I don't believe the current "Observation Planner" tool is suited for the average astrophotographer. Therefore, I wanted to start on a new tool that would be very useful for decision making without going through a multi-step wizard. One Window where you can change all the knobs and sliders and then get immediate updates. I came up with this rather poor mockup, but hopefully it represents the overall idea:
So here we would have the following features:
1. Lists: You can have lists (some are default). Lists can be Favorite (default) and whenever you have a favorite object, you just click it to add to the favorites list. You can create custom lists, and even share them with others and export them. You can browse users lists and import them to KStars.
2. Equipment profile, you can either create one or just "Import from INDI' and it would import whatever you have currently running. This is required to calculate the FOV of your setup which is important.
3. Filters: By default, the table would contain literally everything, though most likely, we'll just show the top most interesting objects this evening if all filters are clear.
3.1. Search: This is a simple search, if an object is found, the list is filtered out. If you select a list, it would clear the table and reload all the objects in the list.
3.2. Type: Select from object type: Galaxies, Solar System, Planetary Nebula, Open Clusters... etc. I'm thinking of also adding "Narrowband Nebulae" as a separate type since this is of interest to astrophotographers.
3.3. Direction: which direction you want to filter your objects on? Maybe North sky is obstructed and you just want to limit the list to eastern view.
3.4. Magnitude: limit by magnitude, for object that have magnitude information. So are you increase the slider, fainter objects would be removed. This would be a 0 to 100 relative slider. 0 has no effect, whereas 100 only shows the brightest magnitude objects in the list.
3.5. Altitude: 0 to 90 scale. I haven't decided yet on how to deal with this, perhaps it is the minimum altitude of an object this evening? not sure if there is a better metric.
3.6. FOV: This is related to your equipment, so for objects with KNOWN FOVs, what's the % of overlap between the two? If you set it to 40%, then an object must
at least occupies 40% of your sensor and so forth.
Next comes the list of object with the common information. I think we should include Alt vs Time and image for each object in the list. Furthermore, we have actions for each object:
1. GOTO & Plate Solve
2. Add To Favorite
3. Add to List (then you select which list)
4. Add to Scheduler
So there it is, this is just brainstorming at this stage. We really to keep this as simple as possible, all in one window. Ideas welcome.