News and announcements
Planetary features: Call to translators
Written for Stellarium by Alexander Wolf on 2017-10-07
Dear translators!
Thank you very much for your efforts for make Stellarium available to non-English community!
We incorporated into main package a long awaited feature - support of nomenclature for planetary features. All nomenclature items are translatable and this is a big problem now for translators, because we added over 15000 new lines for translation.
All those lines was extracted in the separate category - stellarium-
Thank you!
Stellarium 0.16.1
Written for Stellarium by Alexander Wolf on 2017-09-29
Version 0.16.1 is based on Qt 5.6.2, but it can still be built from sources with Qt 5.4.
This version is bugfix release with some important features:
- Added moons of Saturn, Uranus and Pluto
- Added improvements for AstroCalc tool
- DSO catalog was updated to version 3.2:
-- Added support 'The Strasbourg-ESO Catalogue of Galactic Planetary Nebulae' (Acker+, 1992)
-- Added support 'A catalogue of Galactic supernova remnants' (Green, 2014)
-- Added support 'A Catalog of Rich Clusters of Galaxies' (Abell+, 1989)
- Added support asterisms and outlines for DSO
- Added improvements for the GUI
A huge thanks to the people who helped us a lot by reporting bugs!
Full list of changes:
- Added two notations for unit of measurement of surface brightness
- Added improvement for hide/unhide lines and grids in Oculars plugin
- Added few moons of Saturn (Phoebe, Janus, Epimetheus, Helene, Telesto, Calypso, Atlas, Prometheus, Pandora, Pan) with classic elliptical orbits
- Added few moons of Uranus (Cordelia, Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Ophelia) with classic elliptical orbits
- Added 2 moons of Pluto (Kerberos and Styx) with classic elliptical orbits
- Added code to avoid conflicts for names of asteroids and moons
- Added support of IAU moon numbers
- Added angular size into AstroCalc/Positions tool
- Added option to allow users to choose output formatting of coordinates of objects
- Added optional debug info for HDPI devices
- Added optional calculations of resolution limits for Oculars plugin
- Added new data from IAU Catalog of Star Names (LP: #1705111)
- Added support download zip archives with TLE data to Satellites plugin
- Added link to the Mike McCants' classified TLE data into the default list of TLE sources
- Added link to AMSAT TLE data into the default list of TLE sources
- Added support 'The Strasbourg-ESO Catalogue of Galactic Planetary Nebulae' (Acker+, 1992) [DSO catalog version 3.2]
- Added support 'A catalogue of Galactic supernova remnants' (Green, 2014) [DSO catalog version 3.2]
- Added support 'A Catalog of Rich Clusters of Galaxies' (Abell+, 1989) [DSO catalog version 3.2]
- Added export the predictions of Iridium flares (LP: #1707390)
- Added meta information about version and edition into file of Stellarium DSO Catalog to avoid potential crash of Stellarium in the future (validation the version of catalog before loading)
- Added support of extra physical data for asteroids
- Added support of outlines for DSO
- Added new time step: saros
- Added new time step: 7 sidereal days
- Added more checks to the network connections
- Added support of comments for constellations_
- Added support for small asterisms with lines by the equatorial coordinates
- Added support for ray helpers
- Added new feature (crossed lines and output string near mouse cursor) to the Pointer Coordinates plugin
- Added missing cross-id data
- Added support an images within description of landscapes
- Added support Visual Studio 2017 in StelLogger
- Added tool to save list of objects in AstroCalc/WUT tool
- Added tool to save celestial positions of objects in AstroCalc/Positions tool
- Added temporary solution for bug 1498616 (LP: #1498616)
- Fixed wrong rendering Neptune and Uranus (LP: #1699648)
- Fixed Vector3 compilation error in unit tests (LP: #1700095)
- Fixed a conflict around landscape autoselection (LP: #1700199)
- Fixed HMS formatting
- Fixed generating ISS script
- Fixed tooltips for AstroCalc/Positions tool
- Fixed dark nebulae parameters for AstroCalc/Positions tool
- Fixed tool for saving options
- Fixed crash when we on the spaceship
- Fixed Solar system class to avoid conflicts and undefined behaviour
- Fixed orientation angle and its data rendering (LP: #1704561)
- Fixed wrong shadows on Jupiter's moons (Added special case for Jupiter's moons when they are in the shadow of Jupiter for compute magnitudes from Expl. Suppl. 2013 item) (LP: #1704421)
- Fixed work AstroCalc/AltVsTime tool for artificial satellites (a bit slow solution though)
- Fixed search by lists of DSO
- Fixed translation switch issue for AstroCalc/Graphs tool (LP: #1705341)
- Fixed trackpad behaviour on macOS though workaround
- Fixed couple stupid bugs in InnoSetup script
- Fixed morphology for SNR
- Fixed issue in parsing of date format in AstroCalc/Phenomena tool
- Fixed link for fileStructure.html file in README (LP: #1709523)
- Fixed the calculation for drawing a reticle on a HiDPI display (Oculars plugin)
- Fixed default option of units of measure for surface brighness to avoid possible artifacts on the macOS (LP: #1699643)
- Fixed crash when comments is added into constellations_
- Fixed behaviour of 'Center on selected object' button (LP: #1712101)
- Fixed impossibility to select a planet after Astronomical Calculations is activated (LP: #1712652)
- Fixed crash with unknown star in asterism
- Fixed cross-ids of 42 bright double stars (LP: #1655493)
- Fixed magnitude computation for Jupiter's satellites
- Fixed crash of Stellarium when answer of freegeoip.net has wrong format (for example this host blocked by firewall or DNS server with HTML answer) (LP: #1706187)
- Fixed translations issue in Script Console
- Fixed illumination in Scenery3D plugin: Take eclipseFactor into account
- Fixed potential crash in DSO outlines
- Fixed various issues in ray helpers, asterisms and constellations support
- Updated InfoString feature
- Updated sky brightness during solar eclipse (really, there are only few stars visible.)
- Updated Maori sky culture
- Updated list of names of deep-sky objects
- Updated list of asterisms
- Updated selection behaviour in Oculars plugin (avoid selection of objects outside ocular circle in eyepiece mode)
- Updated behaviour of methods getEnglishName() and getNameI18n() for minor bodies
- Updated behaviour of planetarium for support a new format of asteroid names
- Updated behaviour of filters for DSO catalogs
- Updated Solar System Editor plugin (support new format of asteroid names)
- Updated RTS2 telecope driver in Telescope Control plugin.
- Updated API docs
- Updated limit of magnitude for Oculars plugin (Improvements)
- Updated AstroCalc/WUT tool
- Updated AstroCalc/Ephemeris tool
- Updated rules for storing default settings
- Updated rules for computation visibility of DSO hints
- Updated plugins
- Updated default values for material fade-in/fade-out times
- Updated stellarium.
- Updated tab rules in the GUI
- Reduce warnings to one when loading OBJ with non-default w texture/vertex coordinates
Stellarium 0.16.0
Written for Stellarium by Alexander Wolf on 2017-06-21
Stellarium 0.16.0 is a stable version (based on Qt5.6 but it can still be built from sources with Qt5.4) that introduces some new features and closes 38 bug and wishlist reports.
New features include
- RemoteSync plugin, which allows running several connected instances of Stellarium.
- Non-spherical models for solar system objects like asteroids and small moons.
- Solar system config file is now split into two parts.
- AstroCalc feature extension: What's Up Tonight, graphs, ...
- DSO: Addition of catalogs of peculiar galaxies
- New Skycultures: Belarusian, Hawaiian Star Lines
- Telescope plugin: support for the RTS2 telescope system.
- Location can now be read from a GPS device.
A huge thanks to the people who helped us a lot by reporting bugs!
Full list of changes:
- Added support of irregular solar system objects (3D models of minor bodies) (LP: #1153171)
- Added Remote Sync plugin
- Added GPS devices support (LP: #1448673)
- Added splitting ssystem.ini data - now have separate ssystem_major.ini and ssystem_minor.ini. Only the latter shall be editable for the users.
- Added a few more timezone replacements.
- Added support an asterisms for the sky cultures
- Added better identification for existing serial ports for GPS
- Added context support for constellations and asterisms names
- Added support RTS2 for Telescope Control Plugin
- Added a new option in config.ini file esp. for the planetariums (astro/
flag_forced_
- Added support of date and time formatting settings from main app to AstroCalc tool.
- Added a line for the approximate time of the meridian passing in AstroCalc tool (LP: #1652523)
- Added TLE tracking to RTS2 telescopes
- Added different star scales in the Oculars plugin, even separately for ocular and CCD views (LP: #1656940)
- Added information on magnification of the combination of eyepiece/
- Added configurable options to AstroCalc tool
- Added support Catalan (Valencian) language
- Added support Kabyle language
- Added 'What's Up Tonight' tool - AstroCalc subsystem (LP: #1080408)
- Added Dark Doodad Nebula to DSO catalog
- Added more data for analysis to the Exoplanets plugin.
- Added calculation of list of visible object for current location (AstroCalc)
- Added tool to remove custom markers by coordinates
- Added support double and variable stars for AstroCalc tool
- Added support translation novae names (parse nova name to extract constellation name and year of flash)
- Added lists of bright double and bright variable stars to Search Tool
- Added customized buttons for toggle ICRS/Galactic/
- Added customized buttons for toggle constellation boundaries (LP: #1249239)
- Added import/export bookmarks (LP: #1675078)
- Added confirmation before deleting landscape (LP: #1635137)
- Added guessing for name of location and use it when spaceship is landing (LP: #1220561)
- Added an 'Additional settings' block for selected object info
- Added showing a proper motions for some stars
- Added an optional indication of mount mode (LP: #1172860)
- Added option to toggle the usage the buttons background on bottom bar (LP: #1589702)
- Added config option for planet apparent magnitude configuration
- Added description to the planets magnitude algorithm
- Added contrast index for DSO
- Added AstroCalc/Graphs feature
- Added new option to configure behaviour of Satellites (Satellites/
- Added a scripting function to retrieve property names (helpful for configuring RemoteSync).
- Added 3 additional catalogs to our DSO catalog (Arp, VV, PK)
- Added packing of DSO catalog
- Added the showing the groups of the artificial satellites
- Added Belarusian sky culture
- Adding Hawaiian Starlines sky culture
- Added list of bright stars with high proper motion to the Search Tool/Lists and AstroCalc/Positions features
- Added lunar magnitude to sky brightness computation (brightness variation during lunar eclipses!) (LP: #1471546)
- Added property handling for the labels for ArchaeoLines plugin.
- Added Ukrainian translation for Belarusian skyculture
- Added Ukrainian translation for Hawaiian Starlines skyculture
- Added context and improve English phrase (AstroCalc)
- Added missed zh_HK zh_TW zh_CN descriptions for western sky-culture (LP: #1698473)
- Added Belarusian description for Belarusian sky culture (LP: #1698535)
- Added Bengali description for Belarusian sky culture (LP: #1698608)
- Added 'simulation speed' for tooltip of time (LP: #1698510)
- Added saving an angular separation option for phenomena
- Fixed crash when tried use of SIMBAD for offline mode (LP: #1674836)
- Fixed build scripts to update Index once more just before final run.
- Fixed COSPAR designation parser.
- Fixed wrong extinction coordinate frame of Zodiacal Light (LP: #1675699)
- Fixed a missing initialisation (avoids crash at program end)
- Fixed bug for loading default scenery on non-Englush locale in Scenery3D plugin
- Fixed typo in name of dark nebula LDN 935 (LP: #1679066)
- Fixed Scripting Engine: avoiding broken script when calling waitFor() after the point in time to wait.
- Fixed infoMap data for comets.
- Fixed issue of reloading of DSO names when filter of catalogs is updated.
- Fixed small cosmetic bug for SIMBAD status line.
- Fixed the opposition/
- Fixed very stupid bug for Date & Time dialog.
- Fixed translation on-the-fly issue for AstroCalc tool.
- Fixed IAU constellation label for stars with high proper motion (LP: #1690615)
- Fixed crash when AstroCalc tool is active and we are on the spaceship
- Fixed several Coverity issues
- Fixed bug which disabled the bright flare-type Iridium point source drawing
- Fixed fullscreen behaviour on switching tasks (Alt+Tab) (LP: #550337)
- Fixed dynamic eye adaptation behaviour when persistent orbits are enabled
- Fixed switching horizontal/
- Fixed crash when observer is flying on spaceship
- Fixed storing torchlight and coordinate display flag to config (Scenery3D) (LP: #1502245)
- Fixed placing a custom markers on HighDPI devices (LP: #1688985)
- Fixed infostring for ecliptical coordinates data (Nutation)
- Fixed strings consistency for Solar System Editor plug-in (LP: #1698783)
- Fixed string overlap with FOV and FPS labels (LP: #1698789)
- Restore searchable for telescope names (LP: #1686857)
- Updated Scenery3D plugin
- Updated Satellites plugin: refactoring the source code and speed-up rendering of satellites
- Updated rule to create a directory for screenshots (LP: #1626686)
- Updated GUI: refactoring blocks
- Updated a GUI behaviour: a map in LocationDialog resizable is now.
- Updated a GUI behaviour: enabled low resolution for High DPI devices.
- Updated a GUI: added a few GUI text improvements
- Updated InnoSetup script
- Updated and revised stars names
- Updated Historical Supernovae catalog (Added SN 2017cbv)
- Updated meteor showers catalog (Added data for year 2017)
- Updated AstroCalc tool: increased an accuracy of 'Altitude vs. Time' diagram
- Updated AstroCalc tool: speed-up calculations for some types of phenomena
- Updated AstroCalc tool: extension of features for Ephemeris Tool
- Updated AstroCalc tool: improve WUT
- Updated filters for DSO objects in AstroCalc/WUT tool
- Updated sorting rules for AstroCalc/Positions tool
- Updated filters for Solar system bodies (AstroCalc/
- Updated tab rules for Search Tool
- Updated list of locations
- Updated scripts and scripting engine
- Updated list of DSO's names
- Updated headers for AstroCalc tools
- Updated 'Go to home' feature.
- Updated Bookmarks tool.
- Updated API documentation
- Updated Exoplanets plugin: improve placing of the exoplanet systems
- Updated Oculars plugin: the limit for diameter of binoculars aperture upped to 200mm
- Updated calculation for boundaries of IAU constellations
- Updated default supernovae catalog
- Updated Belarusian translation for skycultures
- Updated cmake variable names
- Updated Ocean landscape
- Updated RemoteControl panels with new functionality
- Updated rules for TLE updated: never update TLE's for any date before Oct 4, 1957, 19:28:34GMT ;-)
- Removed script 'Analemma'
- Removed useless vertex color data from asteroid models.
- Removed Polynesian sky culture (replaced by Hawaiian starlines)
0.16.0RC1: Call to translators
Written for Stellarium by Alexander Wolf on 2017-06-11
We plan to release Stellarium 0.16.0 around June 21 (at the moment first release candidate was published for the testing of planetarium and translations checking).
This will an another major release with fixes of bugs and a few new important features - another one step to version 1.0. This version has many changes in the GUI and we added many new lines for translation. If you can assist with translation to any of the 140 languages which Stellarium supports, please go to Launchpad Translations and help us out: https:/
If you can help translate description of sky cultures and landscapes on your language then we would be grateful to you for this. You need a create your branch, add 'description.
You can send translated description.
Thank you!
Stellarium 0.15.2 has been released
Written for Stellarium by Alexander Wolf on 2017-03-21
The Stellarium development team after three months of development is proud to announce the second correcting release of Stellarium in series 0.15.x - version 0.15.2. This version contains few closed bugs (ported from series 1.x) and some new additions and improvements.
We have updated the configuration file and the Solar System file, so if you have an existing Stellarium installation, we highly recommended reset the settings when you will install the new version (you can choose required points in the installer).
A huge thanks to our community whose contributions help to make Stellarium better!
Full list of changes:
- Added new algorithm for DeltaT from Stephenson, Morrison and Hohenkerk (2016)
- Added use QOpenGLWidget
- Added new option to InfoString group
- Added orbit visualization data for asteroids
- Added calculation of extincted magnitudes of satellites
- Added new type of Solar system objects: sednoids
- Added classificator of objects into Solar System Editor plugin
- Added albedo for infostring (planets and moons)
- Added some improvements and clean up of code in Search Tool
- Added use ISO 8601 to date formatting in Date and Time Dialog (LP: #1655630)
- Added "Restore direction to initial values" in Oculars plugin (LP: #1656085)
- Added the define for GL_DOUBLE again to restore compilation on ARM.
- Added calculation and show of horizontal and vertical scales of visible field of view of CCD (LP: #1656825)
- Added caching for landscapes, including preloading and some other manipulation via scripting.
- Added binning for CCD in Oculars plugin
- Added textures for DSO
- Added a mean solar day (equals to Earth's day) on the Sun for educational purposes
- Added transmitting map of object info via RemoteControl
- Added int property handling with sliders
- Added a scriptable function to retrieve landscape brightness.
- Added Spout licence.txt to Windows installer script
- Added displaying solstices points (LP: #1670046)
- Added extension of objectInfoMaps per object, most useful for scripting (LP: #1670412)
- Added tentative fix for crash without network (LP: #1667703)
- Added separate storing of view direction/FoV and other settings.
- Added Meade MA12 Astrometric Eyepiece support in Oculars plugin
- Added option to change the prediction depth of Iridium flares (Satellites plugin)
- Added tooltips for AstroCalc features
- Fixed indirect dependency to QtOpenGL by QtMultimediaWidgets (LP: #1656525)
- Fixed text encoding in installer (LP: #1652515)
- Fixed changing value of n.dot in tooltip when ephemeris type is changed (LP: #1652762)
- Fixed mistakes in DeltaT stuff
- Fixed typos in AstroCalc tool
- Fixed visual style for spinup/spindown markers
- Fixed missing cross-id of Epsilon Lyrae (LP: #1653388)
- Fixed updating a list of Solar system bodies in AstroCalc tool when new objects added or objects was removed
- Fixed calculation of period for comets on elliptial orbits
- Fixed prediction of Iridium flares (LP: #1643311)
- Fixed saving visibility flag for Bookmarks button (LP: #1654164)
- Fixed refraction for Satellites (LP: #1654331)
- Fixed wrong parallax and distance for IC 59 (LP: #1655423)
- Fixed updating a text in Help window when shortcuts are changed (LP: #1656001)
- Fixed saving flags of visibility of Milky Way and Zodiacal Light (LP: #1656067)
- Fixed memory leaks
- Fixed few reports of Clang static analyzer
- Fixed double clicks causing crashes (LP: #1656525)
- Fixed packaging QtOpenGL in Windows/macOS packages
- Fixed handling a log lines with missing newline char
- Fixed a bad-value crash in ArchaeoLines plugin
- Fixed an invalid escape sequence in RemoteControl plugin
- Fixed bug in Search Tool (LP: #1655055)
- Fixed doing a screenshots (do it via FBO - solution for QOpenGLWidget)
- Fixed work a button for ArchaeoLines plugin
- Fixed calculation and rendering CCD frame in Oculars plugin
- Fixed an memory leak with the spheric mirror distorter, and removed stencil buffer from the effect FBO (we don't need it for our rendering) (LP: #1661375)
- Fixed tile-based render performance (always glClear all buffers at the start of the frame) (LP: #1661375)
- Fixed glClear alpha channel usage (glClear alpha to zero instead of one)
- Fixed Scenery3d cubemap rendering (restores rendering)
- Fixed crash, when location 'Sierra Nevada Observatory, Spain' is chosen (LP: #1662113)
- Fixed NetBSD and OpenBSD build by linking glues with Qt5::Gui.
- Fixed size for few DSO textures (NPOT textures for ancient GPUs) (LP: #1641773)
- Fixed crash, when missing a stars catalog from the middle of list (e.g. stars4 is missing and we tried zooming) (LP: #1653315)
- Fixed crash for configure color of generic DSO marker (LP: #1667787)
- Fixed date limit in AstroCalc tool (Set a minimum possible date limit for the range of dates for
QDateTimeEdit widgets) (LP: #1660208)
- Fixed escaping of symbols for Simbad Lookup (LP: #1669088)
- Fixed DE431 mismatch (LP: #1606583)
- Fixed overbright Sun when zooming in (LP: #1421173)
- Fixed absolute magnitude calculation of the planets, their moons, and the Pluto-Charon system (LP: #1664143)
- Fixed a long-standing bug concerning centering small-fov views in equatorial mount mode (LP: #1484976)
- Fixed influencing sky luminance/eye adaptation for bright objects covered by the landscape horizon. (LP: #1138533)
- Fixed atmospheric brightening by Earth's moon when location is on other planets (LP: #1673283)
- Fixed application of DE43x DeltaT when date outside range of the selected DE43x.
- Fixed Night mode issue for binocular mode of Oculars Plugin (LP: #1673187)
- Fixed altitude computation for landscapes
- Fixed a small error in that Zodiacal light was aligned with Ecliptic J2000, not Ecliptic of date (LP: #1628765)
- Fixed crash Stellarium in debug mode on OS X with Qt 5.7+, through clear GL error state after using QPainter (LP: #1628072)
- Fixed a problem with Qt timezone handling, when some IANA timezones have been renamed compared to entries in our location database (LP: #1662132)
- Allows SkyImages in all reference frames and deprecate the old explicit core.loadSkyIma
- Updated rules for usage of custom time zones (the custom time zone may be use in all time now) (LP: #1652763)
- Updated shortcuts
- Updated rules for source package builder
- Updated URL of DSS collection
- Updated detect of OS
- Updated deployment rules for Windows installer
- Updated script for building Stellarium User Guide
- Updated GUI for set coefficients for custom equation of DeltaT
- Updated list of contributors
- Updated ArchaeoLines and Gridlines options to RemoteControl pages
- Updated Tongan sky culture
- Updated catalog of DSO
- Updated common names of DSO
- Updated star names (LP: #1664671)
- Updated Solar System Screen Saver.
- Updated Oculars plugin
- Updated Satellites plugin (Let's start looking to the Iridium on 15 seconds before flash)
- Updated plist data for macOS
- Updated textures of minor planets
- Updated default color scheme
- Removed code for automatic tuning star scales of the view through ocular/CCD (LP: #1656940)
- Code clean-up
- Prevent an unnecessary StelProperty change
- Changed the way the OpenGL format is set once again
