Also maemo can now look at the stars

by filed under Linux, Linux Embedded, N770 Pills.

Maemo-Stars released: a star atlas for Maemo

About Maemo Stars

Maemo stars is the port of “Stars” to the Maemo platform.

“Stars ” was written a few years ago and left unfinished (but with the core functionality fully useable) by the original author.

Original author site: “Stars”

The porting process was not straightforward since GTK and GLADE libraries have changed quite a lot in the past 3 years and much code had to be rewritten. The hildonization process took also some time to complete.

Maemo Stars now has a home in the Maemo Garage, a GForge-powered development site for software projects related to the Maemo developer platform. Visit Maemo Stars’s Project Page for downloads and details about Maemo Stars and its development. Add bug reports or feature requests to the Tracker.

Project page: maemo-stars on garage.maemo.org

Known bugs

Unfortunately this program still has a few minor bugs:

  • ngc31 catalog is not functioning
  • configuration options are not stored when exit the program (this was never implemented in the original application)
  • horizontal and vertical scrollbars are not coherent (and they are buggy when close the edges)

Download and installation

Maemo Stars is now available in the Maemo Garage Application Catalog. Add this catalog to your Application Manager to gain immediate access to Maemo Stars downloads and updates: 

    Web location: http://repository.maemo.org/contrib/
    Distribution: mistral
    Components: free

In order to install libglade (which is needed by Maemo Star) you must manually add also the following repository:

    Web location: http://repository.maemo.org/
    Distribution: mistral
    Components: free

22 Responses to “Also maemo can now look at the stars”

  • Henri Bergius

    Good work!

    Couple of quick points: It would be great to move this to Maemo Garage and add to the package repository there for easier updates.

    Also, this app would be a prime example of benefits of GeoClue. Using the DBUS service you could open the night sky automatically to user’s position:

    http://live.gnome.org/GeoClue

    GeoClue is already being used by the development version of Maemo Blog.

  • Alessandro Pasotti

    Yes, good idea (also the position from GPS would be great) but there are still al lot of bugs to squash first.

    I will set up a garage project ASAP (I’m currently too busy to find the time to do that though).

    Any help would be highly appreciated.

  • Henri Bergius

    Alessandro,

    The whole idea of GeoClue is that you don’t need to worry where the position comes from… it could be geoip, plazes, GPS, whatever. You just ask the service “where am I”.

    Great to hear the app is coming to Garage!

  • Alessandro Pasotti

    @Henry

    Yes, the app is on garage and sonner or later on extra repository too (I’ve go the access tokens, but I still have to understand how to sign packages etc.).

    I think the missing point for position (geoclue) is that maemo-stars cannot set the observer position, I think the applications (unfortunately) has no idea about time and position.

    I should ask the author if he has plans to support it.

  • Simon Clayton-Jones

    Alessandro

    installed maemo stars : very nice
    you can set the observer position (but the option to make it a new city does not work)
    also some catalogues seem to be missing in particular the galaxy ,clusters and fainter stars, how do I get hold of these?

    now I can use my 770 for something other than browsing!

    carpe noctem
    Simon

  • Alessandro Pasotti

    @Simon,

    yes you’re right, position can be set (but not retained after the session).

    Adding a city was not working also in the original application, and I’ve not tried to enable it in the port.

    The missing catalogs can be enabled in the configuration panel (be sure you’re using the latest maemo-star from garage).

    There is just one catalog (n31gc) that I was’nt able to compile and hence is not available.

    Note: the changes in the configuration are not stored anywhere (as in the original app) they are lost between session, this is something I would like to fix among other bugs.

  • Martin Vermeer

    Great software… I just noticed two bugs.

    1) the declination control moves the viewport, but the RA control the sky. I think moving the viewport is more logical. At least it should be consistent.

    2) When enabling the catalog of large galaxies, it is not possible to click on a galaxy to get info. This works for the other catalogs.

  • Alessandro Pasotti

    @Martin

    you’re right, this bug was already in the upstream app.

    I will try to fix it.

  • Anonymous

    Hi,

    Is the source, or a patch available; as required by the GPL? I’d be interested in how Glade-using apps are Hildonised.

    Thanks in advance.

  • 770 dude

    Glade problem
    I cannot install this software, it keeps saying the glade library is missing. I have the latest OS. When will this bug be fixed?

  • Anonymous

    it’s not a bug, if you’d just read this page before posting, you’d find the answer to your question.

  • 770 dude

    I should point out that I have also manually added the http://repository.maemo.org/ mistral free as described above.

    Also I have tried the new 0.5 version of stars. The same problem still exists where the application cannot be installed due to the missing glade library.

  • Tom T.

    First off, thanks for porting an astro application!

    Second – I’m having problems with the catalogs, and I wonder if someone could point me in the right direction. When I install, I’m not getting any catalogs that contain anything other than the SAO stars, Pulsars, and several galactic catalogs. Nothing on the NGC/IC, messier or the SAC databases. This leads to some interesting issues – EX. while I can enable globular star clusters, I don’t have a catalog that has any in them!

    I am running .5

    Help?

    Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated!

    Tom T.

  • Alessandro Pasotti

    n31gc catalog is not functioning ATM, I was not able to activate it.

    I should mention this in a “Known Bugs” list though.

  • Tom T.

    Thanks for the response!

    The only catalogs I see at the moment are

    Galcoorc
    eclcoord
    equcoor
    vla_cal
    vlba_cal
    borders
    const
    rc3_gal
    zwicky
    abell
    Yale
    M31gc
    psr_cata

    AFAICS, none of these are “general use” catalogs for DSO’s. Are there other catalogs available? Specifically, the NGC/IC/Messier and/or the SAC?

    If the goal is to make this useful for amateur astronomers, the inclusion of those would really help.

    Also – according to:
    http://nacho.princeton.edu/~walterfb/stars/

    The initial program additionally offered:

    1151 galactic open clusters(Lund catalog) [grey circles]
    160 galactic globular clusters(Monela et al) [blue crossed circles]
    Planetary Nebula [green circles with points]

    Any chance we’ll see those ported in the near future?

    This program looks very promising. Thank you!

  • Alessandro Pasotti

    @Tom

    I’m currently too busy to do any further deveolpment on maemo-stars, I hope I will find some more time in the (not so far) future.

    Additional catalogs would be a nice feature, but I believe that making maemo-stars remember its options and closing some bugs would be at the top of my priority list.

    I still hope somebody (hopefully more expert than me in astronomy) will join the project.

    I have already spent a lot of time porting this app to GTK2, converting interface to new GLADE XML format, hildonizing and rearranging the interfate to fit into the N770, compiling, testing, packaging, adding to extra repository, answering to emails, that if I will continue this way, my three sons will soon ask for charity near the traffic lights of my town.

    Seriously, I will not stop the development of maemo-stars, but without any help (or founding) it will be a really slow process.

    BTW do you have any links to those catalogs?

  • 770 dude

    I have found the solution to my missing libglade problem by pure happenstance.

    The information about the catalogs and repositories to add, given in the installation instructions at the top of this page, is not correct.

    I accidentally added the following catalog to my 770, and now Stars will install.

    web location: http://repository.maemo.org/contrib/
    distribution: mistral
    components: free

    Note that this is DIFFERENT from BOTH of the catalog and repository definitions given at the top of this page.

    You’ve made a very nice program, more should be able to easily enjoy it.

  • Alessandro Pasotti

    Thanks for signalling the mistake (but it is also possible that the distribution address changed meanwhile), I updated the instructions accordingly.