- Event files format has changed again. Old “.evn” files won’t be supported anymore, the previous “.evn2” can be loaded though. They will saved as “.evn3“, the new event format.
- New tracking mode: “by coordinates”. The user can place the center of the window (better with crosshair on) and track a point of the map without referring to a specific object. Looks weird but sometimes I’ve needed to do it, with external RA and DC coming from a telescope.
- Stellar catalogue: now Uruk_One uses HYG3 up to magnitude 8.99 then Tycho2 magnitudes 9 and 10 stars can be additionally loaded. This means that the Application can work with up to 800K stars, resulting of course in a slowdown. The user must consider whether it is needed or not, as Uruk_one is not really a planetarium but mainly a Single Event Analyzer or an Archaeastronomy Tool. When radial velocity is available (basically all the HYG3 stars) an improved algorithm for computing proper motions is adopted. In this case the best possible position over several millennia is obtained, limited only by the accuracy of data reported by HIP/HIP2 catalogues.
- Asteroids. I’ve added asteroids with magnitude less than 15, loaded from the “astorb.dat” file published by Lowell Observatory. The user has to download manually the more recent file from https://asteroid.lowell.edu/main/astorb and place it into the USER_PATH of Uruk_One. Use this data for periods of time no more than a few months before or after the epoch of the elements. They are useless for historical research, better turn them off in this case.
- Tracking Info of the EQT View now show the equatorial astrometric ICRS and the apparent JNOW coordinates of the tracked object.
- Redesigned the windows accessing to STARS and DSO catalogues. Hopefully cleaner and faster as well.
Updated on November 8, 2020
Updated on November 11, 2020
7) EQT and HOR View: added some info on the view title:
- pixels/arcsec at the current Zoom value
- FOV (field of view) of the window
- number of stars shown into the window
8) Illumination: current illumination is now available directly into the Sun Horizontal window.
9) EQT View control panel: added a new button [RA and DEC J2000] where the user can input external J2000 equatorial coordinates in order to center and track an object not present into internal datasets. In case of astrometric position (corrected for LT only) the user can turn Nutation and Aberration on, if the distance from Earth is a known value, parallax can be computed as well.
And that’s all for this new version. I’m doing some code cleaning very carefully because this activity usually results as a “powerful bugs generator”. Also I removed the Geocentric View from the EQT Window because it is essentially useless.
I know, Saturn is still waiting for its rings and satellites being displayed, I have to make up my mind to do something about it 🙂
Hi
All of these improvements look very interesting.
I am waiting for the next version to use them.
Good luck with the development of this program.
Implementing Saturn rings and satellites is rather tricky I suppose
All the best.