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Stopping old feeds for OW 4.7 and an update about IOTA and Personal events
Hi All, As you all know with the release of OW 5.0 most predictions started coming from OWC. Some of the feeds however continued to post the predictions the old way as well so users with OW 4.7 who were slow to migrate could still get them. Initial announcement was that this double posting would continue for about 2 months. After almost 6 months now the old way of posting predictions will finally cease and users with OW 4.7 (if anyone) will have to migrate to 5.0 to continue receiving events. May be some of the feed maintainers have stopped the double-posting already but this is just a reminder for everyone that OW 4.7 will be no longer supported. There is also a work on the way to bring Personals predictions (posted the same way as before) to OWC and I hope to release the OW Desktop update for this soon. The advantage is that those personal predictions will get the standard OWC treatment including prediction updates when orbit is updated and an OWC page for the events. You may have also noticed that OWC now also shows IOTA Occultation predictions, while OW still gets the events from Steve Preston's web site. This has been done as a transitional phase before fully moving IOTA events to OWC, which is still probably a few months away. Some of the detalis of the IOTA events move to OWC are still to be decicded but Steve Preston will stop posting the data he does at the moment at https://asteroidoccultation.com, including Guide star charts, Occult's plots, pre-points lists and others. It is liekly that the site will get the events from OWC and still show them but with smaller amount of detail and links back to OWC which will be the central resource of information about the IOTA events. If anyone has concerns about the above and about only relying on the information in OW and OWC for their planning, now is a good time to speak up so we can try to identify and address any potential final gaps and issues. Regards, Hristo Pavlov. On Sunday, May 23, 2021, 04:02:08 PM GMT+10, Hristo Pavlov <hristo_dpavlov@...> wrote: Hi All, Today I have released the new version of Occult Watcher which is a major update in regards to how feed events make it into OW and how they are managed by the Feed Maintainers. There is no change to the UI and user experience of how these events are managed by the observers in OW. One difference is that the online link to the events (new or updated) will point to a web page on the OccultWatcher Cloud system - https://cloud.occultwatcher.net Within the next few months I expect to start making small updates to OW user experience to take better advantage of the new OWC event tagging system, with something likely coming up next week - stay tuned! At the moment Feed Maintainers are (and have been for the past 2 months) keeping up to date two different locations of their feed events. One for the current (now old) version of OW 4.7 and the other one of the new version 5.0. There is a plan that they will stop posting events to the old location in about 2 months from now which gives you 2 months to upgrade to OW 5.0. If you haven't updated to OW 5.0 by then, you will not be receiving any new events in OW 4.7 once they stop posting events the old way. OW 5.0 events are also automatically updated by OWC and will be more recent than OW 4,7 events. All these are great reasons to upgrade to v5.0 very soon. After you have updated OccultWatcher please do the following: - Stop OW and then restart it. This is a workaround for an issue where wrong feed settings would have been loaded if you are logged in to windows with a non-admin account and you had to type admin password to complete the upgrade process. I will release a fix for this issue in the near future but for now a manual shut down and a restart of OW with your usual Windows account is required. - Make sure to press the Synchronise button to get the latest events from OWC. Because OWC automatically monitors for orbit updates and updates predictions, doing this will get you the latest predictions for recently updated orbits. If you are subscribed to the CometOcc feed this
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I am not sure if it because I'm doing something wrong in OW or if OW Mobile isn't providing what I want, but I would like the app to display the site name of the location I choose to observe from rather than what seems to be my search site location. Example: I normally keep the search site set to my home location, but when ever there is an event that will travel too, I select it off the site selection in 'right mouse click' menu. But the app doesn't display that site name in the details, rather it shows my name and the word Home. I'm not sure where it is getting that from. I have over 20 sites stored as possible observing locations and when i open an event OW Mobile I would like to know where I planned to observe from, otherwise I'll have to go back into OW on my PC and check. Vince
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still another OW issue
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Hi Paul, everyone, I don't understand why your event may have disappared from OW. Has anyone else seens similar issues? Hristo.
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my report disappeared from OW
Hi Paul, everyone, I assume the event is (377)Campania occulting UCAC4491001574-20211025: https://cloud.occultwatcher.net/event/297-377-15239-648519-U001574 where you reported a 10.3 sec occultation. I see your report on the server as well as it is displayed above. Has anyone seen their reports disappearing from their OW? Currently there is an issue that some multple predictions of the same event (one agains a Gaia star) are not correctly recognized as the same event and stations of other people may not show up on the event you may have signed up, but ths particular event is not affected. Has anyone seen anything wrong with the reporting functionality as reported by Paul? Hristo.
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Hi All, Grzegorz Czepiczek in Poland has developed an add-in for OccultWatcher that can plot charts using Cartes du Ciel, which has been presented by Wojciech Borzy¨½ski at ESOP XXXIX (https://iota-es.de/esop39/lections/CdC-addin-for-OW.pdf). The current version of the add-in can be downloaded from here: http://panoramaczestochowy.pl/tmp/occultwatcher.skychart-1.0.11.zip Grzegorz is looking for beta testers for the add-in, so the development can be finalized and the add-in can be made available in OccultWatcher. Please send any add-in testing feedback or questions to grzegorzczepiczek@... and feel free to CC me as well. Thanks, Hristo Pavlov.
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C2A Occultation Map Interface (modification)
I find the C2A Occultation Map feature (right click on an event) very useful. Once it is generated by C2A, I print out the map for field reference. If possible, I would like to see the RA/Dec of the target star included in the notes that appear on the lower edge of the printout. This would save me time and would be more accurate since I wouldn't have to hand write it each time. This info is passed to C2A when launched from OW, so adding the coordinates of the target star should be feasable. I searched the menus of C2A but couldn't find a setting that would include the coordinates on a printout. If someone knows how to include the RA/Dec, please let me know. Vince
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Fixed Comet Feed links [OW Action Required!]
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Hi all, There was a problem where the recently uploaded comet event in the CometOcc feed were generated with a bad id, due to a recent change of the coment designation format used by MPC. As a result the events in OW and also listed on OWC could not be reached on their event page on OWC. This has been now fixed for existing events starting from tomorrow and the issue should not happen for the future events uploaded to CometOcc. To get the fix in OW, if you are using the Comet Occultation feed, you will need to: - Go to Configuration -> Prediction Feeds -> Comet Occultation (Global) -> [right click] -> Purge database - Let OW finish restarting - Go to Configuration -> Prediction Feeds -> Comet Occultation (Global) -> [right click] -> Synchronise If any MyEvents or stations are lost in the above process you will need to re-add them. Old events will not be updated. Thanks to Vince Sempronio for poiting out this issue. Cheers, Hristo.
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The asteroids aren't a problem since they start with their numeric designation, but comet names have problems since you need the entire designation to identify it or search for it online. Case in point... 20 Sept event of ATLAS (C/2020 N Um, what comes after the N? The details of the event doesn't have a longer name, so I'm not sure how to identify it. V
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I posted this on the IOTA forum but it probably belongs here... I ran Occult and saved a list of events by selecting "Personal OW feed" from the FILE menu. I resynchronized OW but they didn't show up. I checked "LinOccult Personal Predictions" in the prediction feed tab but still nothing. what am I missing? Does OW know where to look for the file or do I have to copy it somewhere? Where is the file stored, BTW. V
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OccultWatcher to move large part of search and sign-up functionality to the web (OWC), within 1 year
This seems to be a push from Google to phase out all 'old style' desktop apps that use an embedded browser control: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/browsersupport I have 1 year to replace OW Desktop's GoogleMap with a pure web version i.e. on OWC. There is nothing else I can do and in Aug 2022 OW's old style GoogleMap will stop working. Until I release a full web version of OccultWatcher you also have no other choice but to press 'Dismiss'. I will try to keep as much as possible in the Desktop version of OW as some features cannot be moved to the web (all add-ins and Occult interaction for example) but I see that a year from now the vast majority (possibly all) of the event searching and sign-up functionality will be only available in a web browser. In the end I think this is good news for non-Windows users but will surely cause some disruption. Hristo. On Saturday, August 21, 2021, 06:05:57 AM GMT+10, V Sempronio <vastronomy@...> wrote: You are probably correct. I'm not sure what platform OW was developed on but if I recall from my coding days, most coding platforms provide for a browser object. It could be the object is too old and needs a refresh. The issue didn't seem to cause any issues for me either, but the fact there is a warning could mean trouble down the road. I'm sure the authors will figure it out. V On Friday, August 20, 2021, 08:13:35 PM GMT+10, Peter Nosworthy <yahoo@...> wrote: I get the same thing. I think it's referring to the browser built in to Occult Watcher rather than your usual default browser. I just clicked "Dismiss" and it doesn't seem to cause any other problems. Peter Nosworthy On Thursday, August 19, 2021, 07:39:54 AM GMT+10, V Sempronio <vastronomy@...> wrote: I clicked the "show online map with stations" button and the map rendered but I am shown a message at the top that says... "You are using a browser that is not supported by the google Maps JavaScript API...." I haven't seen this before and I haven't changed my default browser. I use the "Brave" browser, which is a derivative of Chrome, so why am I seeing this message now? Has the map API changed recently? Is there a way to configure OW to use a specific browser? Has anyone else experienced this? V
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New warning from v5.0.0.5
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I clicked the "show online map with stations" button and the map rendered but I am shown a message at the top that says... "You are using a browser that is not supported by the google Maps JavaScript API...." I haven't seen this before and I haven't changed my default browser. I use the "Brave" browser, which is a derivative of Chrome, so why am I seeing this message now? Has the map API changed recently? Is there a way to configure OW to use a specific browser? Has anyone else experienced this? V
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Hi, I entered the duration of this event using the mobile application. It was not possible enter the decimal point (using comma nor point). When you are entering the duration, the app erase the decimal point after write it. I tried to correct the mistake using the Desktop application OW (ver. 5.0.0.5) but the controls are disabled. Regards, Carlos
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Possible bug
I deleted a future event a couple of weeks ago and today I restored the deleted events. When the screen refreshed, I added the event to "My Events" and now OW shows an additional entry for the event in "My Events".
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Suggestion for a new feature
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I would like the ability to flag events as (forget about it), such as making the little icon to the left of each event something that would tell me that there is no reason to consider this event (distance, etc). Perhaps a new menu item on the right-click menu that says "Ignore". That way, we don't have to remember if we already checked out an event for consideration. Of course we would still be able to change our mind by adding the event to our "my events" list. This one would take a little work (GUI and data structure), but for me it would useful. If there already a way to do this, I haven't figured it out yet. VS
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if anyone saw my last thread (before I deleted it), ignore it, it was user error. I do have a question about best practices in OW. If I am going to observe from a location other than my currently set location, and the site is not in my list of stored sites, I first create a new site at the location where I wish to observe from. I then right click on an event and select "add to my events" and select the site from my list. This works fine. Without cancelling the event, how to do I set the site location to yet another location? I tried doing it from the map by clicking on the icon and selecting edit, but that doesn't give me what I want to do, which is to select another site from my stored list of sites. I don't want to cancel and add it again since that generates unwanted correspondences to others. I cancelling and re-adding my only option? Vince
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adding an add-in for Guide9
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Ted Blank provided me with a copy of Guide9 and I was told there was an add-in for it for OW. I looked in the "find addins" page but couldn't find it. guidance please. Vince
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Does OWC have a separate user group?
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or are you entertaining questions/comments/error reporting here? V
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Hi all, In light of Tony's last email I would like to open this very important discussion of defining the filters to be used for automatic tagging of events by OWC to be made available in OW. Because OWC has all events on a global scale and because OW does filtering based on a distance, the distance from a location or the geographical region will not be part of the tagging criteria/filter. I will be interested to learn what everyone is using for their own filtering in regards to magnitude, mag drop, duration, but here is my current idea. I see the filter to have three separate components we need to discuss and agree on. 1) Quality: The first component determines the quality of the event and may include stuff like max error bars, min diameter, min rank, min SNR etc. We need to agree on what is worth for high quality events and I think that previous experience from Steve Preston's selection algorithm as well as everyone elses experience from generating Personal Predictions or feeds, will help here. 2) Viability: The second component determines constraints related to min duration, mag drop and integration rate (exposure) to achieve the min SNR defined in the Quality constraint i.e. to obtain meaningful recording. We should be able to determine from past observations what those are and create a table that I can use for applying the filter based on max duration, mag drop and min exposure. 3) Accesibility: The third component will be different for different observers and will laregly depend on the telescope aperture and how dark is their sky. I imagine that there will be different tags for different levels of accesibility. I thought I will base this purely on telescope aperture, for example the tags can be Aperture8, Aperture10, Aperture12, Aperture14, Aperture16, Aperture20, Aperture24 where each number repeserents the aperture in inches and assumes a limiting sky magnutude of 5. Then everyone can pick the tag that applies to them, which is not necessaryly the tag for their aperture as it will also depend on the limiting magnitude for their sky condition. The idea however is that thi sis something easy to understand as a tag ApertureXY would mean that this event will be assesible with a telescpe with aperture of XY inches with limiting magnitude of 5. I may have a smaller telescope and darker sky and will then choose the tag that best applies for what I have assess to. So the first big question which deserves a good discussion is what Quality of events we want to be automatically tagged. Considering that there are 30 million events in OWC and noone will be interested in all of them, it is important to agree on what constitutes a good quality event for the majority of the users/observers that is worth observing regardless of other factors (such as potential moons, rings, etc scientific interest). Events with more specilised scientific interest will be tagged aditionally and separately as already done for LuckyStar and other campaigns. Those who want more than just the average recommended events and the active campaigns would be abel to do more specialized searches in the OWC database to satisfy their desires. Not sure exactly how this is going to work yet, but these types of events are outside of the Quality criteria I am trying to get defined here for the global OWC tagging of events. Also worth mentioning that these global events might be seen as an extension to and a replacement of the current IOTA Occultation events. The idea is that at some point Steve Preston will stop publishing his events and OWC would become the source of those events. IOTA Occultations may still list events but tagging will be done on OWC and predictions will come from OWC as well. So let me what you think about all this. Cheers, Hristo.
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Future of OW Personal Predictions and OWC
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Hi All, After further thoughts I decided to postpone the changes to Personal Predictions. I would like to first implement automatic tagging on OWC which could automatically publish all events that are usually published as personal predictions. If this is the case then the use of Personal Predictions for sharing predictions with others will become unnecessary as those prediction will be already available in OW, or at least this is my thinking at the moment. If there are still more events not tagged automatically by OWC which are published as Personal Predictions then they will form a good case for further review and consideration, but until then I will focus my efforts on different parts of OWC and OW Cheers, Hristo
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Synchronising (NEA) always present
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This status message is often present at the bottom of the main dialog. Is the software always spending that much time on this operation or is it a status message that isn't being cleared? I tried purging the DB, but it still remains. Vin
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Image Name
Sat 8:39am
Sat 8:39am