![]() | Questions and Answers |
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This document may have been updated since your installation. You can find the latest version at http://docs.kde.org/current/kdeedu/.
9.1. | What is the KStars Icon? |
The KStars Icon is a sextant, a handheld telescope which was used by navigators on sailing ships back when the stars were important for navigation. By carefully reckoning the positions of the stars, the navigator could get an accurate estimate of the ship's current longitude and latitude. | |
9.2. | What do the different symbols for deep-sky objects mean? |
The symbol indicates the object type:
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9.3. | What do the different colors of Deep-sky objects mean? |
Generally, the different colors indicate to which catalog the object belongs (Messier, NGC or IC). However, some objects have a different color which indicates that there are extra images available in the popup menu (the default “extras” color is red). | |
9.4. | Why are there so many more U.S. cities than in other countries? Is it a conspiracy? |
It may be a conspiracy, but KStars is not involved! We were unable to find a single longitude/latitude database that covers the globe equitably. We are currently working on adding many more non-U.S. cities to the database. We have already received city lists from users in Norway, Italy and Korea. If you can contribute to this effort, please let us know. | |
9.5. | Why can't I display the ground when using Equatorial Coordinates |
The short answer is, this is a temporary limitation. There is a problem when constructing the filled polygon that represents the ground when in Equatorial mode. However, it doesn't make too much sense to draw the ground in equatorial coordinates, which is why this fix has been given a low priority. | |
9.6. | Why do some objects disappear when I am scrolling the display? |
When the display is in motion, KStars must recompute the screen coordinates of every object in its database, which involves some pretty heavy trigonometry. When scrolling the display (either with the arrow keys or by dragging with the mouse), the display may become slow and jerky, because the computer is having trouble keeping up. By excluding many of the objects, the computational load is greatly reduced, which allows for smoother scrolling. You can turn off this feature in the Configure KStars window, and you can also configure which objects get hidden. | |
9.7. | I don't understand all the terms used in KStars. Where can I learn more about the astronomy behind the program? |
The KStars Handbook includes the AstroInfo Project; a series of short, hyperlinked articles about astronomical topics that can be explored and illustrated with KStars. AstroInfo is a community effort, like GNUpedia or Everything2. If you'd like to contribute to AstroInfo, please join our mailing list: <kstars-info@lists.sourceforge.net>. | |
9.8. | How accurate/precise is KStars? |
KStars is pretty accurate, but it is not (yet) as precise as it can possibly be. The problem with high-precision calculations is that you start having to deal with a large number of complicating factors. If you aren't a professional astronomer, you'll probably never have a problem with its accuracy or precision. Here is a list of some of the complicating factors which limit the program's precision:
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9.9. | Why do I have to download an improved NGC/IC catalog and Messier object images? Why not just include them as part of the KStars distribution? |
The author of the downloadable NGC/IC catalog has released it with the restriction that it may not be used commercially. For most KStars users, this is not a problem. However, it is technically against the KStars license (the GPL) to restrict usage in this way. We removed the Messier object images from the standard distribution for two reasons: to simply reduce the size of KStars, and also because of similar licensing concerns with a couple of the images. The inline images are significantly compressed to a very low quality from their original form, so I doubt there is a real copyright concern, but I did obtain explicit permission from the images' authors to use the few images for which there was any question about it (see README.images). Still, just to be absolutely safe, I removed them from the standard distribution, and marked the download archive as being "free for non-commercial use". | |
9.10. | I am really enjoying the beautiful images I have downloaded through KStars! I would like to share them with the world; can I publish a calendar featuring these images (or are there any usage restrictions on the images)? |
It depends on the image, but many of the images restrict against commercial usage. The Image Viewer's statusbar will usually contain information about the image's copyright holder, and what usage restrictions apply. As a rule of thumb: anything published by NASA is in the public domain (including all HST images). For everything else, you can pretty safely assume that the images may not be used commercially without permission. When in doubt, contact the image's copyright holder directly. | |
9.11. | Can I help contribute to future versions of KStars? |
Yes, definitely! Introduce yourself on our mailing list: <kstars-devel@kde.org>. If you want to help with the coding, download the latest CVS version of the code and dive right in. There are several README files in the distribution that explain some of the code's subsystems. If you need ideas of what to work on, see the TODO file. You can submit patches to kstars-devel, and feel free to post any questions you have about the code there as well. If you aren't into coding, we can still use your help with i18n, docs, AstroInfo articles, URL links, bug reports, and feature requests. |
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