After evaluating the prototype version of SkyViewAltAz, a number of changes and additions were made. The intent is to provide a tool to assist in planning observation sessions - initially for use with the Seestar S50.
The current version provides time controls, selection of the various sky views from the home block (plotted on an Az/El grid), the path through the sky views for a selected object as well as various types of information (altitude/ azimuth, current field rotation, etc).
There are also filter options which limit which objects are populated in a drop down list, e.g., a range before and after LST, visibility in sky views - or visible from latitude 34 S (or no filters).
A thumbnail captured from the web (Wikipedia) is displayed to give an idea of the object itself - but of more use is a larger screenshot image (Stellarium) of the appearance of the object in the field of view (FOV) of the Seestar S50. This is very useful as images found on the web are the result from a wide variety of telescope FOVs - so, an object which looks like an interesting target judging from an image seen on the web might actually be from a large telescope with a very small FOV - but when viewed on a Seestar S50 may be just a dot in its much larger FOV.
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| SkyViewAzEl GUI (click on the image for a larger view) |
All I need now is for the clouds to go away...