What’s new in Observation Manager 0.920?

As the first release candidate for 0.920 is available for download, it’s time to see what’s in the new version.

A minor change comes in the sorting of observation (and session) dates. In former releases the latest observation (session) was listed at the bottom of the left hand side navigation tree and the observation table.
With 0.920 the default sorting changed so that latest observations appear on the top of each list.

Another tiny change comes to the observer entries in the left hand navigation tree. All observations which were made as additional observer (via the session element), are now also listed below the corresponding observer. To indicate observations done by that observer and observations done as additional observer, the additional observer observations are shown in a light gray.

Another very useful new feature is the export of missing objects from a statistics result. In case you wanna observe all 110 Messier objects and there’re still some missing. In the past Observation Manager could tell you, how many observations are missing for your goal, but you couldn’t export that list and use it the other night. With 0.920 you’ll get the ability to export a list of missing objects either to XML (<OAL> format) or to HTML.

Talking about statistics…if you’ve an observation project ongoing (say the Herschel 400) any you want to get some statistics on your project (How many objects have been observed?), you can now create observation projects (like the Herschel 400) for Observation Manager. Basically the observation project is a plain TXT list passed over to Observation Manager, who’ll be able to compute statistics from that list. As a first out-of-the-box project the DeepSky extension comes along with a Herschel 400 project file.
More on observation projects, in one of the next blogs. So stay tuned…

Needless to say that 0.920 has again several bug fixes and usage enhancements onboard.
E.g. while loading/exporting/saving/… you’ll get a little animated wait pop-up to let you know, OM is working.
Also the column sizes and the size of the main window frames are now saved and recovered during the next startup.
The DeepSky extension now comes with the revised NGC/IC catalog by Wolfgang Steinicke, that replaces the outdated HCNGC.

So there’s plenty of reasons to download the next version of Observation Manager. The release candidate is out, and we’re curious to receive your feedback!

Observation Manager – 0.920 Release Candidate 1

The first release candidate for the next Observation Manager Version 0.920 has been released and can be
accessed from the projects webpage at: http://observation.sourceforge.net

Please give it a try and report feedback in our projects forum.

Observation Manager on ohloh.net

Today I’ve updated the Observation Manager page on ohloh.net.
Ohloh brought up some very interesting facts about OM:

According to ohloh.net Observation Manager consists of 47.563 lines of code.
85% of the coding are written in Java, the rest ist XML, XSLT, …
The effort of Observation Manager according to ohloh.net is 13 person years or over 700.000$ (if you take an avg. salary of 55000$/year)

Looking forward…Observation Manager 0.920

With 0.820 out of the door, it’s time to look ahead for the next release.

Here’s what has already made it into 0.920 so far:

• Bugfixing (obviously there’s always something to fix)
  • e.g. the table sorting is now enhanced and works out much better
• Latest observations are now shown at the top of the table (and tree). (No longer at the bottom)
• Table column size is now saved and recovered after startup
• Almost everywhere you can export data to HTML and XML (<OAL>) now.
  • E.g. All entries in the navigation tree allow the XML (<OAL>) export now, besides the existing HTML export
• Observation statistics can now be exported to HTML or XML. Also missing objects (from a catalog) can now be exported to XML and HTML. With that, you’re able to get a handy list of what’s missing on your observing projects
• Introduction of observing projects. It’ll be possible with 0.920 to create simple text files in the OM directory that are treated like catalogs during observation statistics.
  So e.g. you’re observing the Herschel 400. So, you place a list with the Herschel 400 objects as txt file into the OM install directory and OM checks which objects from that list haven already been observed.
• Replace HCNGC catalog with latest revised NGC/IC catalog from Wolfgang Steinicke
• …some minor fixes and enhancements…

Anything missing? Post suggestions, idea, … as comment to this blog.

Observation Manager 0.820 is released

Good news everyone!

Observation Manager 0.820 is finally released. Get the latest version on the projects page at:
http://observation.sourceforge.net/en/

Happy downloading

Dirk

Controlling Cartes du Ciel/Skychart from Observation Manager

With Observation Manager 0.820 a new extension is introduced called Skychart. This new extension connects Observation Manager with Cartes du Ciel / Skychart (Version 3.x). To use this extension, all you need to do is make sure you’ve the Skychart extension installed in OM and Cartes du Ciel 3.x running.

With that you should already be able to show observations (or objects) from Observation Manager in Cartes du Ciel / Skychart. Just selected an observation (or an object) in Observation Manager, do a right click on the entry and select Skychart -> Show in Skychart and Cartes du Ciel will move to the corresponding object.

Show observation in Cartes du Ciel

Cartes du Ciel moved to observation target

In case this doesn’t work for you, you might need to check configurations.

In Observation Manager go to menu Extra->Preferences select Skychart tab and see the current connection details to Cartes du Ciel.

Observation Manager Skychart settings

The values set here must be equal to the settings in Cartes du Ciel.

To check the Cartes du Ciel settings go to menu Setup->System select Server tab and see the current connection settings.

Cartes du Ciel Server settings

OpenAstronomyLog 2.0 released

Time to celebrate!

OpenAstronomyLog

OpenAstronomyLog 2.0 (formerly known as COMAST XML schema) has officially been released today!

What does that mean? With <OAL> 2.0 more applications using the same logging format for their observation logs,
making it easier to migrate and compare data between those applications.
Also <OAL> 2.0 introduces an extenstion mechanism, that makes sure <OAL> can easily expanded if required to cover
even more astronomical topics. (Currently <OAL> 2.0 supports DeepSky-, SolarSystem-, VariableStars-observations and some rudimental CCD imaging support)
And the best: Observation Manager 0.820 will completly support all <OAL> extensions!

For more infos see: http://groups.google.com/group/openastronomylog

Using your own custom stylesheet for HTML export

For exporting your observations into HTML, Observation Manager uses XSL-Transformation. The default style sheet used for this might not perfectly fit to your webpage, or you simply don’t like the transformed output. Therefore with OM 0.820 you can make use of your own XSL style sheet.

Create new folder for your custom XSL style sheet

Open your Observation Manager installation directory and goto the /xsl folder. Underneath this folder you can see the default style sheet used for transformation called /oal2html. Now place a second folder besides the existing one, e.g. /myWebpageStyle. Now add your XSL file to this folder. The XSL file must be called transform.xsl (or in case you’ve one XSL file per language, name the files e.g. transform_de.xsl, transform_en.xsl and so on)

(The best way to start with your own XSL file might be by copying an existing one from /oal2html folder.)

Now start Observation Manager, and select Preferences out of the menu bar.

In the General tab, see the XSL style entry. Select your custom style here (the name shown in the preferences dialog is taken from the folder you’ve created underneath the /xsl folder.

Select your custom XSL style sheet

You’re done! Next time you’ll export your observation data into HTML, Observation Manager will use your XSL style sheet for transformation.

What’s new in 0.820?

It’s been a while since the last OM release 0.717 was released and during the last month we’ve implemented quiet a bunch of features making Observation Manager even more comfortable and user friendly. Here’s a (incomplete) list of what’s new in 0.820:

• 

  OpenAstronomyLog

  The first major change from 0.717 to 0.820 is most probably one, you won’t notice at a first glance, but which might be important to you someday in the future. The open XML data format which OM used ’til 0.717 (COMAST) is renamed to OpenAstronomyLog (<OAL>). By that name change the version jumped from 1.7 to 2.0. <OAL> remains open and free and there’ll more logging/planning apps joining the standard (see box on the right).
  For Observation Manager users this migration from COMAST to <OAL> is done automatically by using OM 0.820, so you don’t need to worry about anything, OM does all for you.

• It’s now possible to log variable star observations. Also OM 0.820 has a AAVSO export function, that allows you to export your variable star observations into the common AAVSO (visual) format, ready to upload your observation via the AAVSO website. Also OM 0.820 can plot light curves from your variable star observations.
  

  Variable star light curve

• Several new object/target types are introduced: Star, Multiple star, variable star, cluster of galaxies.
• Extension (Plugin) concept introduced. Observation Manager can be customized to your needs, starting from 0.820 on. In the complete package Observation Manager supports Deep-Sky, Solar system, imaging and variable star observations. In case you just need one of those feature, you can download the Observation Manager base package and simply plugin the extension you need. This saves disk space and keeps Observation Manager slim and easy to use.  (Adding more extension is for sure possible at a later point in time
• Search in catalogs. Search in the e.g. Messier catalog for NGC 2422 and find M47
• HTML export can now use custom XSL style sheets
• Increase startup times
• Major performance optimization in Save function. Saving large files is now up to several hundred times faster than in prior versions.
• Log your observations in Observation Manger during night by using OMs night vision UI.
  

  Observation Manager in night vision mode

• Tons of bugfixes and minor usability improvements