The Stellarium development team after 6 months of development is proud to announce the release of version 0.14.0 of Stellarium.
Version 0.14.0 brings a big leap forward in astronomical accuracy for historical applications:
- Precession now follows the IAU2006 model in the long-time version from Vondrák et al. 2011.
- Nutation is applied (IAU2000B solution). Given that nobody has observed it without telescope and the model does not give limits of applicability, we limit its application to 1500..2500
- Application of DeltaT has been simplified and made a bit more intuitive.
We now dare to add another coordinate system: Ecliptic coordinates of date. We can therefore now show that planetary positions given by the commonly used solution VSOP87 is applicable to -4000..+8000 only, and its use outside this range will give somewhat artificial results. There is more to follow in future versions.
The other big addition is a greatly improved collection of DSO data with lots of possibilities in a new GUI tab to select for object type and/or catalog. In total, 15 catalogs are now built-in!
Also the Meteor Shower, Satellites, Telescope Control and 3D Sceneries plugins have been improved.
Landscapes can have switchable labels, so you can e.g. indicate mountain peaks.
In total 83 bugs and wishlist items were fixed or at least decided.
A platform-specific change for Windows: OpenGL binding is now dynamic. That means, there are no more separate OpenGL/ANGLE/MESA downloads, but after installation you will have separate commands in the start menu which force ANGLE or MESA modes.
A huge thanks to our community whose contributions help to make Stellarium better!
Full list of changes:
- Added accurate calculations of the ecliptic obliquity. Finally we have good precession! (LP: #512086, #1126981, #1240070, #1282558, #1444323)
- Added calculations of the nutation. Now we optionally have IAU-2000B nutation. (Applied between 1500..2500 only.)
- Added new DSO catalog and related to him features (LP: #1453731, #1432243, #1285175, #1237165, #1189983, #1153804, #1127633, #1106765, #1106761, #957083)
- Added Iridium flares to Satellites plugin (LP: #1106782)
- Added tool for prediction of Iridium flares to Satellites plugin
- Added AstroCalc - a tool for calculating planetary phenomena (LP: #1181702)
- Added list of interesting double stars in Search Tool
- Added list of interesting variable stars in Search Tool
- Added cross-identification data for HIP stars (SAO and HD numbers)
- Added sinusoidal projection
- Added draw DSO symbols with different colors
- Added labels to the landscapes (gazetteer support)
- Added a new behaviour for drawing of orbit for selected planet - drawing of the orbits of 'hierarchical group' (parent and all their childrens) of the selected celestial body (disabled by default) (LP: #1071457).
- Added an option to lower the horizon, e.g. for a widescreen cylindrical view with mostly sky and ground on lower screen border (LP: #1299063).
- Added various timeshift-by-year commands (LP: #1478670)
- Added Moon's phases info
- Added support of SOCKS5 proxies (LP: #1499974)
- Rewriting the Meteor module and the Meteor Showers plugin (LP: #1471143)
- Updated skycultures (LP: #1497818)
- Updated Hungarian and Brazilian Portuguese translations of landscapes and skycultures
- Updated data for Solar System Observer
- Updated color scheme for constellations
- Updated documentation
- Updated QZip stuff
- Updated TUI plugin
- Updated data for Satellites plugin
- Updated Clang support
- Updated Pluto and Charon textures
- Updated GCVS catalog
- Updated ssystem.ini (LP: #1240791)
- Using a better formula for CCD FOV calculation in Oculars plugin (LP: #1440330)
- Updated on-screen control panel in Oculars plugin (LP: #1467286)
- Updated list of detection operating systems (LP: #1504910)
- Fixed shortkeys conflict (New shortkeys for Scenery 3D plugin - LP: #1449767)
- Fixed aliasing issue with GCC in star data unpacking
- Fixed documentation for core.wait() function (LP: #1450870)
- Fixed perspective projection issue (LP: #724868)
- Fixed crash on activation of AngleMeasure in debug mode (LP: #1455839)
- Fixed crash in Sinusoidal Projection (LP: #1472555)
- Fixed issue for update bottom bar position when we toggle the GUI (LP: #1409023)
- Fixed weird view of the Moon in Oculars plugin when Moon's scaling is enabled
- Fixed non-realistic mode drawing of artificial satellites
- Fixed availability plugins for the scripting engine (LP: #1468986)
- Fixed potention memory bug in Meteor class
- Fixed wrong spectral types for some stars (LP: #1429530)
- Fixed style of progress bar (LP: #1419895)
- Fixed tooltip colors in night mode (LP: #1300801)
- Fixed visibility of selected object info in night mode (LP: #1487096)
- Fixed behaviour of waitFor function (scripting engine) (LP: #1051858)
- Fixed resize event handler on Windows (LP: #1490265)
- Fixed regression bug of key movements
- Fixed magnitude of the Sun during solar eclipse (LP: #1485245)
- Fixed obvious omission in Observability plugin after having separated JD/JDE (LP: #1499161)
- Fixed night mode on retina display (LP: #1458109)
- Fixed unusual meteor shower display (LP: #1506126)
- Enable autosaving the state by default for Compass Marks plugin (LP: #1410987)
- Added escape counter to allow exiting loop in solving Kepler's equation (LP: #1465112)
- Added limitation magnitude for solar system objects (LP: #1409543)
- Added extinctive reddening on the horizon for planets, esp. visible for Sun/Moon/bright planets (LP: #1448621)
- Added tooltip for 'Select single constellation' option (LP: #1498022)
- Avoid entering locations with leading whitespace (LP: #1083731)
- Avoid rendering of sunlight and moonlight when show of Solar System objects is disabled (LP: #1499699)
- Change visibleSkyArea limitation to allow landscapes with "holes" in the ground. (LP: #1469407)
- Improved Delta T feature (LP: #1380242)
- Improved the ad-hoc visibility formula for LDN and LBN
- Improved the sight opportunities when artificial satellites are passes (LP: #907318)
- Changed behaviour of coloring of orbits of artificial satellites: we use gray color for parts of orbits, where satellite will be invisible (LP: #914751)
- Improved coloring and rendering artificial satellites (include their labels) in the Earth shadow for both modes (LP: #1436954)
- Improved for landscape and lightscape brightness with/without atmosphere. Now even considers landscape opacity for no-atmosphere conditions.
- Reduce Milky Way brightness in moonlight
- Enhancement of features in Telescope Control plugin (LP: #1469450)
- Removed all references to QDeclarative
- Removed meaningless extincted magnitude data in infostring if objects are below horizon
- Restore drawing corona of the Sun during total solar eclipse (LP: #1435065)
You can download new version from those places:
http://stellarium.org or
https://launchpad.net/stellarium/0.14/0.14.0
