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New UI to help user correct polar alignment.

Hy Murveit requested to merge murveit/kstars:paa-v2-ui into master

This updates the polar alignment UI and also adds a new component during refresh which tracks the star the user selects to help correct polar alignment. It will do its best to let the user know what the current polar alignment error is (given the adjustments the user has made to altitude and azimuth).

This screenshot shows the "refresh page" along with the originally estimated, and "after current adjustments" estimates of the polar alignment error. https://photos.app.goo.gl/ctPVpRuahodbCuds6 Note the checkbox labeled "Update PA Error" which enables this feature.

Speed/Responsiveness: Doing the calculations necessary to track the user selected star adds a second or so of delay after the "refresh capture" on a RPi4 with no binning when capturing ASI1600 images (30Mb). However, the total refresh time in that scenario is about 5s, mostly due to image transfer and buffering. With binning of 2x2 that reduces to 2.8s total (and only 0.4s due to star detection). 3x3 is 2.3s (0.3) and 4x4 is 2.1s (0.25). I got good results with all these binnings. I'd recommend users bin at minimum 2x2 on a RPi while polar-aligning, but haven't put in anything to automate that at this point.

Because some users might find this (small) extra delay undesirable, I enabled this feature with a checkbox that defaults off.

Details:

  • The main feature is displaying the originally measured polar-align error during correction. Also estimates the ongoing corrected polar alignment error, if the "Update PA Error" checkbox is checked.
  • Circles the star (on the alignview) used to correct polar alignment if the "Update PA Error" checkbox is checked.
  • Moved Legacy Polar Alignment to a new tab (should it be called drift alignment?)
  • Fixes a bug where the "PAA crosses meridian" dialog executed unnecessarily.
  • Added more information in the PAA UI about what the system is doing (e.g. solving, settling, calculating wcs)
  • Adds instructions on the various polar-align pages.
  • Some modifications to the polar-alignment error estimation math.

Possible future improvements outside the scope of this MR:

  • Auto-selection of the tracking star
  • A separate binning control for polar alignment (not sharing the align tab's control)

Testing has gone well.

Edited by Hy Murveit

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