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KStars To-Do List (as of version 0.7, Oct. 2001)

Bug Fixes

"Phantom" Constellation Line:

A constellation line is incorrectly drawn from (RA, Dec)=0.0, 0.0 to a point off the screen to the upper left, whenever this point is near the center of the display.

Small gap in Horizon:

There is a very small gap in the Horizon line when in Altitude/Azimuth coordinates. The gap is not visible if the "opaque ground" view option is checked.

Southern Constellations need Lines:

Several constellations near the south celestial pole do not have constellation lines.

GUI Improvements

Custom content in InfoPanel

Some users may like more or less information displayed at the top of the screen. The user should be able to specify how much info is shown in the info panel, or decide not to have one at all.

Detailed information popup window

Show detailed information for an object (depending on its type): Rise/set/transit times, object type (for messier/NGC/IC), distance/mass/radius/satellites (for planets), spectral type (for stars), etc.

"What's up tonight?" dialog

Popup dialog listing "interesting" objects that are visible in the sky, for the current date and location. Option to show this window whenever KStars starts.

Additional Toolbar for Display Options

It would be nice to have one-click access to toggle the display of catalogs and guides.

Interface to AstroInfo articles

Provide an index of all articles available in the Help menu, and also link to articles directly using context-sensitive help in some way.

Keyboard Shortcuts

These are easy to add, and could be very useful. Things like typing N, S, E, W to center on the cardinal compass points on the horizon, or the numbers 1-0 to center on the planets (3 would be the Moon instead of the Earth, 0 would be the Sun). Z for the zenith; you get the idea. Potential problem would be localization, but the keys would be user-definable, of course! Other ideas for keyboard commands?

Support for Wheel Mice

The mouse wheel could be used for zooming in/out in the main window.

Show object name in status bar without clicking

If the mouse cursor is paused for a short time, KStars should automatically look up the nearest object and display its name. Currently, this is done only when the user clicks the mouse. Perhaps show the name as a tooltip instead of in the status bar? Or would this be annoying?

Add Functionality

• Save user-defined geographic locations to a file, and add the custom locations to the list in the Change Location window.
• Provide a way to add user-defined links to images and/or URLs to any position on the sky.
• (optionally) show names or symbols of planets
• Add grid lines (alt/az or ra/dec, depending on current system)
• Option to show abbreviated constellation names?
• Add more star names
• Fill-in the milky way contour
• Add contour lines tracing the Magellanic Clouds
• Include Position Angle information for Galaxies
• Add realistic sky-lighting effects?
• Add minor planets and comets?
• Read ephemerides of minor planets directly from online sources (e.g., JPL)
• Add more catalogs? (too many objects may slow KStars down, so additional catalogs should be optional. KStars now ignores objects outside the viewable area, which will help keep the CPU usage down)
• Realistic angular sizes for pixmapped objects? Planets and messier objects are shown much larger than actual size, currently.
• Link to images from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day archive, which includes nice explanations as well.
• Add a "starchart" color scheme, with white background and black stars.
• Abililty to print the sky map.

Long-term wishlist

KStars: The Screensaver

A "lite" version of KStars to be used as a screensaver. A few thousand stars plus the planets would not use much CPU. Could also optionally run in an accelerated-time mode in which the sky could be seen to rotate with respect to the horizon. Plus, you'd see the Sun, moon and planets drifting by, with the moon's phases changing. Sounds pretty neat! Unfortunately, I have no screensaver experience, and am having too much fun right now on regular KStars to think much about this part. Someday, I'll do it (unless you want to! :)

KStars: The Scripting Language

This idea's been bouncing around my head for a while. It would be really great to be able to write a "script" for KStars to follow. For example, you could write a script that starts out in Orion, slews to the Moon, zooms in, starts tracking the moon, accelerates time, and watches the lunar phases change over a complete cycle. This would be especially useful for classroom demo use; seeing the sky "in action" is a great way to explain basic astronomy topics like lunar phases, retrograde motion, even the relationships between time, longitude, and the location of stars in the sky. We could also include the ability for the script to "draw" arrows, circles, and labels on the display while it's running.

Sky-notes

A popup menu option to "annotate" the selectd object or location. A window pops up with a multi-line edit widget in which the user can enter text related to the object or location. Could be an observing log, more detailed information about the object, poetry, anything at all. Annotated objects would be tagged with some kind of small image (like a pushpin, for example). People could even exchange their sets of notes, and if they turn out to be really useful, we could build a comprehensive list of them and distribute it with KStars. Which brings us to...

AstroInfo

These last two items could be integrated into a comprehensive, interactive astronomy encyclopedia. It would be similar to other open online encyclopedias (everything2, wikipedia, GNUpedia): user-contributed articles, and hyperlinks to other articles or to websites. The difference would be that it could also "link" to KStars, and perhaps spawn a script that illustrates the article's topic. There are already some AstroInfo articles on the KStars webpage. I'll be including the first iteration of it in KStars soon (it will probably start out as just a menu item or button that spawns konqueror open to an index of articles).

Ever-present Needs

• Translations
• Improve Documentation
• More AstroInfo articles