Hi,
I have to make heavy use of the Altitude vs. Time Tool.

The reason is that I take my pictures from a balcony.
The house and my neighbours' houses are obstructions to the north. Whereas some tall trees are obstructions to the south.

It would be easy for me to measure the compass points of the obstructions and to find out (by trial and error) the top of the obstructions.
It would be helpful if the user could read the compass point in the AvsT Tool.
And why not improve the tool by creating an option that gives the user the chance to add the surrounding obstructions to the tool so that the AvsT Tool could show them as rectangles rising from the ground.

What do you think?

This view, taken from stellarium (stellarium.org/), could also be useful.
The obstacles around the circle and the path of the object marked on the sphere.
If you hover with the mouse pointer over the path of the object time and altitude could be displayed.
And the user should be able to set the obstacles;
for example by entering two compass points for the width
and by entering the altitude of the top of the obstacle in degrees
in a table list
for as many obstacles as the user wishes to add.
Or some kind of handdrawing?

You can create a custom horizon. Start with that.

lhoujin,
thank you for pointing me to the Artificial Horizon Manager. This is exactly the kind of table list I had in mind.
But I used it and recognized that the created obstacle does not show up in the AvsT tool.
The obstacles are only visible on the skymap. I tried to plan a session with the skymap. But it is not intuitive. I can go forward in time, but I cannot slew the mount to this position of the object in the future. I would like to do this in order to have a look if the scope is pointing to the wall, roof, tree or free part of the sky. Maybe this could be changed?

Both A vs T and more importantly the scheduler need to become aware of the artificial horizon.

This would be a huge improvement for all who image from complex landscapes, either urban or rural.

If you wish to advance time in KStars and slew to the points as though the skyview is current, you can. You will need to open Configure KStars under Settings. Then under INDI, choose KStars Updates All Devices with Time and Location set. If the change doesn't apply immediately, simply restart the INDI server. If you have a GPS device, KStars will ask if you wish to switch to it. For your tests, say no. But otherwise try to remember to switch back to GPS or System Time. Otherwise you will need to set it manually in KStars Set time and Set Geography windows.

lhoujin,
ok the skyview could be useful for planning a session. But one important part of the puzzle is missing - or not?
On the skyview I can show the Celestial equator and the Celestial meridian. I can find a target and the bulls eye marks the target. I can show the artifical horizon. But, the missing part is the path of my target on the sphere. This would be really useful information (together with time and altitude for any given point on the path)!

I do not believe there is a way to plot the path across the sky But you should be able to get a rough idea based on the declination of the object using the Equatorial Grid-lines as a reference. The arcs of declination that fall within your observable area of sky will be the criteria on whether or not the object is visible. Once you know what range of declination you can observe is, you can exclude objects with coordinates that fall outside it. Then all you need to do is determine the best season to observe those targets.

You are right, that's a viable soltution for the time being. Now I have to spend some time to setup my artificial horizon.
On the other hand, if the Celestial equator can be plotted it must be possible to plot another circle at the angle of declination above or under the celestial equator which describes the target's altitude.

I'am playing with the artificial horizon manager.

This does not look right. The obstacles - they appear to be defying gravity.



On the first image the right most of the three is in the sky.
On the second image it is the left most.

I moved the view to the left.

Greetings, there is another thread on this somewhere that I read some time back. What you are seeing has to do with the view you are seeing it in. What is happening is the two points on the horizon that define the bottom edge of the obstruction are connected with a line instead of following the curve of the sphere when zoomed out. Even though it shows a picture of "floating above" the horizon, the obstruction is known to the system correctly. You can see this by zooming in. As you zoom in further, and the view becomes flatter, the obstruction will line up with the horizon. On your last picture, the left most obstruction is even more fun, because one point is in the front of the sphere, and the second one that defines it appears to be on the back side of the sphere.

Yes, it looks funny.

This is the ortographic projection which resembles a marble.
And - being a marble the left most obstruction should become invisible.
Instead it was flipping over to a different part of the night sky. On the second picture it covers Pegasus.

I will not abandon all hope that this will be improved