Implemented:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=40834
http://wiki.maemo.org/Orrery

brainstorm: http://maemo.org/community/brainstor...low_your_star/

Idea:
I am looking for a program|widget|theme-background to follow the current nights sky relative to my location with a helping hand to figure out which constellation I am able to see atm.

Solution #1: Ciclope Astro
a program|widget based on the toolset of "Ciclope Astro - Web-based Planetarium" (GPL)
The current implementation uses Java to generate tiles. The web2.0 based AJAX interface should work just fine.
Implementation Overview
While the client-side consists of no more than a simple web browser running an AJAX web-site, the server side consists of two parts.
1. A JAVA application used to calculate the star constellations and create the images necessary for the planetarium application.
2. A web server hosting an application written in JSP to serve the planetarium web site as well as the created images and the server time to the client.
Ciclope Astro itself is a huge project to control an astronomical observatory (telescopes, cameras, domes, etc.)

Solution #2: offline min online max
an offline working program|widget using a basic tile set but able to catch a full featured database when online

Solution #3: Port Stellarium
Stellarium would work perfectly for this. It shows the night sky for a specified location and time, lets you pan around and look at the different parts of the sky, labels stars/planets/moons, gives you the information you need to orient a telescope, and many other useful functions for stargazing.
Stellarium uses Qt, and some work currently exists to port it from general OpenGL to OpenGL ES, which would allow it to run on the N900. The N900 port could also use the current location by default, rather than having the user configure a location.

Solution #4: Port Kstars
Extremely powerful desktop astronomy application developed in KDE/QT (?). Can it be ported easily? Some folks apparently had this running even in custom N8xx environments, but it was slow. On the N900, maybe it would be reasonable (?).

Solution #5: Port MEphemeris
Python GTK+ application designed for the N8xx series. Not sure how trivial it would be to port to Maemo 5/N900. At the very least, it would require re-compiling the PyEphem python library heavily used by this application. Developer does not own a N900 at this point.


Solution #6: Port MChronos Applet
Python GTK+ home applet designed for the N8xx series. Not sure how trivial it would be to port to Maemo 5/N900. At the very least, it would require re-compiling the PyEphem python library heavily used by this application. This is more of an astronomical 'clock' applet that a 'planetarium' one, but does have a view of the night sky. Developer does not own a N900 at this point.


please feel free to share your ideas!

I've posted a new solution which I think would solve this perfectly: port Stellarium to the N900. Details on Brainstorm.

that looks exactly what I was after, get it voting!

I think that it is a great idea to create/port astronomy apps/widgets for the N900! After all, it was my own interest that spawned 'MEphemeris' and 'MChronos' for the N8xx series, and ideally (somehow/someday) I would like to run them on the N900 as well

However, I am unclear on the criteria being used for this 'wish list' -- there all a number of 'astro' apps that already exist beyond those mentioned here -- are they candidates as well? i.e. XEphem, KStars, etc..

My own N8xx apps are not nearly as 'slick' as all of them. Do they lack functionality that is desired?

why stellarium is atm my favorite is because of the Qt UI, I tested the windows version real quick at work and was impressed, its just enough features so not overdoing it but nothing serious missing as well.

How easy it is to implement later on with GPS data and view setup is another issue, my primaries are map-databases and basic features.

Solution #2 provides just an idea of how it could be kept a small program, with a huge online database to activate if needed. while solution #1 is actually based on a GPL database, which probably needs to run online all the time.

please consider setting up a solution for the programs you know (feature rich or not, each idea one solution please), provide information on what is what, is it GTK or Qt and maybe a feature list! I will edit my solutions to get some more detail into them too.

what are "your" programs like?

Well, I am lousy at trying to describe other people's apps, especially in the 'technical' sense of the underlying development/infrastructure, but I have added 'KStars' and my own humble creations...

My impression is that you didn't own the N8xx series, so didn't get a chance to try them out yourself, and instead were fortunate to leap directly to the amazing N900?

Well, it makes me a bit nervous to be chirping too much about my apps/applets in the N900 context, since I have had no opportunity to do anything about them on that platform. Nevertheless, rather than starting totally 'from scratch', I wonder how easy it would be to make them run on the N900 (?).

I wrote one astro app (MEphemeris), and two applets (MChronos and MOrrery). All of them depend on the amazing PyEphem python libraries written by Brandon Rhodes. My own stuff is Python/GTK stuff. There are old threads for this stuff, mentioned on the brainstorm page that I just added to. I did not include MOrrery, since I don't think that is included in the brainstorm

yes
python/gtk sounds not to bad! have you tried to run them within the SDK? (sounds like you got no n900 yet)

It looks to me like it would be a good idea to have Kstars and Stellarium ported.
Kstars looks big and feature rich (more professional) and Stellarium looks easy to use and enough features for quickly identifying a constellation. Stellarium looks more like what I would use on the n900+ devices and Kstars looks like something I would use on a desktop machine. Having both available would meet someones new born interest with Stellarium and would extend to a more professional use with Kstars.

What do you guys think?

Nope, I have not yet attempted to install the newer SDK or to compile/run my apps on it...

is anyone working on it? if yes "how far have you got?" if no "is someone up for it?"