New version of N900 Orrery available
 

A new version of the N900 orrery has been uploaded into the Extras Testing repository. Two new pages have been added: Planet Elevations and Planet Phenomena. Also, the app generates a legible display when the window manager minimizes it, as explained here. If you use the orrery app, please give the new version a try, and if you like it please consider voting it out of jail.

It's not the best app for the N900 (by a long shot), but it may be the best documented.

Re: New version of N900 Orrery available
 

Is there any plan for porting this awsome app to Harmattan, and then Sailfish (port from Harmattan to Sailfish is admittedly very easy and quick according to Jolla and some users)?

I trully love this app. It is a wonderful addition to other astronomy apps like Stellarium, but this one provides a lot more useful and relevant information, and is much more convenient to use for real life observation in my opinion. I use it much more than I use Stellarium, and I really miss it on my N9. I'm going to miss it on Jolla as well if it is not ported.

Sorry for replying to the thread one year and a half after it was opened, but I thought it was useful to show that there are people that enjoy this app, even if there are no replies here.

Re: New version of N900 Orrery available
 

Thanks very much for the kind words about my little app! I'm still very interested in Linux phones, and I plan to port the code to Sailfish. It'll be a major rewrite, I think, because I did not do a good job of separating the UI elements from the computational parts of the code originally. I'll try to do a big cleanup while I do the porting. I've been waiting to see what Jolla actually produces before starting the rewrite, because frankly I was afraid they might fizzle out and produce nothing. I was also afraid they might go the TIzen route, and support only HTML5 apps. I will not rewrite orrery in HTML5. But if they produce anything remotely sensible, I will buy it (I've bought 5 N900s so far). I would have done the port to Sailfish already had Jolla released their Sailfish code for the N950 (I've got one of those too).

The thing that stopped the updates of orrery for the N900 is Solar Eclipses. I started writing that portion of the code, but to do a nice job of that is MUCH harder than for Lunar Eclipses. Because of the effects of the earth's atmosphere, it's basically impossible to say when a Lunar Eclipse starts or stops with a precision of, say, one second. The shadow of the earth is blurry at the edges, because of the atmosphere. Also, everyone who is on the side of the earth that can see the eclipsed moon sees basically the same thing. But the edge of the moon is very sharp (no lunar atmosphere) and the appearance of Solar Eclipses varies tremendously depending on where you are on the earth, so writing the Solar Eclipse part of the orrery is orders of magnitude harder. I need to calculate the path of totality, if any, and plot it on downloaded map tiles, etc., etc. so it's a big project.

Thanks again for your kind words. I'll preorder the first Jolla device as long as it isn't HTML5-only (and there's no evidence of that) or dramatically inferior to the N900 in some way.

Re: New version of N900 Orrery available
 

You're very welcome, you deserve to be thanked, not me. ;)

I can imagine how hard it can be to add a solar ecplise feature, especially because I can't imagine how hard it can be to code anything, actually. :D My field is Biology, not coding or astronomy, but I do enjoy using your application to try to discover/observe things in real life with my spotting scope. And sometimes I just play with Orrery just to "appreciate" ranges, like a child. :)

What I'd like may sound useless, but clickable planets in the Solar System part to show few details would be awsome in my opinion (revolution periods, mass, diameter, etc., all in regular units and Earth relatives, plus window of possible observation from user-set locations on Earth).

For objects of interest, a few additional details fetched from internet databases when internet connection is allowed would be nice too (year of discovery, discoverer, device used to observe it in first place, maybe some DSS pictures, etc.).

I'm also wondering whether it would be possible to have a schematic map of main current scientific missions/probes (New Horizons, Voyager...), but I imagine it would be extremely difficult to implement given the probably high number of missions ongoing, and difficulty to sort them from "main" to "not as important". :) However, as part of the dream, icons in the sketch (or rows in a - likely simpler - table) would be clickable to obtain an abstract of the purpose, ETA, date of launch, data aimed, and so on. This part would mostly act as a knowledge base for tracking missions and keeping them in mind, not observation of course, but that would be very interesting for curious people and enthusiasts, be they newbies or experienced.

And finally, for observers, a quick list of main objects of interest that can be observed by class of equipments could be useful. I'm thinking about a list of observable objects for spotting scopes (to sort by focal length and diameter of course) with for example Saturn, Jupiter and so on, then a list for entry telescopes... You get the idea: it would help people target what they are gonna try to observe, then use the relevant parts of Orrery to plan their observation and pinpoint the optimal window.

Maybe all these ideas are off-topic for your application, or too difficult to implement. I'd totally understand. These are just dreams and I already enjoy Orrery. I find it great and it provides information Stellarium will not provide, and especially not as easily as with a few finger taps like Orrery does. Plus Orrery provides list of predictions by category of events, to be ready when events occur, and not just to simulate them and note when they will happen without knowing they will occur before running the simulation randomly.

I think Jolla has confirmed several times they will not only support HTML5, I think Marc Dillon stated QT again at the GMIC. Some applications have already been ported with the SDK too and I don't think it was HTML5, but honestly I'm really far from having certainties about coding languages in any way. :D What I know is that I'm keeping an eye on Jolla and that I'll watch the event on Monday, which will most probably end by a pre-order from me too. :D I'm not really hoping a true N900 successor, but rather something closer to the N9 even if I would prefer an up-to-date N900, but I'm afraid of disappointment. Anyway, I'm almost sure I'll preorder if the device is decent enough, which it should be.

Thanks again for your reply and your work. I'm very excited to know you'll likely port the application to Sailfish. Considering the 30'000+ views on the Orrery wiki page (and considering probably more than 50% of Orrery users never visited the wiki), I guess a "few" other people will be happy too. :)

Re: New version of N900 Orrery available
 

Definitely!

But thanks also for reminder to thank Ken-Young and your ideas.

Re: New version of N900 Orrery available
 

I'd like the orrery to be significantly different than programs like Stellarium, because: 1) Stellarium is far more beautiful than anything I'm going to write in may spare time and 2) Why duplicate Stellarium? With the orrery, I'm trying to provide much of the information available from sources like the Astronomical Almanac (http://asa.usno.navy.mil/). I want to make it easy to see what the sky would look like anywhere on the earth at any time in the past or future (Well +- 3000 years or so), and to make it easy to plan ahead for unusual events, like the triple total solar eclipse on Jupiter that is coming up on October 12th this year.

So my emphasis is to try to make a tool that will answer questions like "When is the Perseid meteor shower, and will the moon wreck it this year?" or "Will I have moonlight when I go camping next August?" or "What's that bright thing that's been in the western sky after sunset the last few evenings, and how much longer will it be there?". All this stuff is available on the web, of course, but I'm hoping that my app will make things like that easier to find, or at least easier to find in a format customized to your current location. I also want to avoid having the app grab information from the internet, because people are most apt to look at the sky carefully when they are away from city lights, perhaps camping or hiking, and I want the app to have full functionality in the remotest of locations, where there may be no signal for your phone.

So after adding Solar Eclipses, I'm thinking about integrating the tool with the phone's calendar, so that it can mark your calendar when, for example, a lunar eclipse will be visible from your location, or when Mars is at its brightest, etc.

Re: New version of N900 Orrery available
 

Yeah yeah ! 1 1
for your attempts in making it go offline to the extent possible:)
btw what about this crazy idea??
Using the camera viewfinder at day time which shows the sky blue black using actual imagery ie clouds sun etc to overlay imformatin like stars planets etc
using the wiki ie evopedia database ofline for more info
clicking on planet shows distance from earth and sun
zooming out to milkyway then fliping to other galaxy to roam there intractively:)
why cant earth objects like mountians lakes sea river like geographical things be added in 3d view that can be rotated shows name how it was formed age importance etc:)
just some thoughts as i was never intrested in thease but got good intrest after orrey then strlum:)

Re: New version of N900 Orrery available
 

I totally agree with all your arguments, this is why the ideas I raised were things pertaining to "information Stellarium will not provide" in my opinion, although some of these ideas were perhaps a bit crazy and off-topic. :]

Clickable planets and satellites in your solar system sub-app would be extremely interesting to have detailed information.

I totally agree too with the fact that most (or all) the information must be available without internet connection. I've been using Orrery from a field mission at the Kerguelen Islands, and it was great having the information available without internet or even GSM connection, while observing this sky devoid of any city lights. It was just a suggestion for additional but unncessary content like DSS pictures. That would be interesting, but definitely not required for observation. Perhaps it's not significant enough to justify implementing this feature, I admit it!

The calendar idea is great, it will ensure events are not missed by users. Well, the auto-add-to-calendar feature is useful but could be done by the user himself (even if it would take longer), but the whole advantage of Orrery is that it monitors stuff. It shows predictions of upcoming phenomena, so that you see what will happen before trying to search if any particular event is going to happen soon. Best way to avoid missing things, and I like it. Keep up the great work!

Nokiabot, those suggestions seem... Hum... Enthusiastic? :p I doubt Orrery will ever provide 3D renders of lakes and stuff. :]

Re: New version of N900 Orrery available
 

Ken, Orrery is great I have loved since my neo1973, obviously a labor of love. I especially like the almanac for celestial navigation.
I have wondered if you a could create an input to let the math run backwards and enter object elevations over time with averaging in order to establish a steadily moving or stationary location and/or time. I am hoping to ferry a single engine plane across the north Atlantic as a working holiday (Canada ,Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, UK) maybe even next year and while GPS will be on board along with other nav instruments there is something historic and great about celestial navigation(nautical sextant with bubble horizon) even if I use my phone to cheat on calculations. If I have to do the paperwork by hand I will likely not be able to do celestial nav as I will have other jobs while airborne.
Also for geeky fun lunar distance tables and even even better input lunar distance from sextant to bootstrap exact time(and option to send this to the phones time setting).
Lastly if you choose to add the sextant nav input why not let that info be sent to a fake gpsd server and let us display it on a map with CEP.
I understand that this stack of requests takes the app away from stars and turns it into a mapping app(split?), this would be a novel even unique app that I feel would be appreciated by those of us who love practical celestial navigation but don't want or simply can't always to do the math in real time.
Lastly as I already have the genie lamp in hand, any thoughts on porting to Ubuntu or another desktop OS so we can see the best sky watching program on a big screen or projected onto a wall?

Re: New version of N900 Orrery available
 

The problem with this is that the N900 does not have a compass. It doesn't know which direction it is pointed, so it can't do an augmented reality type of sky display. While in principle one could do a calibration orientation of the phone, and then use the accelerometers to track how the position changes as a function of time, in practice that won't work because the accelerometers aren't very accurate. They are intended to be good enough to tell if the phone should be displaying in portrait or landscape mode. They are not nearly accurate enough to keep track of the phone's azimuthal orientation as it is slowly rotated.