Stellarium 0.11.4

[alexwolf]

The Stellarium team announces the first release candidate of Stellarium version 0.11.4.

This release has over 30 closed bugs in the main application and in the plugins. Also this version has improvements of GUI and two new plugins. A huge thanks to all peoples from our community who helped us in finding bugs!

We are updated the configuration file and the Solar System file, so if you have an existing Stellarium installation, you need to reset the settings after you install the new version.

This is not a stable release and it's not intended for distribution and re-distribution to end users. The RC1 version is intended for testing only and should be installed only by people who don't mind looking for bugs and reporting them.

A package for Windows you can download from here:
for 32-bit: https://launchpad.net/stellarium/0.11/0.11.4/+download/stellarium-0.11.4RC1-win32.exe
for 64-bit: https://launchpad.net/stellarium/0.11/0.11.4/+download/stellarium-0.11.4RC1-win64.exe

Translators can check translations and fix mistakes on launchpad.net Rosetta - https://translations.launchpad.net/stellarium/0.11/+translations

[alexwolf]

The Stellarium team announces the second release candidate of Stellarium version 0.11.4.

A package for Windows you can download from here:
for 32-bit: https://launchpad.net/stellarium/0.11/0.11.4/+download/stellarium-0.11.4RC2-win32.exe
for 64-bit: https://launchpad.net/stellarium/0.11/0.11.4/+download/stellarium-0.11.4RC2-win64.exe

[alexwolf]

The Stellarium development team is proud to announce the release of version 0.11.4 of Stellarium.

This release brings some interesting new features:
- New plugin: Exoplanets.
- New plugin: Observability analysis.
- Improvements to Night Vision mode.
- Improvements for *BSD systems.
- New scripts.

There have also been a large number of bug fixes and some performance and GUI improvements. A huge thanks to all community bug reporters.

ChangeLog:
Added:
- New plugin: Exoplanets
- New plugin: Observability analysis
- Get geometric altitude and azimuth for script engine (LP: #1010617)
- Sky image loading with altitude/azimuth coordinates (LP: #1023548)
- New hotkey for star name labels (LP: #1032989)
- Option to activate/deactivate the Nebula Background Images button via GUI (LP: #925247)
- Return to user set location and landscape (LP: #981507)
- Display degrees and minutes for FOV of CCD (LP: #998761)
- Adding all possible satellites (LP: #1006495)
- Building a Windows x64 packages (LP: #1003041, #1027607)
- Apply atmosphere effect only on bodies with atmosphere (LP: #971875)

Fixed:
- Various Stellarium freezes and crashed (LP: #1005155, #1030913, #940638, #992267, #1033380, #951967, #1040054)
- Various plugins issues (LP: #751381, #892027, #1006134, #1040066, #1040085)
- Various issues for nebulae (LP: #1026021, #744517)
- Add/subtract one sidereal year jumps wrong amount (LP: #1006208)
- Various small issues, typos and mistakes (LP: #1022506, #1032469, #1019247, #985204)
- Various issues in Scripting Engine (LP: #1023934, #1017148, #1017154, #730180)

Changed:
- New tab in the configuration window to control the selected object information.
- Improvement Night Vision mode
- Extend list of default scripts

[TheDecepticon]

That's great! Can I install over the previous, or should I uninstall and install the new one fresh?

[bojan]

I can't access those webpages.. (maybe my current location has something to with this?)

[Barrykgerdes]

Same here Bojan.
Something odd about the way it is interpreted. I just go to

https://launchpad.net/stellarium/0.11/0.11.4

find the item and download it from there

Barry

[mithrandir]

I've switched from a 32 bit version to the 0.11.4 64 bit one and it hasn't crashed or hung yet, which is an improvement.

It would be nice if you could point it at the extra star catalogs rather than having to move them to the new directory.

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi Andrew
Don't the extra stars in the user section load with the 64bit version. I am not very familiar with the 64 bit version because I can't build it yet and only have the pre-built version. There is no 64 bit Qt 4.8.2 for windows so you need to build it from source and I have not found a suitable source. 64 bit MinGW is OK. I have that.

In any case the only difference I have noted with the 64 bit version is that it loads into program files rather than program files(86). No difference in speed or display.

Barry

[mithrandir]

Barry, yes the 32 bit version installs stars in %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Stellarium\star s\default and the 64 bit one in %ProgramFiles%\Stellarium\stars\def ault and they do not check for the existence of the other directory.

Assuming a Win7 file layout, if there was a %LOCALAPPDATA%\stellarium\stars\def ault it could work for both 32 and 64 bit.

The 64 bit version should better cope with the big catalogs.

[Screwdriverone]

Try this link, it opens the web page with all the new versions on the right hand side buttons.

https://launchpad.net/stellarium/0.11/

Cheers

Chris

[Barrykgerdes]

All the stars load for me in both versions. Star catalogues 4-8 should be in \users\yourname\appdata\roaming\ste llarium\stars\default.

If they don't load the option to load the extra catalogues should still be in the configure menu.

By the way I checked the speeds. On my laptop the 64 bit version is twice as fast as the 32 bit version (win-7 home premium). on the PC the speeds are the same (win-7 ultimate).

Barry

PS before I fixed up permissions Stellarium install would not write to the user area.

[cometcatcher]

I've been running Stellarium 0.11.4 64 bit version now on the laptop running 64 bit Win7 for the last couple of weeks. Ran great at first then suddenly started crashing on startup every time, bringing up a program close box. Uninstalled / reinstalled same thing happens. Uninstalled the 64 bit version and installed the 32 bit version. Now it works. What gives?

[Barrykgerdes]

The 64 bit version is compiled with a home brewed version of Qt 64 bit as there is no 64bit version of Qt 4.8.2 pre built at the moment so behavior may be erratic. The 64 bit MinGw is also very new and may have deficiencies.

Barry

[fauxpas]

Was looking at NGC 2244 in stellarium when a comet/falling star shot past... Is this just a random thing that happens for effect or was it a real thing?

[cometcatcher]

Press F4 or mouse to the left of the screen to bring up the configuration window. Under the sky tab down the bottom the hourly rate of shooting stars can be set manually.

[fauxpas]

Ahhh, IC... Cheers...

Lovin' this app... Every beginner should be given this app before anything else...

[fauxpas]

One tiny annoyance I found was when in fullscreen and mousing over the bottom menu bar to bring it up, it wouldn't come up. Then I would click in that area to entice it up but the windows 7 taskbar would appear instead. I would have to mouse over the middle of the screen on stellarium and click to make the taskbar disappear then the stellarium lower menu bar would work.

Doesn't do it all the time but if I'm viewing for more that 5-10min at a time I'll get it at least once... No big deal as the app never crashes...

I'm running the 64bit version.

[Barrykgerdes]

The shooting stars are a bit gimmicky. However there is some attempt to make them realistic.

They are designed to have the greatest rate at the time of the common meteor showers and you will also note that they come from a specific point in space corresponding to the common source of the heavy meteor showers.

Thus at certain times the frequency of the meteors will change to suit this phenomena.

For instance. If you go back to August the 12th and look in the Perseids area in the early morning the frequency of meteors should increase dramatically.

Barry