Displaying images/sky survey images

[theskyhound]

The right-click menus are getting too long. They intimidate people. So if there were some sort of external lookup feature it would have to be part of the Object Information dialog, which already is the home for many such features, including images that you have attached, web links, notes, etc. I could do that. It also has the advantage that the Object Info is connected via all parts of the software. People have already asked for links to SIMBAD and NED there.

But that takes us a long way from a quick thumbnail.

A popup thumbnail is doabale. Cons are that it doesn't apply to everything. People image comets, minor planets, galaxies (there are well over a million in SkyTools), dark nebulae, etc. Where do we get the thumbnails and how do we select a suitable subset of objects?

[markusd112]

There are many questions to think about... I think the best way to go depends on the functionality that will be implemented and there could be some iterative way with little steps instead of a "big bang" with all features that we have talked about.

A good first step could be to enable ST4 to reach existing informations and images with "one simple click": for a connection to astrobin for example it would be great:

- when the user can push a button in ST4 object info dialogue and this opens the webbrowser with the astrobin search url filled with the name of the object, so all available images for the object are displayed in the webbrowser
- it would be great, if the user could then copy the url of one image out of the result list in the browser and paste it in some way into ST4 object info dialogue. ST4 parses the URL and offers some download of the image. I think this will be not very easy.
- maybe it is possible that ST4 uses the astrobin API to do searches and get access to the images: https://de.welcome.astrobin.com/applicat...-interface
- ST4 could download the image via the API. Or the images will be downloaded instantly when they have to be displayed in ST4, so no local cache/download is needed (performance?)
- every image attached to an object could be marked as "show as thumbnail", only one can marked if there more than one images attached: the mouse over in the list view uses this image to display

This are some first ideas...

CS

Markus

[theskyhound]

That's not all that difficult to do. There is already a way to save links. Its right there on the Links tab of the Object Info. I've never been sure why more people don't use it. I say this because when I accidentally break this feature, nobody seems to notice until I do. Maybe its just a matter of option overload. One of these days I am going to make a really good tutorial about using Attachments in SkyTools. It seems to be the last thing people learn to use, but its very powerful.

Using the API seems simple, but it might be tricky. I have had a lot of trouble with these in the past. Sometimes they won't even let an unknown software like SkyTools access it. Other times there are account issues, and in the long term, any changes they make will break the functionality, and I'll be scrambling to fix it. What it really comes down to in this case is what it actually returns. If it generates a result URL that can be opened in a browser that would be easy, but if it does something else...

Another big issue that few people think about is object designations. I have to provide something that the search will recognize. I am in the process of doing an upgrade for narrow band imaging, and in doing that I am adding the common names that are popular among narrow band imagers so that would help. I don't use Astrobin a lot, and if it is picky about what designation you are searching on, then it might turn into a lot of work to get SkyTools to be able to successfully find objects. For example, the proper terminology for Sharpless catalog objects is to write them as "Sh 2-xxx" but for some reason narrow band imagers have decided to drop the space. This is just one example of how getting good results could turn into more work than it first appears.

I will look into it further when I get the chance, to see how much work might be involved. I have a lot of projects on the table right now, first and foremost the update for narrow band imaging, which will provide emission line data for many objects that had not been available before.