33 replies to this topic

[Patrick Chevalley]

A new version 4.2 of Cartes du Ciel / Skychart free software is now available.

 

Cartes du Ciel is a free open source planetarium software to use on Windows, macOS or Linux platform.

 

The download is available from: https://www.ap-i.net...art/en/download

You can read more about the installation options on the different platform: https://www.ap-i.net...mentation/start

 

The following list the changes since the previous version.

 

New functions:

• New default interface with only two button bar.
• New icon for the buttons, better suited for night vision filters. Use larger image for big buttons and high resolution screen.
• Add direct connection to Alpaca telescope. It is now possible to use a telescope connected to a remote ASCOM Windows computer from Skychart running on Linux or macOS.
• Support for the new GAIA DR2 star catalog.
• Allow to use HNSKY star catalog using the “290” format.
• New mosaic tool to prepare mosaic for image capture application.
• Show the object rise and set time relative to the local horizon if a horizon file is loaded. This can be disabled in Setup/Observatory. Calendar rise/set are always given to the astronomical horizon.
• Set observatory coordinates from the telescope GPS, this set a “Telescope” observatory name and not override other settings.
• New button to Park/Unpark the ASCOM telescope.
• Allow per chart observatory horizon profile.
• Add update menu for Delta T and Jupiter GRS.
• Add orange night vision mode.
• Separate label setting for Asteroid and Comet.
• Option to show only the celestial equator line.
• Option to not filter the bright nebula by magnitude, only by size.
• Option to set the drawing line width. Beware this not work with dash line when printing on Windows because of API limitation.
• Allow to lock at the position set from the menu View/Position.

Fix and improvement:

• Default comet element download is now from http://astro.vanbuitenen.nl
• INDI server and driver selection is now in the telescope connection box. Option to launch indistarter is removed.
• Improve double star display.
• Improve magnitude filter for small FOV.
• The resolution of the background image is now limited to improve the performance if the screen is big or if there is not enough cpu core for processing.
• Improve download progress display.
• Show a warning in window title if running as administrator. Skychart never need to run as administrator but this can break the configuration.
• Many bug fix.

Incompatibility with previous version:

• Beware the update of asteroid and comet from the main menu now delete all the old elements data from the database!   
  If you need to keep this old elements or cumulate data from many source you must use the function from the menu Setup/Solar system.
• Remove obsolete/unmaintainable LX200 and Encoder direct drivers. Please use the corresponding ASCOM or INDI drivers.
  • https://ascom-standa...copeDrivers.htm
  • https://www.indilib....ces/mounts.html
• Depreciate the use of Mysql database and suggest to move to Sqlite if currently in use. Mysql support will be removed in the next version.
• Client/server communication can now use J2000 coordinates instead of the current chart setting. You can change this option in Setup/General/Server.
• Saved circle file (.cdcc) include the coordinate equinox on the first row and more information for use with the mosaic tool.

[Xeroid]

Thanks for the update!

 

Download and ran  4.2 4046 and maybe I'm doing something incorrect but I'm unable to VIEW any graphic icons for M31, M32 and M110?

 

I did select "view deep sky objects" options

 

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[Patrick Chevalley]

You must look at the menu Setup / Catalog, at the Deep sky tab.

Apparently you disable all the catalog except the open cluster. Be sure "CDC default nebula catalog" is checked.

Maybe you also want to reactivate at least one star catalog? or select "Show stars"?

[Xeroid]

Patrick,

 

YES! That fixed the display!! Very Nice!

 

Thank You!

 

PS: no doubt the missing graphics  was due to my not reading the manual and just "diving in" 

 

 

 

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[jdupton]

Patrick,

 

   Thanks for the update! It incorporates several things I am anxious to try out. In particular, this one caught my eye.

 

• Client/server communication can now use J2000 coordinates instead of the current chart setting. You can change this option in Setup/General/Server.

   If I understand it correctly, I no longer have to stay in Equatorial mode in order to use J2000 coordinates when controlling my mount. If this is what I think it is, it will no longer revert to JNOW if I happen to accidentally click on a compass direction view out of habit.

 

 

John

[Patrick Chevalley]

Xeroid,

Yes, this small images are draw as part of the default nebula catalog, this just replace the line drawing, so this catalog must be active.

 

John,

This is the goal of this new option, if you check "Force J2000" the client always receive J2000 coordinates even if the Alt/Az chart use JNOW.

In this case the command GETCHARTEQSYS always return 2000.

[lwbehney]

Hello Mr. Chevalley,

 

I am currently using the Celestron Sky portal application, which has the nice feature of marking the exact zenith of my location on the map while slowly scrolling the stars visible at this location as time passes. I am writing to ask if Cartes du Ciel also has this feature?  Your program, I know goes much deeper regarding faint star magnitudes compared to the Sky portal app. This is important to me, because one of my scopes is a large newtonian, which is currently unmounted and it would be nice to know what stars it is looking at (while it is standing on end in my driveway).  

I also had the thought that I should ask you if there is any device that can communicate to Cartes du Ciel so that the program can provide precise detailed information about what is being seen in the field of view of the telescope. For example, suppose that a small camera is attached to a finder scope or guide scope riding on my 5 inch refractor and the star pattern seen in this camera could be recognized by Cartes du Ciel so that I could get precise information about any particular star I  was looking at within the field of my telescope. 

Celestron has a crude program called "Identify", where the CGEM II mount will tell you which  object within its 40,000-object data base is being viewed (based upon its assumption the telescope and the mount is properly aligned).

I imagine that if this proposed camera+small telescope device was fixed in its magnitude reach and focal length so that the stars in its field over the sensor could be perfectly correlated with the scale of the Cartes du Ciel and the camera could provide the program also with the apparent magnitude of the stars in the field, there might be enough information that your program would be able to pinpoint the area of sky to which the telescope was viewing. Then the observer could potentially be able to learn precise details about any particular star he or she was observing; such as its location in the Milky Way Galaxy, its special type and color, its approximate size, its approximate age, distance, whether it is on the main sequence, any binaries to look for in the field, variable stars in the field, whether it is a Wolf-Rayet star or of some other exotic type, etc. etc. 

The value of that is mostly for the casual observer with a Dobsonian or Alt-Azimuth mount of some kind. These poor souls are out on the observing field with their new 6-10 inch inexpensive reflectors struggling to find M8 or M11 for up to 20 minutes.  During all this wasted time, their eyepiece field is filled with stars just as potentially interesting as the stellar objects they are looking for. I imagine that with a 50-70 mm guide scope attached to a small camera sensor of a precise focal length to provide a fixed scale of stars over a sensor, your program could readily identify that location in the sky and produce a map appropriate in appearance to match what the observer is viewing through the eyepiece.  

I realize that there would be some difficulties, such as the fact that sky transparency and light pollution may inhibit the sensitivity of the device to detect faint stars. However, there are phone apps now that will inform one of the sky brightness background that could easily be incorporated as part of the data that would correct for extinction so that star magnitude information from the device would remain accurate. 

It just occurred to me that perhaps an easier way would be for Cartes du Ciel to receive a larger field of stars from a phone camera aligned with the telescope, so that the Cartes du Ciel program can then simply determine the exact centerpoint of the image from the phone and then display the central circular 1-2 degree  radius of the star map.  Lastly, because the telescope is forming a mirror image of the sky, it would be nice if Cartes du Ciel had a way of inverting its map to match the telescope field of interest once that area is localized and identified.  

I apologize for the length of this post, but I think your wonderful program has just as much to offer visual observers as it does for astrophotographers. 

 

Laurence Behney

[Patrick Chevalley]

Laurence,

 

To show the full sky, select the menu Chart / Field of vision / Show all sky. It is best if you resize the application window to square before to call this function.

To make it follow the current time : Setup / Date-Time , be sure "Auto-refresh every" is checked.

 

Cartes du Ciel do not read image from camera but there is other application like APT that have the capability to take an image, plate-solve to know the exact image coordinates and rotation, then show the result in Cartes du Ciel or other planetarium.

See https://ideiki.com/a...anetarium_2.htm

 

All the chart mirror and rotation are controlled from the menu Chart / Transformation so you can match the view in the telescope.

[Patrick Chevalley]

After the release of version 4.2 I was contacted by some of you because of the problem caused by the removal of the old native telescope driver for LX200 and Digital circle encoder.

 

For the LX200 there is normally no problem to find a driver that work with any equipment among the 6 different ASCOM LX200 drivers or 17 INDI LX200 variant.
But the principal missing function of the old driver is the software handpad to move the telescope manually.
In today beta version I add a handpad for every ASCOM and INDI telescope that support the required command. If the command is not supported by the driver the handpad disappear after the telescope is connected.
This can be downloaded from:
https://sourceforge....t/files/0-beta/

 

For the digital circle, it look like some model that worked with my driver have issue with the ASCOM or INDI driver.
The solution for me was to transform my old driver to a native Alpaca server.
This way the digital circle can be used as before from CdC on all the platform using the Alpaca connection.
But this also let you connect from any Windows software by using the ASCOM Remote Client.
The download:
https://github.com/p...ncoder/releases
The documentation:
https://github.com/p...ca_encoder/wiki

 

[Steve Cox]

Thanks for the update.  I have question; since CdC now accommodates and offers GAIA, will installing UCAC4 be a duplication or even necessary now with GAIA?

[Patrick Chevalley]

Steve,

 

Yes this is a redundant and you not need to install the two, this is to your preferences.

I keep the UCAC4 download visible for now because the smaller files are easier to download for many people. The minimal is the equatorial band and your hemisphere. It is a good choice if you need the APASS magnitude, or reference with UCAC4 identification that are stable.

GAIA DR2 is a temporary release, there will be EDR3 in about one year, then DR3 in two years, and more the following years.  Every time you have to download the better version. GAIA advantage is deeper magnitude and better proper motion.

You can really use the one you prefer, also I never remove data access from CdC, you can still use the GSC or USNO-B if you want.

[AgilityGuy]

If I install the new version over the previous version will the settings I currently have be preserved or should I expect that I’ll need to spend some time setting the program up again? Thanks!

[Patrick Chevalley]

If you install over, the old setting is preserved. But if you uninstall the settings are erased, at least on Windows.

 

Sometime a new feature can make the program to look a bit different. 

For example if you upgrade from 4.0 to 4.2 all the toolbar buttons are keep the same. But if you upgrade directly from 3.xx to 4.2 it use the new default with minimal buttons.

[jedorme]

Hello Mr. Chevalley,

 

I'm an old retired guy new into the hobby of astrophotography & just started using the Explore Scientific iEXOS 100 Go To equatorial mount.  For astrophotography, I've been told I need to use planetarium software compatible with an ASCOM driver in this mount rather than the ExploreStars telescope controller that comes with this system.  One of those recommended is your software & I note that it is used by many owners of other ES mounts, including the head software engineer at ES who created their telescope controller.  Can you confirm that I could use the CDC software with my ES system & advise if there is anything else that I need to do besides install the ASCOM driver on my laptop PC.  Is their a user manual on a website that I might also download prior to downloading your software to better understand how it is to be used for telescope control when doing astrophotography?  Thank you for any assistance you might offer.

 

Jed Orme

[Patrick Chevalley]

Hello Jed,

 

To use CDC with your mount you just need to install the latest version of CDC, the ASCOM platform and the ASCOM driver for the mount.

 

The instruction about the telescope connection is here https://www.ap-i.net...telescope_ascom

The full program documentation is also available in pdf: http://www.ap-i.net/.../doc/doc_en.pdf

 

Then to become familiar with the operation I suggest you try to make all the connection inside by daytime. For that use the mount without any telescope or counterweight mounted on. Follow carefully the instructions in the ES manual, if it ask for a star alignment you cannot do inside just press the key as if the star was centered.

After that you can play with CDC to send the mount at different position. If this work correctly it confirm the installation is ready to be used on the stars.

 

About astrophotography it all depend on the equipment you use and what you want to do.

I suggest you look at the specific forum https://www.cloudyni...ediate-imaging/ and ask your questions there.

 

[jedorme]

Mr. Chevalley,

 

Your information & other suggestions for using your software are very much appreciated.  I have a background as an air force navigator & still tend to see both the earth & celestial sphere above in terms of altitude & azimuth coordinates, so the equatorial model with Ra & DEC is still somewhat confusing for me in my lower mid latitude northern hemisphere location.  Using the electronic controls on my ES iEXOS 100 mount to get it pointed at the intended celestial object with the Ra & DEC controls, with the mount set at my lower mid latitude location, becomes confusing as the Ra rotational plane is now more vertical that horizontal, & the DEC rotational plane more horizontal than vertical.  The ExploreStars control panel uses a compass rose layout with the ability to move the mount in either cardinal directions or in both Ra & Dec directions at the same time; while the CDC control panel appears to use N,S, E & W buttons to move the telescope on the mount only in cardinal Ra or DEC directions.  Am I correct in understanding that with the CDC controller the N button is in effect a control for right DEC movement, the S button for left DEC movement, the W button for left Ra movement, & the E button for right Ra movement?  So in effect to move the telescope in the flat or level plane direction of 45º, you would move it 0º/360º first & then 90º to arrive at the same point. Hopefully this will all make more sense after some efforts to become familiar with it as suggested, & I will certainly follow this advice.  Thank you again for this assistance & information, & I apologize for my confusion with any misunderstandings that result.

 

Jed

[Patrick Chevalley]

The button to move the telescope in CDC are related to the mount axis. So with an equatorial mount this is RA and DEC.

 

For the DEC movement the direction generally depend on which side of the meridian the mount is pointing. But this also depend on the mount and the driver. Often this is the right direction when looking at the west, but the movement is inverted when looking at the east.

You can change the "Flip N/S movement" selection if you observe the mount go North when you press the South button.

 

But this buttons are for small adjustment of position. To move to an object you click the object on the map then press the Slew button to send the telescope at this position.

 

Patrick

[AgilityGuy]

I recently upgraded to the newest version installed over a previous version.  The installation went fine and pointing works well.  When it came to closing things down with my Mach1 I used the same method I had with the previous version.  I always disconnect CdC from the mount prior to shutting down the program but this time when I clicked ‘connect telescope’ to bring up the dialogue box I received a warning box.  I can’t remember the exact message but it stated something like the program could not focus a closed program - press cancel and risk disc corruption or abort to close the program.  I chose abort.  Program closed. 
 

When I connect the mount I open the ‘connect telescope’ dialogue box, chose the ASCOM A-P V2 driver, click connect, the appropriate boxes turn green then I click ‘hide’ to minimize the box.  Not sure what has changed to give this message from the previous version. 

[Patrick Chevalley]

This is a know issue with 4.2.1.

You can avoid it by never closing or hiding the telescope control window, just let it go behind the main screen. It is also perfectly safe to not abort, the program will continue to run normally.

This is fixed in the beta version you can download from https://sourceforge....t/files/0-beta/

[xcy]

In 4.2.1 and latest beta (Windows 64 bit) I can't find the Tycho2 catalog to select (check) under Setup, Catalog, CdC stars. I have installed the Additional Catalog (skychart-data-stars-4.0-3421-windows.exe) in the default folder (C:\Program Files\Ciel). Am I doing something wrong?

[Patrick Chevalley]

Since the version 4.2, GAIA DR2 is the preferred faint star catalog. There is a relatively small download available with stars to magnitude 15, and two bigger download for the full catalog.

So the setting in the star catalog tab is for GAIA and it can be confusing to have other setting for Tycho2 here.

 

For this reason the Tycho2 setting is moved to the "Obsolete" catalog tab.

But this not meant you cannot use it, it is still perfectly valid and I not plan to remove any catalog once supported by CdC.

[xcy]

Maybe you should update the instructions in the Additional Catalog setup that Tycho2 catalog can now be found under Setup, Catalog, Obsolete? And is the message "Do not run Cartes du Ciel as administrator!" in the title bar normal under Windows?

Edited by xcy, 07 April 2020 - 01:02 PM.

[AgilityGuy]

This is a know issue with 4.2.1.

You can avoid it by never closing or hiding the telescope control window, just let it go behind the main screen. It is also perfectly safe to not abort, the program will continue to run normally.

This is fixed in the beta version you can download from https://sourceforge....t/files/0-beta/

Thank you.

[Patrick Chevalley]

Right, I update the download page and the Tycho2 setup instruction.

 

The message "Do not run Cartes du Ciel as administrator!" is not normal, it is to inform you are doing something wrong.

You must never run CdC as administrator. You must fix the program shortcut to remove the "run as administrator" option.

 

Since Windows XP there is no reason to run any program as administrator. There is still old legend floating around about this option but this date back from the migration of DOS/Windows3 application to Windows 95. Really, since XP a program can no more read and write at random memory location to access devices, even with administrator right.

 

The problem is once you started to run a program as administrator you are forced to run everything also as administrator, otherwise communication between software or shared access to the driver will not work. Also this can make files and directories created by this program no more accessible by the standard user, forcing you to run even more program as administrator and making difficult to revert to a normal use. 

[xcy]

I noticed the update on your webpage, but when running "skychart-data-stars-4.0-3421-windows.exe" it also shows an information window with:

 

Skychart / Cartes du Ciel
Stars Catalog

This file install all the standard stars catalog:
- Tycho2
- GCVS
- WDS
- Search index for SAO, BD, HD, GC

Be sure to install in the directory where you already install Skychart.

After the installation open the menu Setup / Catalog / CdC stars
to select the catalog you want on the chart.
Just check Tycho2 with the default value to add faint stars.

 

And I do not run Cartes du Ciel as administrator. In the shortcut properties under compatibility, the "Run this program as an administrator" box is not checked.