Hi,

Sorry if I'm missing some settnig. I'm running kstars 3.6.8 and I have no way to let "moon" restriction work with the scheduler. Tested with several objects, any moon separation seems to be completely ignored and the job is always planned. Location in kstars is fine.

Any idea?

m

ok I just found that if I fast forward kstars clock to 22.00h for example (rather than right now, 12.30h) leads to a more reasonable result. Is this normal?

definitely I can't figure out why is this object being scheduled:

since separation to the moon is obviously lower than 180g

Looking at the code,
invent.kde.org/education/kstars/-/blob/m...?ref_type=heads#L580
it seems that the moon separation constraint is ignored if the moon is below the horizon.
So, not sure, but perhaps what is happening is the object is being scheduled to run while it is up and above its altitude constraint,
and the moon is down (even though technically the separation is less than the constraint).
I guess once the moon rises, then the constraint will be followed.
Does this cause problems?

Hy

thanks for the reply. Ok I've been tinkering with kstars clock and I think you are right.

To be honest, it is a bit confusing. So, I'm supposed to forward the clock and play with it in order to check which plan is going to be effectively executed?

The schedule printed is an FYI, but in actually the schedule is recomputed constantly, so when it is really time to run your job, the moon separation should be honored and any jobs too close to the moon should not be run.

Clearly that should be improved.
Hy

yes I note that is recomputed constantly. Which makes sense, of course. Also makes sense, I think, to have a real view of the foreseen execution. Not a big deal, though. An improvement indeed would be well received

thanks!

Hi again.

Moon separation constraint is quite useful but very uncomfortable to use, from my point of view. Last night the scheduler stopped cause of a bad (partially) foresight.
Before starting the scheduler, I have to play back and forth with kstars' clock to make sure that when an object is finishing, the next one will continue. Otherwise I'm not sure about the queue that will effectively be executed.

It would be nice if it's improved in some way.

Thanks!

I did submit a change into the beta software 6 days ago that considers moon separation, even if the moon is below the horizon:
invent.kde.org/education/kstars/-/merge_requests/1121

This will be part of the upcoming release (next week, I believe).
I'm not aware of any other issues related to moon separation.

Please let me know if you think there are other problems.
Hy

Thanks a lot; that would be very useful.

There is a comment from the developer that draw my attention: "... we should keep in mind to consider distance and moon illumination in the future ..."

That's in fact why I'm using moon separation. Actually, I run a custom script that builds the sequence and adapting moon separation according the moon illumination. If ekos could do that, would be fantastic!

Regards