Favourites list?

[Fir Chlis]

I haven't found an obvious way to do this, but is there a way to have a Favourites list of targets?

The scenario I'm thinking of is if friends or family are around (or for a Star Party), I could have a saved list of targets that I know would impress them. If these were available in, say, a drop down list on the Goto Catalog Target page (like the current Messier/Caldwell list), then it would be quick and easy to find something good for them to look at.

And I'm maybe being very picky here, but a related nice to have would be a compass direction filter in the Messier/Caldwell list (and the potential favourites list). If the wind is strong, I put my telescope on the lee side of the house, which blocks half the sky, so it would be nice if the drop down list could be filtered to exclude objects that I couldn't see.

To be fair, I usually use Stellarium to look at the half of the sky that is viewable, so this latter thought is maybe a bit OTT!

Cheers


Geoff

[admin]

Hi Geoff,

the favourites list is a good idea - I also want to investigate having the search in the initial drop down search against the full catalog too, but not sure if that will work.

Not sure about direction - possibly, but I also have a plan to allow for custom horizon altitudes, so you could specify how high your horizon is in different directions. That would feed into the filtering by above/below horizon and time to set automatically, so you could set up a custom horizon to match your observing position. I guess that to support different locations there would have to be multiple custom horizons though...

cheers,

Robin

[Jean-Francois]

Hello Robin,

Do you have sufficient information for an user horizon file ?

For example, the programs Occult Watcher and Carte du Ciel (Skychart) have an user defined horizon.
You can see in the attachments 2 examples.

horizon_Geneve.txt

UserHorizon.txt

The horizon file of Occult Watcher allows only integer values. The other software can use decimal numbers.

Regards,
Jean-Francois

[admin]

Hi Jean-Francois,

thanks for sharing - those look very similar to user horizon files that I have seen before in other software, so it seems that there is a fairly common format. Initially I was concerned that the calculation of rise/set times in bulk for a custom horizon would be too slow, but you can work out a table in advance of the hour angle of rise and set by declination then look up each object in that table rather than calculate individually. I am undecided yet on how to handle obstructions that stick up and cause objects to have multiple rise/set times per day...

cheers,

Robin

[mgCatskills]

Hi, Robin. Has there been progress on this?

Like a lot of folks I use SharpCap both for my own use, and for demonstrating EAA at star parties. The current Goto Catalog Target/Co-ordinates dialog takes a lot of steps, and is awkward to use at a star party when you're in a hurry and have an audience. By my count it's SEVEN steps....

1) Select Tools Menu. 2) Find and select the Goto Catalog Target/Co-ordinates option in the menu. 3) Push the Full Catalog Button. 4) Find the search string text entry box in the middle of the full catalog dialog. 5) Type in a well-formed text search string. 6) Select the correct line for your target 7) Click Start after you return to the outer dialog

Ideally it would be fabulous to have a facility to decide in advance the targets for the evening and save them in an easily accessible drop down list. Selecting an item on the list would put you onto Step 7 immediately.

The other thing that makes this challenging is that there is no consistent formatting for valid search strings across catalogs. For example, if I remember correctly, you search for NGCs with a space, e.g. NGC 2345 while Messier Objects are more intuitive, e.g. "M2". But of course you have to remember those inconsistencies in front of the audience.

[admin]

Hi,

I am still hoping to improve this, but there is nothing in the immediate plan in this area. It's good to collect feedback though on what the difficult points are, as that helps see places that the process can be simplified/speeded up - for instance just reading your steps makes me think of

* GOTO button in the mount control area to avoid the tools menu
* Searching to ignore spaces
* Search box placement - or at least ensure it has the keyboard focus so you can just start typing
* Two 'OK' (well not OK) buttons on the full catalog window - 'Select Target' which drops back to the other dialog and 'Start GOTO'.

cheers,

Robin

[mgCatskills]

Hi, Robin

Thanks for the response. I'm encouraged that you would will ultimately address what is, for me, one of the worst usability issues with the system.

While I'm at it, let me add two more comments:

• Normally I go to the search dialog and simply click on the full catalog button. BUT, if it happens that I had entered RA/Dec coordinates manually the last time, that click is ignored. I've got to click on the radio button and THEN click on the "Full Catalog" button. If it's been a while since I manually entered the coordinates, it can take me a while to realize why the system is not doing anything. It seems to me that the Full Catalog button should operate independently of the radio button, since it's highly likely that if you click it, it's what you want to do. Worst case -- if you clicked it by mistake -- you can cancel out of it.

• Similarly, I'm often puzzled why you need to click Start after you select a catalog entry. More embarrassingly, I sometimes forget to click it and sit there for a while waiting for things to happen. I assume there's a good reason for separating the steps. But it seems to me that at the level of the target selection dialog you could have a "Select" button or a "Select & Start" button to eliminate that step, since I would venture that 90%+ of the time select and start is what people want to do.

[admin]

Hi,

please check out the latest update when you get a chance, as I slipped some improvements in this area into that update, including

* A 'Goto ...' button in the telescope control area that avoids the need to go Tools->Goto Target (you need to give the telescope controls some extra width for this to show up)
* A 'Select Target and Start' button in the full catalog window that will start the movement straight away rather than need you to click 'OK' then 'Start'
* The search box in the full catalog has the keyboard input focus when the window appears, meaning you can type a search term straight away with no need to click

Looking at your two points above, the stuff to the right of each radio button is subsiduary to the radio button - it only has effects if the radio button is selected, so it's usual to have it disabled when the radio button isn't selected to avoid confusion (I changed XXX but it didn't do anything - better that you can't change XXX). The alternative approach would be to leave it all active and then select the radio button automatically if you click in any of the stuff to the right of it to adjust that stuff. I'm not convinced by that approach - I've seen similar things on web pages, but it's an unusual approach in a windows application, so I think it might confuse more people than it helps.

The reason you need to click Start is that the catalog selection from full catalog is basically equivalent to choosing a target from the dropdown of the Messier/Caldwell/Solar System list - you've picked your target, but you haven't necessarily made all the decisions about the options (do I want to plate solve, etc), so the process doesn't start. I think the 'Select Target and Start' button on the full catalog window negates the need to worry about that issue anyway.

cheers,

Robin

[mgCatskills]

Hi, Robin...

I installed the newest version. Definitely a step in the right direction, though I'm not a big fan of the GoTo button hanging out on the side. You ended up inspiring me to do a little UI design based on what I found....

Here's a suggestion for how to deal with the Telescope Controls including the "Favorites List" which I'm calling My List (and avoiding having to play favourites, if you know what I mean).



The first 3 buttons should be clear. The fourth adds an entry to My List with the current RA/Dec and Target Name. The other way to add to the list is via the Select Target Dialog...



The My List itself is basically a simplified version of the "Select a Target" dialog... only it shows your list instead of SharpCap's and adds a "delete" target option.

Anyway, I hope it's helpful. Not how I expected to spend my evening but it was fun....

Edits added...
I suppose I've introduced the catalog/catalogue problem as well. Instead of the Catalog Button, it could be Targets or Select Target... more consistent anyway with current naming.

A minimalist version of the My List function is exactly as I said... exactly what you have in the Select a Target dialog (with or without the filtering) with a delete option.

If you wanted to get fancy, a filterable tag field would be nice (so I can enter "November Star Party)... And possibly a "Manage" button to edit tags and possibly names of targets. But you could always delete and add back, so nice but not necessary.

[admin]

Hi,

you are right that the placing of the GOTO on the right is a bit of a 'quick and dirty' fix at the moment. I have plans to put more in the extra column on the right hand side with the GOTO button in the future, but no time to do that part yet. It's also a consideration that vertical space in the controls is at a premium (adding an extra row of buttons to the mount control means space for one other visible control gets used up), but horizontal space is less constricted, especially on widescreen monitors.

Thanks for taking the time to make the mockups though - particularly the 'full catalog' one has kicked off some thoughts about how a 'favourites' list might work, so that's really helpful.

As I mentioned in another post today, I don't want SharpCap to become a full planetarium, but I do feel that planetarium software often misses the sort of 'filter and sort' operation that you can do in SharpCap target selection, so it's worthwile improving that area.

cheers,

Robin