Sander,
I've got all my completed images loaded into Observatory for cataloging, and have noticed some of the tagging looks erroneous. For instance look at this M42. There are tags for "oc, g, en" What do they represent? Also, I'm wondering if there's any way for proper(?) names to auto populate? Like Great Nebula in Orion, and Running Man Nebula?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gr3fethg8fqo81w/m42.jpg (https://www.dropbox.com/s/gr3fethg8fqo81w/m42.jpg)
Also, I've noticed that there is some basic stretching applied to all images by default. Is there a way to make it so it's a flag you can check on one of the image tabs? Or a preference that is set? It's making my final images stitched, and they shouldn't be.
One other thing, I couldn't figure out how to make a smart album based on tags from certain catalogs. Like an album for Messier objects, or NGC objects.
Sorry, one more thing. How do you get a planet to show up in the Planets smart album? I've have an image of Uranus that I've tagged with it's name and "planet" and it doesn't show up there.
Observatory uses abbreviations for many tags. "oc" for open cluster, "g" for galaxy, "en" for emission nebula, etc. Please see the description/table in
https://codeobsession.com/observatory/doc/#sidebar-library (https://codeobsession.com/observatory/doc/#sidebar-library)
It uses many standard abbreviations, but also many non-standard ones. For example "pl" for planet. So, the "Planets" smart album displays images with the "pl" tag, not with the "planet" tag. Observatory's tag field originally was very small, but has been increased in size lately, and maybe we should change "pl" into "planet" by now.
You can use the histogram action menu to quickly adjust the stretching.
To make a smart album for, say, NGC objects, you could create one that just matches the "ngc" tag, and add that tag manually. You can find the images with NGC objects using the quick filter in the browser. Select "Tag" in that search box's menu and enter "ngc". It will list the images with "ngc" in their tag. It's not ideal. There is already an action item for automatically adding a tag for the catalog source (e.g. "messier"), so at one point this will be automatic.
Adding commonly used names for objects as tag I hesitate to do. Many objects have multiple of these names, in different variations, they tend to be very long, and Observatory is used in many countries for which these names have no meaning.
If you match an image of a planet that contains a timestamp, Observatory will also automatically attempt to tag it. Right now it's more of a bonus feature, not fully fleshed out, and oftentimes you will not be able to because of the short exposure duration, but for Uranus/Neptune (and Pluto) it may work. I have bigger plans for that (more than one dwarf planet, minor planets, etc), but no ETA whatsoever.
Hello,
it seems that Constellations get not matched according to the tags used in the smart folders. I took a photo of Ursa Major and the tags more than one time list uma like in uma, eps uma, but not the required keyword "constellation". However the WCS info got updated to constellation = UMa.
So how do constellation get matched?
Another nice feature (which is maybe already implemented, but I did not find it yet) would be the ability to search and locate for objects in images, as well as having an hovering info window when mouse pointer is hovering over an object.
Cheers
Rogue
The Constellation smart album was intended for images that contain complete (not partial) constellations, but currently Observatory never adds that "constellation" tag, nor does it add tags for the constellations themselves. It's a bug, and I have added this and your feature request to the list.
To quickly access more information about objects in your matched images, right now you'll have to choose Image ▸ Show Sky Chart, but that requires SkySafari 6.1 or later.