Hi All,

Been out for a while, back into it. I'm wondering where KStars stores the saved Region files from Artificial Horizon Manager in Windows(10)? While I have you, how about for Linux and Mac?


I spent a few hours toying with the polygon tool. It's a pain, no doubt, but useful nonetheless. Instead of building multiple Regions, indicating multiple polygons, I'm after a single polygon. I recently relocated- I have about 7hrs x 20deg of sky in the middle of the redwood forest, but luckily I can see the pole and Polaris. I just want to define the trees all around me. I'm after this file so I can edit it myself if possible. Here's what I've been doing to get around it in a very tedious fashion:

• Draw a 72-gon around the horizon; all 0°Alt,
  
• Finish with 359°59'59.9R"Az; without closing,
  
• Then 00° 00' 00"Az, 45°Alt; go around to make 360-gon with varying altitudes,
  ->Entering anything between this 00°Alt and 02°Alt will automatically become 00°Alt... so technically a 358-gon.
  
• End at 00°Az, 00°Alt to close the total polygon.

Things that would have made this experience easier, for future reference:

1. Insert a row in the Points section, in between previously-entered rows
2. Make a duplicate of a Region for smooth, safe editing/testing
3. Copy/paste Az/Alt rows and/or columns
4. Edit multiple cells in a column at the same time (a fella can dream)
5. Save as (for Region)
6. Open (for Region)
7. Draw a polygon. Invert selection.
-> It's much easier to draw an area as if it were an obstructing object, but then it is seen as such- to invert an obstructing polygonal area would have made this process the simplest, I think.

What I'm after at this point is the text of the Region file so that I can edit and make a template that draws a 360-gon at 00° 00' 00"Alt, then continues with another 360-gon at 01° 00' 00"Alt (as well as separate script that uses a 72-gon for when I don't want to deal with the huge 360-gon). I'll use this red band over the horizon to edit Altitude coordinates of the (00° 00' 00"Az, 01° 00' 00"Alt) pairs to draw my appropriate Region.


Am I missing something completely, here?
At any rate, I am simply after the text file. If I was apt to coding, I'd certainly offer up my time to write a script. This tool is very valuable to me, if I can get it right. Drawing out trees isn't any fun, but I'm sure there will be improvements to the tool as time progresses and more important features are streamlined. Amazingly, KStars didn't crash once for me while I was building this ridiculous polygon! That made me happy (thanks dev team). I will compile these experiences to send to KDE team in a feature request whenever is clever to do so.


I'm still trying to wrap my head around this Artificial Horizon function, so it's incredibly likely that I breezed over something fundamental without noticing. Just writing this post to gather my thoughts.

The horizon data is stored in kstars sqlite database. In Linux, that is ~/.local/share/kstars/userdb.sqlite
I'd also have preferred a simple text file (like, e.g., for the eyepieces), so it's easier to change manually.

What I did for my horizon was place a photo tripod at my telescopes place and take a 360×180 panorama, then read the polygon values, and enter them in the horizon config... also not the most straightforward way, I know