Bug 89371

Summary: Faint limits disabled for deep-sky objects
Product: [Applications] kstars Reporter: Marko Gronroos <magi>
Component: generalAssignee: Jasem Mutlaq <mutlaqja>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED    
Severity: normal CC: akarsh.simha, mboquien
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: 1.0   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Compiled Sources   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Marko Gronroos 2004-09-12 20:58:54 UTC 
Version:           1.0 (using KDE Devel)
Installed from:    Compiled sources
Compiler:          gcc version 3.2.2 20030222 
OS:                Linux

"Faint limit zoomed in/out" boxes for Deep Sky Objects are grayed in the Catalogs tab, in the "Configure KStars" dialog. It reads "16,0" in both of them. The faint limits for stars work just fine. The red circles around DS objects seem to work.

Also the Remove Catalog button is grayed (in the screenshot in the Help it is not).

I'm not sure if this setting would help me with my problem. I want to see the deep sky objects better when I'm viewing a certain area in the sky. Now it's really difficult to try to find any interesting deep sky objects in a certain area, as they are just tiny red dots until you zoom close enough. Bright deep sky objects definitely should be labeled. KStars works nicely only if you already know the name of the object you want to look at, which isn't really convenient if you don't know exactly what you want to look at... Last night, I had to go in and get the old trusty Tirion's Sky Atlast just to find something to look at. 

Another good solution for searching interesting objects might be to be able to draw a rectangle on a sky area to get a list of all objects inside it, ordered by type/magnitude.
Comment 1 kstars 2005-01-11 05:47:21 UTC 
The deep-sky mag limits are disabled because the default NGC/IC catalog contains too many undefined magnitudes.  There is a much more complete NGC/IC catalog available in the Get New Stuff tool (Ctrl+D).  We can't ship the good catalog with KStars because it is not under a Free Software license (it is free for non-commercial use only).  I am on the lookout for a Free and complete NGC/IC catalog.  If and when I find one, I will enable the deep-sky mag limits.

The Remove Catalog button is only enabled if you highlight a custom object catalog; the default catalogs can't be removed (but they can be hidden).  This is not a bug.

I like your idea of drawing a box on the sky to identify objects.  It will fit nicely with the new Observing List tool; you would be able to add objects to your observing list by drawing a box around them in the map.  Then you can filter by type/magnitude/etc.  I'll add this to my TODO list.
Comment 2 Akarsh Simha 2009-09-27 18:29:15 UTC 
Finally, we've gotten a good catalog (actually, we've merged in a good catalog with correct magnitudes). I think it is worth looking at this bug now.
Comment 3 Akarsh Simha 2009-10-04 01:15:41 UTC 
I just fixed this bug:

http://websvn.kde.org/?view=revision&revision=1031008
http://websvn.kde.org/?view=revision&revision=1031011

A lot of IC objects still have undefined magnitudes, so we display them all the time anyway.