mutlaq On Tue, Mar 25, 2025 at 1:16 PM Ben Cooksley wrote: > On Tue, Mar 25, 2025 at 6:43 PM Jasem Mutlaq > wrote: > >> Hello, >> > > Hi Jasem, > > >> >> We have a new KStars Documentation website written in Sphinx. We'd like >> to host it here: https://invent.kde.org/documentation >> >> Once this is done, we will remove the KStars docs folder that has the >> Docbook-based documentation and any translations under po that are for >> docs, so that the translation team can only concentrate on the new >> documentation website for the docs. >> >> The compressed documentation is here: >> https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/671mh2g66f7omev100r4x/docs-kstars-org-03.zip?rlkey=2nedrq54te2ddnh6xfoby6es2&dl=0 >> >> Let me know what needs to be done next. >> > > Normally this is worked on in a GIt repository in a developer's personal > namespace, which is then followed by a request to Sysadmin to move that > repository to it's final home. > Can you please push the code to a Git repository then file the > corresponding ticket and we can go from there? > > >> >> -- >> Best Regards, >> Jasem Mutlaq >> >> > Regards, > Ben > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mutlaqja at ikarustech.com Tue Mar 25 13:00:28 2025 From: mutlaqja at ikarustech.com (Jasem Mutlaq) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2025 16:00:28 +0300 Subject: Akshay--a New Volunteer In-Reply-To: References: <8530BD2B-724A-4DAA-8DE4-1449A615471E@gmail.com> Message-ID: Hello Akshay, Just wanted to follow up on the ML Guider concept. Do you think it's doable? If yes, what do we need to do next? What kind of training data is required? -- Best Regards, Jasem Mutlaq On Tue, Mar 18, 2025 at 10:05 AM Akshay Subramaniam wrote: > Regarding the ML guider concept, all of these ideas sound good. I don’t > quite have a handle on what the “ground truth” data would be though. If we > just use guiding pulses from the logs, we can only ever match the > performance of existing algorithms, right? I think it might be prudent to > do a bit of a literature survey on ML based control algorithms generally. > One specific paper comes to mind where they trained an ML control algorithm > that can hover a helicopter upside down but I can’t remember the title of > the paper off the top of my head. > > I agree that the model must be specific to a users setup, but I also feel > like having a base model that has learnt fundamental guiding > characteristics would be very useful so a user can fine tune that on their > specific setup rather than train an all new model from scratch. Anyway, > I’ll do some literature search over the next week or so to have a more > informed opinion on this topic. > > Thanks, > Akshay > > On Sun, Mar 16, 2025 at 11:50 PM John Evans > wrote: > >> My 2c on the ML/AI guider concept. It seems a good choice as we already >> have guide logs that detail the pulses sent to the mount so there is a >> ready source of data for training although perhaps a first step would be to >> review these logs with a view to their suitability for AI. >> >> The procedural approach currently is 2 fold: >> 1. Standard Correction. Calculate the deviation and from the calibration >> send a correction pulse. Then repeat. >> 2. Pre-emptive Correction. Based on periodic error, calculate repeatable >> deviation and send these corrections at the appropriate time to minimise >> deviation in the first place. This is PEC / PPEC / GPG. >> >> It kind of feels like a good opportunity for an AI algorithm although as >> others have suggested maybe not as a first step. Maybe however it would be >> OK to start thinking about how we could go about this in the future and see >> what prerequisites we'd need (e.g. additional data in the guide logs)? >> >> On Mon, 17 Mar 2025 at 03:52, Jasem Mutlaq >> wrote: >> >>> Hello Akshay, >>> >>> Welcome abroad! I find that Machine Learning powered guiding is indeed >>> very exciting but as you rightfully indicated, very challenging for a first >>> time task! You are indeed correct, we used AI+RAG to answer FAQs and other >>> knowledge based articles related to StellarMate. >>> >>> The binning statistics sound good. There are also many KStars issues >>> reported here that would be of interest: >>> https://invent.kde.org/education/kstars/-/issues >>> >>> Regarding the ML Guiding, I'm not sure if this is something we can >>> crowdsource per se. My intuition is that it should learn on the user's own >>> setup due to many contributing factors in seeing, mount, camera, and optics >>> that can vastly differ from one user or another. It would be possible to >>> start "training" after a guiding session is over for example, or while it >>> is running, or in a special "train mode". At any rate, I am by no means an >>> expert on this, so feel free to suggest a better model to approach this >>> issue! >>> >>> -- >>> Best Regards, >>> Jasem Mutlaq >>> >>> >>> >>> On Mon, Mar 17, 2025 at 4:52 AM Akshay Subramaniam >>> wrote: >>> >>>> Hi all, >>>> >>>> Firstly, I want to say I really appreciate all of your work developing >>>> kstars and INDI and for putting out a ton of education material as well. >>>> And thanks for all the suggestions on how to get started. Just as a >>>> warning, I've never contributed to a full stack application and have no >>>> clue how frontend development works so I might be very slow to implement >>>> things in kstars 😅 >>>> >>>> The AI based guiding algorithm sounds fun but also daunting as a first >>>> effort. I assume the biggest challenge would be inferencing the model in >>>> real time faster than a single guide exposure at the very least. Maybe the >>>> first step to tackle that would be to add a harness that outputs a bunch of >>>> guiding data along with all the relevant mount parameters. That way, we can >>>> crowd source data from people that would be willing to share. That would be >>>> necessary to train a base model which folks can then finetune that model >>>> for their specific mount either as an offline step or on the fly. I'd also >>>> imagine there would need to be some guardrails around the predicted guiding >>>> pulses just so things don't go off the rails because of some instability >>>> mode of the model. Another idea is a simple LLM+RAG model that a kstars >>>> user can chat with to answer simple questions like "What should my meridian >>>> flip settings be for an OnStep based mount?". I believe Jasem and the >>>> Stellarmate folks already have something similar and it can even take >>>> actions based on natural language commands! >>>> >>>> The binning conditional statistics enhancement seems like a simpler >>>> starting point so I can maybe start with that. >>>> >>>> Thanks, >>>> Akshay >>>> >>>> On Sun, Mar 16, 2025 at 6:10 PM Hy Murveit wrote: >>>> >>>>> Akshay, >>>>> >>>>> and I'll throw one in too, related to John's suggestion. How about a >>>>> adaptive guider based on machine learning? E.g. it decides on the >>>>> correction pulses based on how well recent pulses have corrected the guide >>>>> error--so presumably learns about periodic error and backlash. I suppose it >>>>> could be pre-trained and/or adapting on the fly, or more likely both. I'd >>>>> be happy to collaborate on that. >>>>> >>>>> Hy >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Sun, Mar 16, 2025 at 1:28 PM John Evans < >>>>> john.e.evans.email at gmail.com> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> Hi Akshay, >>>>>> >>>>>> Welcome to the project, great to have you on board! >>>>>> >>>>>> I had a quick look at the links Hy enclosed and see you’re working on >>>>>> AI related topics. I’m sure there are some interesting things in this area >>>>>> that could be brought to KStars. I personally know very little about this >>>>>> field but would be very interested to collaborate if you think it would be >>>>>> appropriate. >>>>>> >>>>>> Regards, >>>>>> John. >>>>>> >>>>>> On 16 Mar 2025, at 18:53, Hy Murveit wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>  >>>>>> Folks, >>>>>> >>>>>> I bumped into Akshay (cc'd) today at a local astro-club function. >>>>>> >>>>>> Akshay is an aeronautical engineer at NVidia, with a PhD in physics >>>>>> from Stanford >>>>>> and a KStars user, who's interested in contributing to our project. >>>>>> If you have any suggestions on projects which might help start to >>>>>> contribute, please feel free to reach out to him at >>>>>> akshaysubr at gmail.com >>>>>> >>>>>> https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/author/akshay-subramaniam/ >>>>>> https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=hNhELoYAAAAJ&hl=en >>>>>> >>>>>> Hy >>>>>> >>>>>> Hey Hy, >>>>>> >>>>>> Nice meeting you today and I really enjoyed our chat. You mentioned a >>>>>> kstars framing workflow video you had made, I’d love to watch that >>>>>> incorporate that into my process. >>>>>> >>>>>> Also, I’m enthusiastic about contributing to kstars/ekos. If anything >>>>>> specific comes up, let me know. Maybe something simple to start with so I >>>>>> get a bit more familiar with the kstars development process before trying >>>>>> to tackle anything more complicated. I was thinking adding an offset >>>>>> between plate solving and the mount location might be a nice easy one so >>>>>> one could use a guide camera and finder scope for plate solving with the >>>>>> main scope used for visual. >>>>>> >>>>>> Thanks, >>>>>> Akshay >>>>>> >>>>>> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bcooksley at kde.org Tue Mar 25 18:20:07 2025 From: bcooksley at kde.org (Ben Cooksley) Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2025 07:20:07 +1300 Subject: New KStars documentation website In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Mar 26, 2025 at 1:31 AM Jasem Mutlaq wrote: > Sure, it's done here: https://invent.kde.org/mutlaqja/kstars-doc > Thanks will get that transferred tonight. > > -- > Best Regards, > Jasem Mutlaq > Cheers, Ben > > > > On Tue, Mar 25, 2025 at 1:16 PM Ben Cooksley wrote: > >> On Tue, Mar 25, 2025 at 6:43 PM Jasem Mutlaq >> wrote: >> >>> Hello, >>> >> >> Hi Jasem, >> >> >>> >>> We have a new KStars Documentation website written in Sphinx. We'd like >>> to host it here: https://invent.kde.org/documentation >>> >>> Once this is done, we will remove the KStars docs folder that has the >>> Docbook-based documentation and any translations under po that are for >>> docs, so that the translation team can only concentrate on the new >>> documentation website for the docs. >>> >>> The compressed documentation is here: >>> https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/671mh2g66f7omev100r4x/docs-kstars-org-03.zip?rlkey=2nedrq54te2ddnh6xfoby6es2&dl=0 >>> >>> Let me know what needs to be done next. >>> >> >> Normally this is worked on in a GIt repository in a developer's personal >> namespace, which is then followed by a request to Sysadmin to move that >> repository to it's final home. >> Can you please push the code to a Git repository then file the >> corresponding ticket and we can go from there? >> >> >>> >>> -- >>> Best Regards, >>> Jasem Mutlaq >>> >>> >> Regards, >> Ben >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mutlaqja at ikarustech.com Fri Mar 28 04:44:01 2025 From: mutlaqja at ikarustech.com (Jasem Mutlaq) Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2025 07:44:01 +0300 Subject: New home for KStars user manual Message-ID: Hello all, Finally after a lot of work, we have a new home for KStars documentation written using Sphinx: https://kstars-docs.kde.org/ The translations are not completely done. I hope the translations teams can continue to improve the translations from docbook to rst and submit their changes here: https://invent.kde.org/documentation/kstars-docs-kde-org We will be removing the docbook manual from KStars. -- Best Regards, Jasem Mutlaq -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From luigi.toscano at tiscali.it Fri Mar 28 07:39:31 2025 From: luigi.toscano at tiscali.it (Luigi Toscano) Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2025 08:39:31 +0100 Subject: New home for KStars user manual In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47f72b70-2242-9ed2-aa2f-d721865256dd@tiscali.it> Jasem Mutlaq ha scritto: > Hello all, > > Finally after a lot of work, we have a new home for KStars documentation > written using Sphinx: https://kstars-docs.kde.org/ > > The translations are not completely done. I hope the translations teams can > continue to improve the translations from docbook to rst and submit their > changes here: https://invent.kde.org/documentation/kstars-docs-kde-org Translators will continue to translate the po files and not touch that repository directly, and scripty will push them to the repository. I see you imported some po files, I guess for testing purposes. Please remove all the content of the locale/ directory, they will be removed anyway. > > We will be removing the docbook manual from KStars. Please keep it around for a bit so people could see if they can reuse some content. The moment you remove them, I will remove the translations as well. If the new documents are a 1-1 mapping of the old ones, maybe we can arrange a copy before removing them. In general a bit more of coordination would have been appreciated. -- Luigi From mutlaqja at ikarustech.com Fri Mar 28 08:24:01 2025 From: mutlaqja at ikarustech.com (Jasem Mutlaq) Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2025 11:24:01 +0300 Subject: New home for KStars user manual In-Reply-To: <47f72b70-2242-9ed2-aa2f-d721865256dd@tiscali.it> References: <47f72b70-2242-9ed2-aa2f-d721865256dd@tiscali.it> Message-ID: Thank you Luigi, it would be greatly appreciated if you or someone takes care of cleaning the new repo to meet KDE standards. I worked on mostly converting docbook to RST and translating a few files (not all are complete). Can KStars developers also push directly to the new docs repo without needing to fork and send a PR for each change? I think that would be convenient for the developers. -- Best Regards, Jasem Mutlaq On Fri, Mar 28, 2025 at 10:39 AM Luigi Toscano wrote: > Jasem Mutlaq ha scritto: > > Hello all, > > > > Finally after a lot of work, we have a new home for KStars documentation > > written using Sphinx: https://kstars-docs.kde.org/ > > > > The translations are not completely done. I hope the translations teams > can > > continue to improve the translations from docbook to rst and submit their > > changes here: https://invent.kde.org/documentation/kstars-docs-kde-org > > Translators will continue to translate the po files and not touch that > repository directly, and scripty will push them to the repository. > I see you imported some po files, I guess for testing purposes. Please > remove > all the content of the locale/ directory, they will be removed anyway. > > > > > > We will be removing the docbook manual from KStars. > > Please keep it around for a bit so people could see if they can reuse some > content. The moment you remove them, I will remove the translations as > well. > > If the new documents are a 1-1 mapping of the old ones, maybe we can > arrange a > copy before removing them. In general a bit more of coordination would have > been appreciated. > > > -- > Luigi > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From luigi.toscano at tiscali.it Fri Mar 28 08:55:57 2025 From: luigi.toscano at tiscali.it (Luigi Toscano) Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2025 09:55:57 +0100 Subject: New home for KStars user manual In-Reply-To: References: <47f72b70-2242-9ed2-aa2f-d721865256dd@tiscali.it> Message-ID: Jasem Mutlaq ha scritto: > Thank you Luigi, it would be greatly appreciated if you or someone takes care > of cleaning the new repo to meet KDE standards. I worked on mostly converting > docbook to RST and translating a few files (not all are complete). No, please, that's not the way. Translations must pass through the po files. Any work on those localized files will be removed (I will do it shortly). > > Can KStars developers also push directly to the new docs repo without needing > to fork and send a PR for each change? I think that would be convenient for > the developers. You can push directly but not translations. Translations _must_ be managed by scripty. Again: please DON'T convert translated docbooks. If there is a mapping between the old doc and the new one, let's try to copy the po files in the translation repository. -- Luigi From mutlaqja at ikarustech.com Sun Mar 30 15:49:22 2025 From: mutlaqja at ikarustech.com (Jasem Mutlaq) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2025 17:49:22 +0300 Subject: New home for KStars user manual In-Reply-To: <13374980.O9o76ZdvQC@tyrell> References: <13374980.O9o76ZdvQC@tyrell> Message-ID: Absolutely, no one knows about the new documentation website. We will also need to update our README and KStars website to point to it. -- Best Regards, Jasem Mutlaq On Sun, Mar 30, 2025 at 3:58 PM Paul Brown wrote: > On Friday, 28 March 2025 05:44:01 Central European Summer Time Jasem > Mutlaq > wrote: > > Hello all, > > > > Finally after a lot of work, we have a new home for KStars documentation > > written using Sphinx: https://kstars-docs.kde.org/ > > > > The translations are not completely done. I hope the translations teams > can > > continue to improve the translations from docbook to rst and submit their > > changes here: https://invent.kde.org/documentation/kstars-docs-kde-org > > > > We will be removing the docbook manual from KStars. > > > > -- > > Best Regards, > > Jasem Mutlaq > > > Hi Jasem, > > Can we promote this on social media? > > Cheers > > Paul > -- > Promotion & Communication > > www: https://kde.org > Mastodon: https://floss.social/@kde > Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kde/ > LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kde > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From luigi.toscano at tiscali.it Sun Mar 30 16:04:01 2025 From: luigi.toscano at tiscali.it (Luigi Toscano) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2025 17:04:01 +0200 Subject: New home for KStars user manual In-Reply-To: References: <13374980.O9o76ZdvQC@tyrell> Message-ID: <324fff5a-0231-223d-e68f-99bc78dfd63e@tiscali.it> Shouldn't we first solve the problem with importing translations? Please provide a mapping between the old _source_ docbooks and the new RST pages, so that I can help with reshuffling the po files. Jasem Mutlaq ha scritto: > Absolutely, no one knows about the new documentation website. We will also > need to update our README and KStars website to point to it. > > -- > Best Regards, > Jasem Mutlaq > > > > On Sun, Mar 30, 2025 at 3:58 PM Paul Brown > wrote: > > On Friday, 28 March 2025 05:44:01 Central European Summer Time Jasem Mutlaq > wrote: > > Hello all, > > > > Finally after a lot of work, we have a new home for KStars documentation > > written using Sphinx: https://kstars-docs.kde.org/ > > > > The translations are not completely done. I hope the translations teams can > > continue to improve the translations from docbook to rst and submit their > > changes here: https://invent.kde.org/documentation/kstars-docs-kde-org > > > > We will be removing the docbook manual from KStars. > > > > -- > > Best Regards, > > Jasem Mutlaq > > > Hi Jasem, > > Can we promote this on social media? > > Cheers > > Paul > -- > Promotion & Communication > > www: https://kde.org > Mastodon: https://floss.social/@kde > Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kde/ > LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kde > > From mutlaqja at ikarustech.com Sun Mar 30 16:10:00 2025 From: mutlaqja at ikarustech.com (Jasem Mutlaq) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2025 18:10:00 +0300 Subject: New home for KStars user manual In-Reply-To: <324fff5a-0231-223d-e68f-99bc78dfd63e@tiscali.it> References: <13374980.O9o76ZdvQC@tyrell> <324fff5a-0231-223d-e68f-99bc78dfd63e@tiscali.it> Message-ID: We should be good to go with the English version ready. We don't have any up-to-date manual online now (the last one is quite old and does not contain a lot of updated sections) so I say we'd go ahead with the announcement. I don't have a mapping of the old docbook to the new RST. I think most docbooks were converted to RST while keeping the same file name. -- Best Regards, Jasem Mutlaq On Sun, Mar 30, 2025 at 6:04 PM Luigi Toscano wrote: > > Shouldn't we first solve the problem with importing translations? > > Please provide a mapping between the old _source_ docbooks and the new RST > pages, so that I can help with reshuffling the po files. > > > Jasem Mutlaq ha scritto: > > Absolutely, no one knows about the new documentation website. We will > also > > need to update our README and KStars website to point to it. > > > > > > -- > > Best Regards, > > Jasem Mutlaq > > > > > > > > On Sun, Mar 30, 2025 at 3:58 PM Paul Brown > > wrote: > > > > On Friday, 28 March 2025 05:44:01 Central European Summer Time Jasem > Mutlaq > > wrote: > > > Hello all, > > > > > > Finally after a lot of work, we have a new home for KStars > documentation > > > written using Sphinx: https://kstars-docs.kde.org/ > > > > > > The translations are not completely done. I hope the translations > teams can > > > continue to improve the translations from docbook to rst and > submit their > > > changes here: > https://invent.kde.org/documentation/kstars-docs-kde-org > > > > > > We will be removing the docbook manual from KStars. > > > > > > -- > > > Best Regards, > > > Jasem Mutlaq > > > > > > Hi Jasem, > > > > Can we promote this on social media? > > > > Cheers > > > > Paul > > -- > > Promotion & Communication > > > > www: https://kde.org > > Mastodon: https://floss.social/@kde > > Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kde/ > > LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kde > > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mutlaqja at ikarustech.com Mon Mar 31 09:46:26 2025 From: mutlaqja at ikarustech.com (Jasem Mutlaq) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2025 11:46:26 +0300 Subject: New home for KStars user manual In-Reply-To: <6140500.lOV4Wx5bFT@tyrell> References: <324fff5a-0231-223d-e68f-99bc78dfd63e@tiscali.it> <6140500.lOV4Wx5bFT@tyrell> Message-ID: Good to go from my side! -- Best Regards, Jasem Mutlaq On Mon, Mar 31, 2025 at 11:45 AM Paul Brown wrote: > On Sunday, 30 March 2025 17:10:00 Central European Summer Time Jasem > Mutlaq > wrote: > > We should be good to go with the English version ready. We don't have any > > up-to-date manual online now (the last one is quite old and does not > > contain a lot of updated sections) so I say we'd go ahead with the > > announcement. I don't have a mapping of the old docbook to the new RST. I > > think most docbooks were converted to RST while keeping the same file > name. > > We can qualify the posts to social media with something like > > "At the moment only English is available, but more languages coming soon." > > Something like: > > """ > #KStars debuts a new documentation site! > > A comprehensive resource that helps you to get to know and make the most > of > KDE's fantastic night sky observatory and astrophotography utility. > > At the moment, only English is available. More languages coming soon. > > https://kstars-docs.kde.org > """ > > What do you think? > > Paul > > > > > -- > > Best Regards, > > Jasem Mutlaq > > > > > > > > On Sun, Mar 30, 2025 at 6:04 PM Luigi Toscano > > > > wrote: > > > Shouldn't we first solve the problem with importing translations? > > > > > > Please provide a mapping between the old _source_ docbooks and the new > RST > > > pages, so that I can help with reshuffling the po files. > > > > > > Jasem Mutlaq ha scritto: > > > > Absolutely, no one knows about the new documentation website. We will > > > > > > also > > > > > > > need to update our README and KStars website to point to it. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > > Best Regards, > > > > Jasem Mutlaq > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Sun, Mar 30, 2025 at 3:58 PM Paul Brown > > > > > > > > wrote: > > > > On Friday, 28 March 2025 05:44:01 Central European Summer Time > Jasem > > > > > > Mutlaq > > > > > > > wrote: > > > > > Hello all, > > > > > > > > > > Finally after a lot of work, we have a new home for KStars > > > > > > documentation > > > > > > > > written using Sphinx: https://kstars-docs.kde.org/ > > > > > > > > > > The translations are not completely done. I hope the > translations > > > > > > teams can > > > > > > > > continue to improve the translations from docbook to rst and > > > > > > submit their > > > > > > > > changes here: > > > https://invent.kde.org/documentation/kstars-docs-kde-org > > > > > > > > We will be removing the docbook manual from KStars. > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > > > Best Regards, > > > > > Jasem Mutlaq > > > > > > > > Hi Jasem, > > > > > > > > Can we promote this on social media? > > > > > > > > Cheers > > > > > > > > Paul > > > > -- > > > > Promotion & Communication > > > > > > > > www: https://kde.org > > > > Mastodon: https://floss.social/@kde > > > > Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kde/ > > > > LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kde > > > -- > Promotion & Communication > > www: https://kde.org > Mastodon: https://floss.social/@kde > Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kde/ > LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kde > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From john.e.evans.email at gmail.com Mon Mar 17 06:51:09 2025 From: john.e.evans.email at gmail.com (John Evans) Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2025 06:51:09 -0000 Subject: Akshay--a New Volunteer In-Reply-To: References: <8530BD2B-724A-4DAA-8DE4-1449A615471E@gmail.com> Message-ID: My 2c on the ML/AI guider concept. It seems a good choice as we already have guide logs that detail the pulses sent to the mount so there is a ready source of data for training although perhaps a first step would be to review these logs with a view to their suitability for AI. The procedural approach currently is 2 fold: 1. Standard Correction. Calculate the deviation and from the calibration send a correction pulse. Then repeat. 2. Pre-emptive Correction. Based on periodic error, calculate repeatable deviation and send these corrections at the appropriate time to minimise deviation in the first place. This is PEC / PPEC / GPG. It kind of feels like a good opportunity for an AI algorithm although as others have suggested maybe not as a first step. Maybe however it would be OK to start thinking about how we could go about this in the future and see what prerequisites we'd need (e.g. additional data in the guide logs)? On Mon, 17 Mar 2025 at 03:52, Jasem Mutlaq wrote: > Hello Akshay, > > Welcome abroad! I find that Machine Learning powered guiding is indeed > very exciting but as you rightfully indicated, very challenging for a first > time task! You are indeed correct, we used AI+RAG to answer FAQs and other > knowledge based articles related to StellarMate. > > The binning statistics sound good. There are also many KStars issues > reported here that would be of interest: > https://invent.kde.org/education/kstars/-/issues > > Regarding the ML Guiding, I'm not sure if this is something we can > crowdsource per se. My intuition is that it should learn on the user's own > setup due to many contributing factors in seeing, mount, camera, and optics > that can vastly differ from one user or another. It would be possible to > start "training" after a guiding session is over for example, or while it > is running, or in a special "train mode". At any rate, I am by no means an > expert on this, so feel free to suggest a better model to approach this > issue! > > -- > Best Regards, > Jasem Mutlaq > > > > On Mon, Mar 17, 2025 at 4:52 AM Akshay Subramaniam > wrote: > >> Hi all, >> >> Firstly, I want to say I really appreciate all of your work developing >> kstars and INDI and for putting out a ton of education material as well. >> And thanks for all the suggestions on how to get started. Just as a >> warning, I've never contributed to a full stack application and have no >> clue how frontend development works so I might be very slow to implement >> things in kstars 😅 >> >> The AI based guiding algorithm sounds fun but also daunting as a first >> effort. I assume the biggest challenge would be inferencing the model in >> real time faster than a single guide exposure at the very least. Maybe the >> first step to tackle that would be to add a harness that outputs a bunch of >> guiding data along with all the relevant mount parameters. That way, we can >> crowd source data from people that would be willing to share. That would be >> necessary to train a base model which folks can then finetune that model >> for their specific mount either as an offline step or on the fly. I'd also >> imagine there would need to be some guardrails around the predicted guiding >> pulses just so things don't go off the rails because of some instability >> mode of the model. Another idea is a simple LLM+RAG model that a kstars >> user can chat with to answer simple questions like "What should my meridian >> flip settings be for an OnStep based mount?". I believe Jasem and the >> Stellarmate folks already have something similar and it can even take >> actions based on natural language commands! >> >> The binning conditional statistics enhancement seems like a simpler >> starting point so I can maybe start with that. >> >> Thanks, >> Akshay >> >> On Sun, Mar 16, 2025 at 6:10 PM Hy Murveit wrote: >> >>> Akshay, >>> >>> and I'll throw one in too, related to John's suggestion. How about a >>> adaptive guider based on machine learning? E.g. it decides on the >>> correction pulses based on how well recent pulses have corrected the guide >>> error--so presumably learns about periodic error and backlash. I suppose it >>> could be pre-trained and/or adapting on the fly, or more likely both. I'd >>> be happy to collaborate on that. >>> >>> Hy >>> >>> >>> On Sun, Mar 16, 2025 at 1:28 PM John Evans >>> wrote: >>> >>>> Hi Akshay, >>>> >>>> Welcome to the project, great to have you on board! >>>> >>>> I had a quick look at the links Hy enclosed and see you’re working on >>>> AI related topics. I’m sure there are some interesting things in this area >>>> that could be brought to KStars. I personally know very little about this >>>> field but would be very interested to collaborate if you think it would be >>>> appropriate. >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>> John. >>>> >>>> On 16 Mar 2025, at 18:53, Hy Murveit wrote: >>>> >>>>  >>>> Folks, >>>> >>>> I bumped into Akshay (cc'd) today at a local astro-club function. >>>> >>>> Akshay is an aeronautical engineer at NVidia, with a PhD in physics >>>> from Stanford >>>> and a KStars user, who's interested in contributing to our project. >>>> If you have any suggestions on projects which might help start to >>>> contribute, please feel free to reach out to him at >>>> akshaysubr at gmail.com >>>> >>>> https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/author/akshay-subramaniam/ >>>> https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=hNhELoYAAAAJ&hl=en >>>> >>>> Hy >>>> >>>> Hey Hy, >>>> >>>> Nice meeting you today and I really enjoyed our chat. You mentioned a >>>> kstars framing workflow video you had made, I’d love to watch that >>>> incorporate that into my process. >>>> >>>> Also, I’m enthusiastic about contributing to kstars/ekos. If anything >>>> specific comes up, let me know. Maybe something simple to start with so I >>>> get a bit more familiar with the kstars development process before trying >>>> to tackle anything more complicated. I was thinking adding an offset >>>> between plate solving and the mount location might be a nice easy one so >>>> one could use a guide camera and finder scope for plate solving with the >>>> main scope used for visual. >>>> >>>> Thanks, >>>> Akshay >>>> >>>> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ron.eli at icloud.com Tue Mar 4 18:17:43 2025 From: ron.eli at icloud.com (Eli Ron) Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2025 18:17:43 -0000 Subject: Error downloading Tyco-2 star catalog Message-ID: <7496FFB4-409A-40D6-AFAA-140A4938E561@icloud.com> Hi, There is a consistent error when attempting to download the Tyco-2 star catalog (among others) in kstars on arm silicon apple computers. This is also true for the following add-ons: 1. UNSO NAMAD Catalog 2. Inline thumbnail images 3. NGC displayed in the detail windows 4. IC Images displayed in the details window 5. Common images displayed in the window The error is similar in each - see attached sample -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Screenshot 2025-03-04 at 1.13.38?PM.png Type: image/png Size: 315166 bytes Desc: not available URL: From ron.eli at icloud.com Tue Mar 4 18:17:43 2025 From: ron.eli at icloud.com (Eli Ron) Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2025 18:17:43 -0000 Subject: Error downloading Tyco-2 star catalog Message-ID: <7496FFB4-409A-40D6-AFAA-140A4938E561@icloud.com> Hi, There is a consistent error when attempting to download the Tyco-2 star catalog (among others) in kstars on arm silicon apple computers. This is also true for the following add-ons: 1. UNSO NAMAD Catalog 2. Inline thumbnail images 3. NGC displayed in the detail windows 4. IC Images displayed in the details window 5. Common images displayed in the window The error is similar in each - see attached sample -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Screenshot 2025-03-04 at 1.13.38?PM.png Type: image/png Size: 315166 bytes Desc: not available URL: From paul.brown at kde.org Sun Mar 30 13:58:50 2025 From: paul.brown at kde.org (Paul Brown) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2025 14:58:50 +0200 Subject: New home for KStars user manual In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <13374980.O9o76ZdvQC@tyrell> On Friday, 28 March 2025 05:44:01 Central European Summer Time Jasem Mutlaq wrote: > Hello all, > > Finally after a lot of work, we have a new home for KStars documentation > written using Sphinx: https://kstars-docs.kde.org/ > > The translations are not completely done. I hope the translations teams can > continue to improve the translations from docbook to rst and submit their > changes here: https://invent.kde.org/documentation/kstars-docs-kde-org > > We will be removing the docbook manual from KStars. > > -- > Best Regards, > Jasem Mutlaq Hi Jasem, Can we promote this on social media? Cheers Paul -- Promotion & Communication www: https://kde.org Mastodon: https://floss.social/@kde Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kde/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kde From paul.brown at kde.org Mon Mar 31 09:45:44 2025 From: paul.brown at kde.org (Paul Brown) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2025 10:45:44 +0200 Subject: New home for KStars user manual In-Reply-To: References: <324fff5a-0231-223d-e68f-99bc78dfd63e@tiscali.it> Message-ID: <6140500.lOV4Wx5bFT@tyrell> On Sunday, 30 March 2025 17:10:00 Central European Summer Time Jasem Mutlaq wrote: > We should be good to go with the English version ready. We don't have any > up-to-date manual online now (the last one is quite old and does not > contain a lot of updated sections) so I say we'd go ahead with the > announcement. I don't have a mapping of the old docbook to the new RST. I > think most docbooks were converted to RST while keeping the same file name. We can qualify the posts to social media with something like "At the moment only English is available, but more languages coming soon." Something like: """ #KStars debuts a new documentation site! A comprehensive resource that helps you to get to know and make the most of KDE's fantastic night sky observatory and astrophotography utility. At the moment, only English is available. More languages coming soon. https://kstars-docs.kde.org """ What do you think? Paul > > -- > Best Regards, > Jasem Mutlaq > > > > On Sun, Mar 30, 2025 at 6:04 PM Luigi Toscano > > wrote: > > Shouldn't we first solve the problem with importing translations? > > > > Please provide a mapping between the old _source_ docbooks and the new RST > > pages, so that I can help with reshuffling the po files. > > > > Jasem Mutlaq ha scritto: > > > Absolutely, no one knows about the new documentation website. We will > > > > also > > > > > need to update our README and KStars website to point to it. > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > Best Regards, > > > Jasem Mutlaq > > > > > > > > > > > > On Sun, Mar 30, 2025 at 3:58 PM Paul Brown > > > > > > wrote: > > > On Friday, 28 March 2025 05:44:01 Central European Summer Time Jasem > > > > Mutlaq > > > > > wrote: > > > > Hello all, > > > > > > > > Finally after a lot of work, we have a new home for KStars > > > > documentation > > > > > > written using Sphinx: https://kstars-docs.kde.org/ > > > > > > > > The translations are not completely done. I hope the translations > > > > teams can > > > > > > continue to improve the translations from docbook to rst and > > > > submit their > > > > > > changes here: > > https://invent.kde.org/documentation/kstars-docs-kde-org > > > > > > We will be removing the docbook manual from KStars. > > > > > > > > -- > > > > Best Regards, > > > > Jasem Mutlaq > > > > > > Hi Jasem, > > > > > > Can we promote this on social media? > > > > > > Cheers > > > > > > Paul > > > -- > > > Promotion & Communication > > > > > > www: https://kde.org > > > Mastodon: https://floss.social/@kde > > > Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kde/ > > > LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kde -- Promotion & Communication www: https://kde.org Mastodon: https://floss.social/@kde Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kde/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kde From paul.brown at kde.org Mon Mar 31 13:09:24 2025 From: paul.brown at kde.org (Paul Brown) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2025 14:09:24 +0200 Subject: New home for KStars user manual In-Reply-To: References: <6140500.lOV4Wx5bFT@tyrell> Message-ID: <2854858.mvXUDI8C0e@tyrell> On Monday, 31 March 2025 10:46:26 Central European Summer Time Jasem Mutlaq wrote: > Good to go from my side! Done: * Mastodon: https://floss.social/@kde/114256740249657428 * Discuss: https://discuss.kde.org/t/kstars-debuts-a-new-documentation-site * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/ urn:li:activity:7312431935522234368 * BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/kde.org/post/3lloa5aac7s2z * Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/1jo0smz/ kstars_debuts_a_new_documentation_site_a/ * FacebooK: https://www.facebook.com/groups/KDECommunity/posts/8814109975355878/ https://www.facebook.com/kde/posts/ pfbid0gooUSgasAoBSQPwc5CYDT58DQwNnhdjnkiDMHcfEvDJMx5jM5ph5nxqMKAszFDZNl * Threads: https://www.threads.net/@kdecommunity/post/DH3LWRcs6td Cheers Paul > > -- > Best Regards, > Jasem Mutlaq > > On Mon, Mar 31, 2025 at 11:45 AM Paul Brown wrote: > > On Sunday, 30 March 2025 17:10:00 Central European Summer Time Jasem > > Mutlaq > > > > wrote: > > > We should be good to go with the English version ready. We don't have > > > any > > > up-to-date manual online now (the last one is quite old and does not > > > contain a lot of updated sections) so I say we'd go ahead with the > > > announcement. I don't have a mapping of the old docbook to the new RST. > > > I > > > think most docbooks were converted to RST while keeping the same file > > > > name. > > > > We can qualify the posts to social media with something like > > > > "At the moment only English is available, but more languages coming soon." > > > > Something like: > > > > """ > > #KStars debuts a new documentation site! > > > > A comprehensive resource that helps you to get to know and make the most > > of > > KDE's fantastic night sky observatory and astrophotography utility. > > > > At the moment, only English is available. More languages coming soon. > > > > https://kstars-docs.kde.org > > """ > > > > What do you think? > > > > Paul > > > > > -- > > > Best Regards, > > > Jasem Mutlaq > > > > > > > > > > > > On Sun, Mar 30, 2025 at 6:04 PM Luigi Toscano > > > > > > wrote: > > > > Shouldn't we first solve the problem with importing translations? > > > > > > > > Please provide a mapping between the old _source_ docbooks and the new > > > > RST > > > > > > pages, so that I can help with reshuffling the po files. > > > > > > > > Jasem Mutlaq ha scritto: > > > > > Absolutely, no one knows about the new documentation website. We > > > > > will > > > > > > > > also > > > > > > > > > need to update our README and KStars website to point to it. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > > > Best Regards, > > > > > Jasem Mutlaq > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Sun, Mar 30, 2025 at 3:58 PM Paul Brown > > > > > > > > > > wrote: > > > > > On Friday, 28 March 2025 05:44:01 Central European Summer Time > > > > Jasem > > > > > > Mutlaq > > > > > > > > > wrote: > > > > > > Hello all, > > > > > > > > > > > > Finally after a lot of work, we have a new home for KStars > > > > > > > > documentation > > > > > > > > > > written using Sphinx: https://kstars-docs.kde.org/ > > > > > > > > > > > > The translations are not completely done. I hope the > > > > translations > > > > > > teams can > > > > > > > > > > continue to improve the translations from docbook to rst and > > > > > > > > submit their > > > > > > > > > > changes here: > > > > https://invent.kde.org/documentation/kstars-docs-kde-org > > > > > > > > > > We will be removing the docbook manual from KStars. > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > > > > Best Regards, > > > > > > Jasem Mutlaq > > > > > > > > > > Hi Jasem, > > > > > > > > > > Can we promote this on social media? > > > > > > > > > > Cheers > > > > > > > > > > Paul > > > > > -- > > > > > Promotion & Communication > > > > > > > > > > www: https://kde.org > > > > > Mastodon: https://floss.social/@kde > > > > > Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kde/ > > > > > LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kde > > > > -- > > Promotion & Communication > > > > www: https://kde.org > > Mastodon: https://floss.social/@kde > > Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kde/ > > LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kde -- Promotion & Communication www: https://kde.org Mastodon: https://floss.social/@kde Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kde/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kde