(1) EARTH VIEW : the Orthographic Projection now shows the eclipse path as well.
(2) ECLIPSE NAVIGATORS : actually the slider can set a coarse value for the year due to the wide range, so I added two buttons for better tuning.
(3) EARTH STEREOGRAPHIC VIEW : northern limit of the path now is a blue line, southern limit a red line.
(4) INFO MENU: all data computed for building the current solar eclipse path are shown in a new window called “Eclipse Path Descriptor”.
(5) Solar eclipses nearby the Earth poles have a better graphic representation. The extreme points of the path now refer to an observed altitude of the Sun of +0.5°, better than before (typically 1°). Still few eclipses close to the poles give a little distortion of the path lines but in general the situation has improved considerably. As an example we can see how the eclipse occurred on CE 1601 December 24th looks.
(6) EARTH ORTHO MAP – Added a new flag into the Solar Eclipses Navigator. When ORTHO MAP is active and Time Flow is used local coordinated will be changed in order to follow the Central Line. As long as this flag is active Longitude and Latitude edit boxes are inactive, and this is highlighted by two blinking leds.
(7) SOLAR ECLIPSES CANON – Added to previous data the geographical coordinates of the greatest eclipse relating to PARTIALS and NOC T/A eclipses.
(8) – STARS and DEEP SKY OBJECTS (DSO) – When stars or DSO are disabled their coordinates are not updated. In this case a warning appears on top of the window (see the image below) warning that coordinates are not likely up to date. Activating the catalogues again ALL THE OBJECTS will be computed again. Due to a precise choice U1 always computes a rigorous position for all stars (proper motion, precession, nutation, annual aberration, daily aberration), not only for those appearing into the graphic window. This is the reason why U1 can’t handle 100 million stars as other software do. I assure you that calculating the rigorous position of 100 million stars would take several minutes even on the best performing PCs.
(9) – Some change to the user interface in the Main Window:
1 – These are the new leds blinking when following the Central Line coordinates in Orthographic Map. See preceding note (6).
2 – Leds indicating when planets are above or below the local horizon have changed. I preserved the tip text for each one when passing over with the mouse. Planets from Mercury to Pluto report now the elongation from the Sun instead of Phase.
3 – UDC (User Defined Clock) and RTC (Real Time Clock) leds have been moved respectively close to their buttons.
4 – The button allowing the user to introduce an object by means of its J2000 coordinates has been moved here. Enabled only when the EQT view is active.
5 – See note (10) below.
6 – Added the Parallactic Angle relative to the center of EQT and HOR view. In short PA is the angle between Zenith and North Celestial Pole. A deeper definition can be found here or, if you have it, into J. Meeus’ book “Astronomical Algorithms”, chapter 14.
(10) – A small grant to astrophotographers (and therefore to me too, yeah). I decided to implement the simulation of a sensor field of view (FOV) after creating two databases, telescope/lens and sensor/DSLR. I’m populating the lists with some common devices, and of course the user can add the ones he owns. Files containing stored devices willl be placed into the USER_PATH, so these info won’t be lost after an upgrade. Basically the same that happens with geographical locations file. Field Rotation follows this convention: negative left and positive right (just like Parallactic Angle does) despite of possibly applied flips( H, V, H+V). Totally useless for historical researches, I know, but dramatically useful for my astrophotography activities. 🙂
(11) – Format of Event Files has changed, including now info about a Solar or Lunar eclipse linked. New format generates files with a “.evn6” suffix. Old EVN5 format is supported for reading, meaning that one can load a EVN5 event and save it again as EVN6 file.
(12) Testing code with the new IDE version, Lazarus 2.2.0 and FreePascal Compiler 3.2.2. So far so good.
(13) During the totality of a solar eclipse the small Sun Window now shows a simulation of solar corona.
(14) General restyling. Now using flat buttons instead of 3D ones. Final code is under test and hopefully out in few days.
Hi
Great news. I’m sure there are some exciting new improvements on the way. All my encouragement for this remarkable work.
Regards.
Buonasera.
Mi associo nel dare tutto il mio incoraggiamento a Cavalli nel suo sforzo di miglioramento continuo del suo già eccellente lavoro.
Saluti
Thanks guys, I appreciate that. 🙂