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VStar Software Development

Citizen Sky

Welcome to the VStar Software Development Team! 

VStar is a multi-platform, easy-to-use variable star data visualization and analysis tool. Data for a star can be read from a file or AAVSO database and plotted on a light curve along with mean data and error bars. Phase plots can be created and basic period search functions can be performed.

I'm David Benn (pictured on right at CitizenSky in August 2009), the lead developer of VStar in collaboration with the fine folks at AAVSO. I wrote a blog entry that provides background context and some details about VStar.

Michael Umbricht (pictured at left) has played a key role in the early testing of VStar. He wrote this Forum post soon after the CitizenSky workshop.

VStar is still very much a work in progress but is being implemented in phases, as described in my blog post above.

Contributions by developers, testers, technical writers, user interface designers, and artists (e.g. About Box images) are encouraged. One of the most underestimated aspects of software projects tends to be effort required in testing, so please feel free to volunteer to test VStar. The more platforms we test on, the better: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris.
 

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Another release imminent

By david_benn on September 2, 2010 - 3:51am
Teams:

I found some bugs relating to AAVSO file format input handling the night before I left for the 2nd Citizen Sky workshop. I fixed these bugs and a couple of other things while I was waiting at Sydney airport. I've asked Doc to deploy a new release on Thursday before the workshop starts.

Regards,

David

VStar 2.4 Beta Launches!

By rkinne on August 30, 2010 - 4:54pm
Teams:

Just in time for the upcoming Citizen Sky Workshop in California, VStar V2.4 Beta today has been released and is ready for download.

Moving forward, VStar V2.4 implements a polynomial fit and frequency range & resolution can now be specified for DC DFT.

Full details can be found in this release's ChangeLog.

Full source code for VStar, bug tracking, and discussion can be found at VStar's SourceForge site. I'd strongly encourage everyone interested to check it out! While VStar can perhaps be said to be driven by David, in order to be a healthy project, it must continue to be a team effort.

----
Doc Kinne, [KQR]

New VStar release and the star groups feature

By david_benn on August 26, 2010 - 9:58am
Teams:

Hi all

As promised recently, the latest VStar release allows you to add groups of stars of your own choosing. For example, you could add groups by type (e.g. cepheids, cataclysmics, ...) or say, Southern Gems. The Citizen Sky 10-star group is the default one and can't be deleted. If you wanted to create a Southern Gems group, you would go to the Star Groups tab of the Preferences dialog, click the "Add Group & Stars" button, enter the name of the group (e.g. Southern Gems) and a comma separated list of stars:

X Sgr, W Sgr, eta Aql, kappa Pav, zet Phe, beta Dor, V Pup, alpha Ori, R Dor, l Car, R Car

(or you can use alf Ori instead). After clicking the OK button, VStar will ask you to enter your Citizen Sky login details if you have not already loaded a dataset from the AAVSO International Database during the current VStar session. Then VStar will check each star in the list, retrieve its unique ID, and cache the details.Read more

A Licensing Discussion...

By rkinne on August 24, 2010 - 1:03pm
Teams:

A few days ago a small licensing discussion was started between David, myself, Aaron, etc., partially brought on by the fact that V2.3 Beta has started being able to support potential 3rd party plug-ins, which is very exciting!

I was the push to get VStar licensed under AGPL3.0, and it is the largest contribution I've made to the project to date. I'm proud of it. Below you see the gist of the email discussion between David and I. Both of us strongly believed that this should be brought to the VStar Development Team for their discussion and input. Because of the community we are trying to create here, this is all our program and we all have a stake in it. Everyone should, and needs to be, heard!

We very much encourage discussion and input on this matter! Yea, its not photometry, but as CitizenSky has proven to us, astronomy is not just photometry and observation. It's papers, and analysis, and now data mining and software. It's all so critical.

================Read more

VStar 2.3 Beta Launches!

By rkinne on August 24, 2010 - 12:03pm
Teams:

The newest version of what is frankly one of the most exciting open source variable star project going today has been released and is ready for download.

Moving forward VStar 2.3 offers the first implementation of a plug-in architecture! Do you have an idea of how VStar could be extended in a special way? Now you can do that! A VStar plugin development PDF document is ready for your review giving details on this process.

Read more

Another VStar plug-in type and a better period analysis example

By david_benn on August 23, 2010 - 11:11am
Teams:

Hi all

I've attached an updated version of the VStar plugin development PDF document.

There is now a distinction between "observation tool" and "general tool" plugins, as per the document.

A more complete period analysis plugin example has also been added. This uses a "component factory" class that makes creating plots and data tables for period analysis easy.

Feel free to ask questions.

The next VStar release is planned for Tuesday this week. This will include the plug-ins capability.

Regards,

David

VStar Help documentation anyone?

By david_benn on August 19, 2010 - 10:54am
Teams:

Hi Team

While writing the plug-in development document, I started thinking again about the ongoing need to write VStar Help documentation...

The Help Contents item in VStar's Help menu is the minimalist approach I've taken so far. I would be very happy for someone to take (and if you like, rework) the existing material and create a PDF document (probably via Word or Open Office) that can then be incrementally added to.

The next step would be to look at the notes I've been collecting here:

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2960025&group_id=263306...

re: what else ought to be in the Help docs and go crazy with that.

VStar's Help menu item would then either open the PDF or disappear.Read more

Create VStar plug-ins!

By david_benn on August 19, 2010 - 10:17am
Teams:

The next release of VStar (within days) will have a number of new features, one of which is a plug-in capability. This has been planned since the start and has been in development on and off for a few months but is now suitable for use.

This capability makes it possible for someone with even minimal Java (or other programming language) knowledge to create plug-ins for arbitrary tools, custom filters, and period analysis algorithms that appear in VStar's menus without having to change VStar's source code.

I have written and attached a PDF that describes this capability in some detail and shows how to get started with VStar plug-in development.

Your feedback on the document is welcome. Even better, have a go at writing a plug-in and provide feedback on the application programming interface described in the document and the Javadoc referenced therein. Read more

VStar update

By david_benn on August 12, 2010 - 12:46pm
Teams:

Hi all

I'm aiming for another VStar release next week. My current focus is to pack as much "goodness" into VStar leading up to the 2nd Citizen Sky workshop in early September, so your help in downloading and testing releases (as much as you have time for) up until then will be much appreciated.

Some of the features I'm working on are: color preference persistence, the creation of arbitrary star groups, confidence intervals, plugin mechanisms to permit VStar to be extended easily without having to modify the existing source code. I'd love to have people trying to write plugins and helping hone the related programming interfaces.

I've also been talking with people like Grant Foster and Matt Templeton at AAVSO about algorithms such as analysis of variance and autocorrelation, with a view to incorporating them in VStar soon.

More details will be forthcoming re: all of the above.Read more

Alternative star lists in VStar (opinions sought)

By david_benn on July 13, 2010 - 10:53am
Teams:

The Southern Gems project has highlighted the need to permit alternative lists of stars to be added and selected in VStar. Right now the "Select a Star" dialog box has a section for the Citizen Sky 10-star list. This could be generalised by adding another drop-down menu of star list names (one of which would be the 10-star list; another could be Southern Gems). Selecting an item from that list would populate the current drop-down menu with the stars for that list.

A related issue is how to get such lists into VStar to begin with. For example, custom star lists could be loaded in via a File menu item. Instead, new star lists could be added via the user preferences dialog.

Which of these (or some other method) would be best for disseminating star lists common to a group, such as Southern Gems? The latter could be enabled by allowing star lists to be imported via the preferences dialog.

Your opinion is sought. Thanks.

Regards,

David

QZ Virginis outburst and VStar plots

By david_benn on July 12, 2010 - 8:57am
Teams:

There was a post to my local Astronomical Society's mailing list (http://www.assa.org.au/) today about the current outburst of the nova QZ Virginis (http://www.aavso.org/publications/specialnotice/212.shtml) with discovery observations made by a couple of Aussies.

I followed up on the post with plots from VStar, so thought I would repeat them here.

I've attached a plot of QZ Vir data since 1956, showing periodic outbursts. The observation in the cross-hair is Hiroshi Matsuyama's mag 10.4 observation from July 9. Rod Stubbing's mag 10 observation does not yet appear in the database. I pulled this dataset down from the AAVSO International Database with VStar.

Only fainter-than observations (slightly less than half of the total 20,000+ observations) and observations whose band is not recorded are not shown (443). Read more

Concrete ways in which you can contribute to the VStar project

By david_benn on July 8, 2010 - 10:52am
Teams:

I recently posted this as a follow-up to Doc Kinne's VStar 2.2 Beta post, but thought it was worth highlighting a little more:

http://www.citizensky.org/teams/vstar-software-development/vstar-22-beta...

In this comment I suggest particular ways in which you can contribute to the VStar project.

Filtering observations in VStar 2.2 Beta

By david_benn on July 7, 2010 - 11:05am
Teams:

Thanks to Doc Kinne for deploying the latest VStar release, his subsequent post and pertinent points.

I want to give some background to this release's most obvious new feature.

One of the early VStar requirements was this:

REQ_VSTAR_DENOTE_SINGLE_OBSERVER
VStar shall permit all observations made by a single observer to be highlighted on the current plot for a star's dataset.

That seemed harmless enough, and after all, the AAVSO and Citizen Sky light curve generators already have this capability. Then at the NACAA 2010 VStar workshop I ran this April in Canberra, comments were made by a couple of partipants that it would be nice to be able to highlight other characteristics of an observation such as whether or not it has been marked as "transformed".Read more

VStar 2.2 Beta Launches!

By rkinne on July 7, 2010 - 10:57am
Teams:

The newest version of what is frankly one of the most exciting open source variable star project going today has been released and is ready for download.

Moving forward and taking advantage of the infrastructure change offered to us by Java 1.6, VStar 2.2 offers the first implementation of Observation Filtering. Want to see how YOUR observations have been doing on a particular star? Now is the time!

Read more

VStar in Java 1.6

By SaraB on June 4, 2010 - 3:15pm
Teams:

Exciting new developments in VStar! David has begun using Java 1.6 and with this move comes the ability to easily add more useful functionality. (See David's earlier post for more on why we decided to make this move.) Because of this change, please delete any old versions of the vstar.jnlp file you may have lying around and get a new one by clicking on the "Download VStar Now" button.

Anyone who is still using Java 1.5 won't be able to use VStar until you upgrade, but based on the results of our earlier survey, this should not affect many of you. We certainly hope that you will be able to get Java 1.6 and stay with us and VStar continues to evolve!

You can read about the latest changes to VStar in this ChangeLog.

VStar Version 2.0 Beta Launched!

By SaraB on May 27, 2010 - 2:36pm
Teams:

Just what you all have been waiting for! David has been working hard fixing things and making improvements to VStar which I am sure you will like. If you haven't had a chance to try using VStar yet or haven't used it in awhile, then by all means do so. Its fun! We also would appreciate your helpful comments and reports of any bugs you may encounter. My favorite thing about this new version is the "tabbed panes" instead of radio buttons which you can use to switch views between the observations data, means, and the lists. Other changes are summarized in the ChangeLog which I have attached to this post.Read more

VStar: a move to Java 1.6?

By david_benn on April 19, 2010 - 11:40am
Teams:

Hi all

For future VStar versions, I want to consider making the minimum Java Runtime version 1.6 rather than 1.5. One big reason is the table sort and search functionality it adds. Other reasons relate to performance, general bug fixes and improvements. Java 1.6 is not new, and was released in late 2006 and has had a number of updates since then. Java 1.7 is due out later this year.

What I would like to find out is if users or potential users would be unable to run VStar if the switch to 1.6 was made. The obvious concerns are for pre-Windows XP (e.g. Win98) and pre-Leopard Mac OS X.

Early releases of Java 1.6 are available for Windows 98 and I have been running Java 1.6 on a test installation of Windows 98.

I have Leopard on an Intel MacBook and a PowerPC Mac mini running Java 1.6. For earlier Mac OS X versions, there's http://landonf.bikemonkey.org/static/soylatte/, but only for Intel not PowerPC Macs. Read more

VStar Observation Details dialog usage question

By david_benn on April 9, 2010 - 10:55am
Teams:

Hi all

After some recent discussion between myself, Arne, and Aaron re: this SourceForge tracker item:

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2947383&group_id=263306...

titled "Obs Detail dialog should open over selected datapoint", your input is sought. What we're interested in is how you use the Observation Details dialogs (invoked by left-clicking on a plot datapoint). For example, do you normally just have one observation detail dialog open, and close it before opening another? Or do you have multiple observation detail dialogs open side-by-side?

Please also read over the tracker content and provide feedback as a reply to this post.

Regards,

David

VStar NACAA 2010 workshop summary

By david_benn on April 8, 2010 - 7:24am
Teams:

Aaron (and all), thanks for your your congrats.

On Friday (April 2) I ran a successful half-day VStar workshop at the National
Australian Convention of Amateur Astronomers in Canberra (NACAA 2010):

http://www.nacaa.org.au/2010/

The detailed workshop agenda can be found here:

http://www.nacaa.org.au/2010/workshops/98

In attendance were 15 Australian Amateur Astronomers, many with considerable
variable star observation and analysis experience.

VStar received a very positive reception and the feedback from the participants
was invaluable. Numerous SourceForge tracker entries have been added or updated
as a result of feedback from the workshop:

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=263306&atid=1152052

I was also pleased with the attendance numbers given that the other concurrent
workshop was Anthony Wesley's "Processing Techniques for Planetary Imaging":

http://www.nacaa.org.au/2010/workshops/108Read more

congrats

By Aaron Price on April 2, 2010 - 7:35pm
Teams:
Congrats on the release everyone! I just made a post on the AAVSO Discussion Group promoting it. You can read it here: http://mira.aavso.org/pipermail/aavso-discussion/2010-April/016218.html

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