I took advantage of a small bug in the representation of the All Sky Map to change and add some stuff. This time my integrated all sky cam will take its final form, I hope not to go back to it. The white background seemed too bright to me so I went back to a more classic blue. Isn’t it nice huh? To give a little more comfort to the map management I added 2 types of projection (well it’s almost the same) and the possibility to activate the grid, the ecliptic and the equator from the Preferences window. Ok, swear I won’t touch it anymore! 🙂
October 8, 2020 – UPDATE
I’m working now with a new graphic library (BGRABitmap), that’s definitely better than the previous one. It’s not exhaustively documented as it should be, but playing around with it I think I have learned enough to use at least the main functions. So, what is expected of the next release?
- A better antialiasing, especially visible on the Windows version.
- The phase of the planets is now correctly represented on all 3 platforms. (No more on Windows only).
- If needed, radial gradient is eventually available (see the All Sky Map and the little solar window).
- A better representation of lunar eclipses, with the lunar disk partially eclipsed (thanks to Transparency).
- A better dynamic drawing stellar disks.
Below are some screenshots just to clarify what I’m talking about.
Some further test about this new stuff and a new release soon will be out. It will be a kind of intermediate release while in the meantime I will try to expand the canon of lunar eclipses (from -10000 to 10000 as for solar eclipses) and deal with asteroids.
October 14, 2020 – Update
Added support for Galilean satellite shadows. This leads to further tests of course but puts an end to Jupiter’s satellites management… hopefully. I’m using the E5 ephemeris for position calculations.
That’s what happened on October 12, 2013 – https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap131102.html
And the same event shown below by Uruk_One.
Great job!
if there was a “wish list”, I would like to ask for the addition of the ISS tracking (I am passionate about ISS sun / moon transit photography). something like this at https://transit-finder.com/help
I am not able to know the difficulties behind this eventual feature but I realize that there are many (very small time window of the search due to the orbital data of the ISS which are changeable due to periodic orbit corrections, etc), however it would be a beautiful completion of this app!
Thanks. About ISS maybe in the future, although I must admit that this kind of objects (all artificial satellites in general) are not a priority for me. Currently the new graphics library I’m putting into the code will keep me busy for a while but it’s worth it.