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C2A Changelog

What's new in C2A 2.1.13

Jan 27, 2023
  • A problem has been fixed in the update process of the JPL orbital elements. This was due to a change in the data format exposed by the JPL.

New in C2A 2.1.12 (Oct 31, 2022)

  • Access paths to catalogues are empty by default if they are not provided by the user.
  • The URL to access the meteor dynamic catalogue has been updated.
  • It is now possible to change the URL to access the 3 dynamic catalogies in a configuration file called dynamic_catalogues.txt which is present in the C2A installation folder.
  • A bug has been fixed in the display of the artificial satellite positions (the option to display them ot not was not correctly memorized). Furthermore, the map refresh was performed even when no TLE were loaded.

New in C2A 2.1.11 (Jul 15, 2022)

  • Improvement of the calculation accuracy for azimuth and altitude coordinates of the obejcts in the maps.
  • Fix of an installation problem under Windows 11 that triggered a crash when launching C2A.
  • Fix of a problem that occurred when copying the current map in the Windows system clipboard.
  • Fix of a problem that triggered a crash when there was a large number of asteroid labels to display in the current map.
  • Fix in a problem when checking the access to the Gaïa catalogue.
  • Added an option in the "Date" tab of the Options dialog box to allow the user to select the data format in C2A. By default, the format "DD/MM/YYYY" is used in the French version and the format "MM/DD/YYYY" is used in the English version.
  • In the dialog box to select date and time, two commandes have been added to facilitate the time setting to zero.
  • The commands GetSelectedRa, GetSelectedRaHms, GetSelectedDe and GetSelectedDeDms have been added in the C2A TCP/IP protocol in order to get the coordinates of the selected object.

New in C2A 2.1.10 (Dec 2, 2021)

  • A third line of text can be added to printouts. This third line is automatically filled with the target star equatorial coordinates when C2A is called from OccultWatcher.
  • A right click on the Julian date at the bottom of the main screen provides the day number in the year of the current map (Python must be installed on the system for this function to be used).
  • A problem has been fixed in the Options dialog box. Symmetry changes on Field type views were not taken into account (but symmetries triggered from the toolbar worked).

New in C2A 2.1.9 (Jun 29, 2021)

  • Few minor bug fixes.
  • It is now possible to import comet orbital elements where perihelion distance is greater than or equal to 10 AU.

New in C2A 2.1.8 (May 4, 2021)

  • New features:
  • Orbital elements from JPL are now taken into account in the automatic importation process.
  • Since January 1st, 2021, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus satellites are not displayed anymore in previous versions of C2A (IMCCE polynomial coefficient files have not been updated). This is partially solved in this version where Jupiter and Saturn satellites are displayed if the Pyhton environment is installed on your computer. For now, Mars and Uranus satellites are not displayed.
  • It is now possible to change the constellation names by editing the files constellations_fr.txt (for French version) and constellations_en.txt (for English version). These files are located into the C2A installation folder.
  • 3000 orbital elements can now be displayed in the Asteroid and Comet tool.
  • The Moon terminator (display, phase tool, planet visibility tool and main window icon) is reverted if the current location is in the South hemisphere.
  • It is now possible to set the landmark on a zone without any object.
  • Sounds are produced to warn the user about the end of the King method waiting time.
  • The default value for the King method shift limit is now set to 35 pixels rather than 10.

New in C2A 2.1.7 (Apr 14, 2020)

  • Change of behaviour of the Julian Day display zone in the main window: a left click on this zone triggers the display of a dialog box to enter a UT date expressed in Julian days that will become the current date of the map. A right click on this zone copies the current Julian day into the Windows clipboard.
  • A bug has been fixed regarding the background image management system.
  • A bug has been fixed in the interface to enter geographical coordinates under the for of a decimal number. E, W, S, N symbols were not correctly interpreted.
  • Planetary magnitude accuracy has been improved.
  • A bug has been fixed in tne calculation of comet magnitudes (there was an issue with the very specific comet 1I/`Oumuamua).

New in C2A 2.1.6 (Jan 12, 2020)

  • The concept of "default configuration" has been introduced. It is now possible to save a default configuration defined by the user using the command Save default configuration from the File menu. The key combination Ctrl+End is a shortcut to accelerate the default configuration saving. Once a configuration is saved, it can be loaded using the command Load default configuration from the same menu. The key combination Ctrl+Home is a shortcut to accelerate the default configuration loading. It must be noted that an option is available in the Options dialog box (tab Misc) to request that the default configuration file is loaded every time C2A is launched (a default configuration must have been defined before).
  • Development of C2A has been moved to Windows 10.
  • Writing performance for saving the configuration when exiting C2A has been improved.
  • Tab order in the configuration panel has been changed for visually impaired.
  • It is now possible to set a tracking speed for an artificial satellite (change in the Python code c2a_ephem.py: version 1.1)
  • A problem has been fixed in the detection of the Python environment. When user IDs had spaces in them, the Python process output file could not be created.
  • Options have been added in the planet position tool.
  • The date increment and decrement values can be set with a unit and a value specified by the user.
  • A bug has been fixed that provoked a crash of C2A when the presence of some specific files was tested.
  • Field markers are now displayed at the top of Solar System disks for high level zooms.

New in C2A 2.1.5 (Sep 17, 2018)

  • First integration of the Gaia Grappa2 catalogue. This integration is still experimental et is intended only for selected users.
  • URL format has been changed to automatically access orbital elements from the Minor Planet Center web site (the secured version of the HTTP protocol is now used).
  • The equatorial coordinates of the asteroids and comets are now updated in the control panel in case the date and time of the current map are changed.
  • An issue is fixed when close user objects are identified in the map.
  • A problem is solved regarding the xay Messier objects are tagged in the maps. This problem could crash C2A when tagging was used with the SAC catalogue.
  • A button has been added to specify a date in Julian Days in the Date tab of the Options dialog box.
  • An option has been added in the telescope options in order to activate or not the DTR mode of the serial communication protocol.
  • The UCAC3 or UCAC4 name of an identified object is displayed when the SAO catalogue is forced.

New in C2A 2.1.4 (Sep 4, 2017)

  • Management and display of artificial satellites positions using orbital elements in TLE files. This function requires Python 3 to be installed on the computer where C2A is running. The C2A help file includes all the required information to install Python 3 on your computer (look for Python in the index). This information is also available in the FAQ section of the Support page of the C2A Web site.
  • Computing and display of planet elongation in identifications. This function requires Python 3 to be installed on the computer running C2A.
  • Addition of a new function called Magnitude Histogram which gives the number of stars in pre-defined classes of magnitude of all the stars in the sky from a certain location and at a certain date. This function requires Python 3 to be installed on the computer running C2A.
  • A bug has been fixed regarding the width and height of some C2A windows when the size of the Windows text was changed to 125% in the system options.
  • Two buttons have been added in the Location tab of the Options dialog box that give the possibility to specifiy the latitude and longitude in decimal degrees.
  • Two buttons have been added in the Location tab of the Options dialog box so that the user location file can be easily edited and reloaded.
  • The MPC URLs used for the automatic import of orbital elements have been updated in order to get more reliable sources.
  • The meteor shower URL has been changed to reflect the new location of this information on the Internet.
  • A bug has been fixed in the automatic download of the Bowell orbital element catalogue.
  • An option has been added in the Misc tab of the Options dialog box to specify if one wants to display the small panel when saving the parameters during the C2A exit process.
  • A new item has been added to the File menu to exit C2A without saving the current parameters.
  • An option has been added in the King method in order to specify the rotation direction of the star on the sensor. The reason is that the King formula is different in the North and South hemispheres or if the image is inverted by the optical system or the processing software.
  • The longitude sign has been changed in the main window display in order to respect the most commonly used convention, i.e. positive eastward.

New in C2A 2.1.2 (Apr 4, 2016)

  • A field 'Tag' has been added to the Observation Logbook in order to associate use metadata to the Logbook entries and perform more powerful filtering. This new field does not require to upgrade the Logbook database, this is done automatically by C2A.
  • A rotation parameter has been added for the CCD field markers of type 'Rectangle 2'.
  • It is now possible to create a CCD field marker of type 'Rectangle 2' in the C2A TCP/IP socket protocol.
  • Two items have been added to the Telescope contextual menu in order to set the 'Tracking Rate' of the telescope controller. These commands are only available for the Gemini Pulsar 2 controller and the ASCOM drivers that support Tracking Rate setting.
  • An option has been added to define the time-out value on image acquisition.
  • A new method is used to calculate the Sun an Moon rise and set times. It uses the centre of the solar and lunar disks while the other method (from Meeus) uses the disk border. It must therefore be noted that there are differences between the different C2A tools that report Sun and Moon rise and set times.
  • The center of the solar and lunar disk is used for:
  • The control panel of the object information window;
  • The Ephemeris tool;
  • The Moon phase tool (in the tooltips).
  • The border of the disk is used for:
  • The Sunrise and Sunset tool;
  • The visibility bars in the planet visibility tool.
  • When the C2A icon properties were set to launch the program in a maximized mode, a display bug was occurring and only a fraction of the screen was used to display the map.
  • A bug has been fixed in the annual visibility tool. For the first day of the month as the current date, the month labels were shifted by one position towards the left. Furthermore, there were some inaccuracies on the labels.
  • There was a bug in the Observation Planner tool. Some entries from the Logbook were not correctly eliminated in case a filter was set.
  • A bug has been fixed for the search on IC objects. Adding an extension under the form of a letter (A, B, C, ...) was causing an error.

New in C2A 2.1.1 (Nov 3, 2015)

  • Support of the URAT1 astrometric and photometric catalogue.
  • Support of the SAC 8.1 deep sky object catalogue (see Saguaro Astronomy Club).
  • Search is now performed on a part of the deep sky object names is nothing is found on the full names.
  • A new user object called Frame can now be used to define CCD observation fields. This can be useful to plan mosaics for instancce (search frame in the C2A help system index).
  • It is possible to export the current CCD field marker to a Frame from the menu Edition (the frame declaration is copied in the Clipboard so that it can be easily reused in a user file).
  • A new contextual menu associated to the combination Ctrl + left mouse button has been added in order to quickly switch the time increment to be used when pressing the keys + and - from the keyboard.
  • Proper motions are now taken into account in the WDS catalogue.
  • Two new types of deep sky objects have been added: Globular Cluster in a Galaxy and Cluster with Nebulosity in a Galaxy. They are only used for the SAC 8.1 catalogue and user files are not impacted.
  • In the astrometric resolution process, it is now possible to cross-match the GCVS and WDS catalogues. An option has been added to display the names of the stars in these catalogues.
  • An option has been added in the Observation Planning tool to eliminate from the search all the objects already present in the Observation Logbook (in order to avoid targeting already observed objects). Take care that the names of the objects in the Observation Logbook must be exactly the same that the ones used by the Observation Planner.
  • Default values in the file used to save the configuration have been changed to avoid a problem with the decimal separator on some international Windows configurations.
  • Several minor bugs reported by C2A users have been fixed.

New in C2A 2.1.00 (Jan 27, 2015)

  • New features:
  • The range of date for the IMCCE polynom file (file wap.b98) goes now from 1987 to 2040 instead of 2020. It is therefore possible to compute the positions of Solar System objects up to 2040.
  • An other option to automatically import asteroid orbital elements has been added. A list of asteroid names can be read from a text file and the orbital elements are then obtained from the astorb.dat file that must be available locally on the PC.
  • The latest version of the RNGC/IC catalogue (August 24, 2014) is now released with C2A.
  • The galaxy morphological classes have been added to the RNGC/IC catalogue objects. The following classes are used: Elliptical, Lenticular, Spiral, Irregular, Peculiar, Compact, Dwarf, Ring.
  • It is now possible to filter galaxies according to their morphological class for display in the maps.
  • It is now possible to filter galaxies according to their morphological class in the observation planning tool.
  • A tool has been added in the Astrometry contextual menu to measure the movement of a Solar System object over time.
  • Two small buttons have been added at the top left of the map to quickly switch between the two types of view that C2A supports (Horizon and Field).
  • The mouse behavior has been modified. It is now possible to zoom with the mouse wheel and take into account the position of the mouse in the map to recenter the view in direction of the targetted point. Furthermore, the mouse left button behavior can be optionally changed: it can be used to translate the view rather than drawing rectangles to perform zooms. Take care however: for the views with the type Field, the translation is stopped if one of the two celestial poles has been reached and is at the center of the view. For the views with the type Horizon, the translation is stopped when the zenith or nadir are reached.
  • A new function has been added to perform searches on deep sky object common names. This function is available in the Find dialog box.
  • A small button with a question mark has been added next to the quick search zone in the control panel. When pressed, the Find dialog box is displayed to perform easy searches.
  • Dates have been modified in the Planet Visibility tool. If the map's current time is before noon local time, C2A uses the previous day so that the date line is positioned on the right day in the visibility diagram.
  • In the Observation Logbook, the current date and local time are used as the observation time. Furthermore, the object name is automatically positioned (for the RNGC/IC catalogue).
  • A problem has been fixed in the Planet Visibility table. Some cells could be empty.
  • An option has been added in the astrometric and photometric resolution tool in order to display the reference star names in the images as well as in the exports.
  • The name of an extended object has been fixed: Sh2-40 is actually Sh2-240.
  • It is now possible to paramterize the maximum distance in pixels for the movement of a star when using the King method to perform a polar alignment.

New in C2A 2.0.53 (Aug 12, 2014)

  • New features:
  • Support of the catalogue CMC15, an astrometric and photometric catalogue of more than 122.7 million stars in the red magnitude range 9 to 17.
  • Support of the catalogues Guide Star 1.2 and Guide Star ACT in their native formats. This provides more information on the catalogue objects than the compressed version of the 1.1 catalogue used until now by C2A. It is also posible to perform searches on the 1.2 and ACT catalogue objects.
  • Magnitude bands have been added to the export process for the UCAC3, UCAC4, NOMAD, PPMXL and CMC15 catalogues.
  • Deep Sky Object common names have been added (154 as of today).
  • An option has been added to display the equator line whatever the grid type is in the current map.
  • The date and time background is turned to red in the main window dialog area if a fixed date and time are used in the current map rather than the PC current date and time.
  • An option "/image_processing" has been added in the command line to display only the Image Processing window.
  • In the Image Analysis tool, a button has been added to copy the displayed data into the Windows Clipboard.
  • Several small problems have been fixed: local time is used in map printing if this is the current setting; grid labels are printed in black if the automatic color setting is requested; a bug has been fixed in the angular distance calculation; a parsing bug has been fixed in the "Exoplanet Transit Database" dynamic catalogue; a bug has been fixed that occurred when FITS images were loaded from folders that contained special characters such as parenthesis.

New in C2A 2.0.51 (Dec 16, 2013)

  • A tool has been added to easily get the times of sunrise, sun meridian transit, sunset and astronomical, nautical and civil twilights.
  • A table summarizing the rising, stransist and setting times of the Sun, Moon and planets has been added to the Planet Visibility tool.
  • Two special magnitude bands have been added in the advanced options for the UCAC3, UCAC4, NOMAD and PPMXL catalogues: a band where priorities can be defined among available magnitude and a compound instrumental magnitude band.
  • An advanced option has been added to the NOMAD catalogue in order not to display stars which do not have a magnitude defined for the current magnitude band when a filter is set.
  • The OCX SComm32 control is now integrated with C2A in order to better support USB/RS232 adapters for controlling telescopes. An option has been added to optionally go back to the former Microsoft standard MSComm OCX control.
  • A problem has been fixed in the Observation Logbook: the PDF export process was not working properly when the file name was containing characters with accents.

New in C2A 2.0.50 (Nov 29, 2013)

  • Added a Meteor Shower dynamic catalogue.
  • The Celestron NexStar telescope controller is inow natively managed by C2A.
  • NMEA-compatible GPS are now taken into account by C2A in order to automatically update the observation location, the date and the time.
  • A bug has been fixed in the Observation Logbook (an issue in constellation indexes could hang C2A during a PDF export).
  • It is now possible to perform 10 successive "undo" on Logbook entry deletes.
  • Two buttons have been added into the C2A Control Panel for calibration and slewing on the currently identified obejct.
  • A bug has been fixed in the object search capability. Searches on HD objects could not be completed.
  • It is now possible to produce thumbnails to represent planetary positions for all the days of the current month.
  • Options have been added for the thumbnail image production (Moon phases and planetary positions about image format and image quality).
  • Improvements in the object visibility window (in particular for the Juiter GRB).
  • An export function has been added into the object visibility window.
  • Better control on dates when creating a chart from OccultWatcher. On foreign Windows systems, the data format can take some unusual formats.
  • A bug has been fixed in the Hand Controller window: if it was minimized in the task bar, an action on the main window could hang the program.

New in C2A 2.0.49 (Nov 29, 2013)

  • Starting with this version, C2A does not use the Windows Registry to store user parameters. This was creating some problems for a few users under Windows 7 and Windows 8 who could not retrieve parameters from session to session. The user parameters are now stored in the file 'c2a.ini' which is placed in the folder 'C:\Users\user name\AppData\Local\C2aw'.
  • The C2A program icons have been fully redesigned in order to provide a better diplay under Windows 7 and Windows 8.
  • An option has been added in the tab Deep Sky of the options dialog box. This option prevents a warning message to be displayed when performing a search on an object that can potentialy be excluded from the current map because of a specific filter on object type or magnitude.
  • Online help has been improved.
  • A new version of the 'cfitsio' DLL is provided with this release. The previous version was creating a problem in the display of the BT-Atlas PIC images.
  • Logbook entries can now be exported and imported so that they can be transferred from a PC to an other.
  • A couple of issues have been fixed in the Image Processing tool: issues could happen on long exposures and the temperature management process could fail in some occasions.
  • A few display issues have been fixed when using an enlarged font in the Windows settings.

New in C2A 2.0.47 (Dec 4, 2012)

  • C2A checks every week if a new version of the program is available. Update messages can be disabled in the Misc tab of the Options dialog box.
  • A new Astrometry contextual menu has been added allowing the user to perform two taks when the Image Processing window is open and an image loaded:
  • 1) Copy the equatorial position of an object, or of the mouse position, into the image center definition fields of the Image Processing window (zone Astrometry);
  • 2) Possibility to compute the image sampling using the camera field marker of the current view. The sampling values are then copied into the image sampling field of the Image Porcessing window (zone Astrometry).
  • The objective is to facilitate the definition of an image characteristics before launching the astrometry resolution which will refine these values (PinPoint needs to know the rough values of the image center and sampling in order to perform correctly the astrometry resolution).
  • In the Astrometry zone of the Image Processing window, a button has been added which, once the astrometry resolution has been performed, allows the user to calibrate the telescope withe the exact value of the image center. The goal here is to facilitate the telescope calibration by shooting an image directly from C2A, then performing the astrometric resolution and finally calibrating the telescope with the determined value.
  • An option has been added for the astrometric resolution. It is now possible to specify a filter where the maximum number of sloved stars to be displayed in the image is specified. This prevents from having too many solved stars in the image that make it unreadable.
  • A parameter has been added in the astrometry resolution options. It is now possible to specify the maximum duration of an astrometry resolution attempt by PinPoint.
  • A new feature to manage the CCD camera temperature has been added into the acquisition interface of the Image Processing window. Camera cooling is performed through several phases in order to avoid frost formation inside the camera. Warming up is done over a period of time specified by the user.
  • The UCAC4 catalogue is now fully supported. It is possible to use two different organizations for the catalogue data: either the index files are in the same folder as the data files, or the index files are in a sub-folder u4i and the data files in a sub-folder u4b. This second possibility must be favored as it is the native organization of data in the UCAC4 catalogue.
  • It is now possible to display the Sun analemma in the maps (the display is toggled only in the Solar System tab of the Options dialog box).
  • The Revised New General Catalogue and Index Catalogue has been updated using the most recent version made available by Wolfgang Steinicke. This is the version from the 12th of August, 2012, which includes a certain number of improvements and fixes. Several fields have been added: redshift, distance derived from redshift (in Mpc), metric distance from NED (in Mpc), Herschel designation and B-V magnitude difference.
  • It is now possible to display and update the visibility curve from the Observation Planning tool.
  • A bug has been fixed in the Exoplanet Transit Database. Objects with missing data are now ignored rather than stopping the import process.
  • A bug has been fixed in the secondary toolbar. The label M1 was not correctly displayed.
  • A bug has been fixed in the image acquisition feature through Maxim DL. If binning was changed to a value other than 1, going back to binning 1 resulted in an image acquisition with a higher binning.
  • Terminology has been changed in the English version of C2A. "Last Quarter" (LQ) replaces "Second Quarter" (SQ).
  • Camera management through Maxim DL has been improved. If an instance is already running, C2A detects it and connects to it. When C2A exits, and if the user confirms it, the pre-existing Maxim DL instance is not closed and the link between Maxim DL and the CCD camera is not stopped.
  • A change has been made in the way the ASCOM telescope driver is managed. C2A checks first if an instance is already running so that it is not stopped when the C2A session ends.
  • 31 modifications, most of them minors, have been made in the genitives and english names of the constellations, in accordance to the recommendations of the IAU (http://www.iau.org/public/constellations/).
  • A bug has been fixed in the ASCOM options. It was only possible to specify integer values for the pointing and slewing speeds in Right Ascension.
  • C2A now differentiates the refresh periods for the horizon views and the views that contain asteroids and comets. In order to do that, an option has been added in the Map tab of the Options dialog box.
  • Nebulae which are not NGC or IC objects (patches) now have a center in order to identify them and be able to perform operations such as visibility display or telescope slewing and calibration on them. This center is not necessarily the geometric center of the nebulae, but rather a place where a label can be put so that it is clearly readable.
  • A bug has been fixed in the information display associated to the trajectory points of a Solar System object. The date was incorrect in some cases.
  • A bug has been fixed in the transit time display fro some objects. In a particular case, a number of minutes equal to 60 was displayed.
  • Checking is now performed on longitude and latitude values entered into the Options dialog box.
  • A problem has been fixed in the full screen display mode: planets were not always displayed correctly.
  • The shortcuts Ctrl+O and Ctrl+S have been added into the Image Processing window to load and save an image.
  • An option has been added to mark the center of the field markers with a small cross.

New in C2A 2.0.44 (Apr 13, 2012)

  • The binary PPMXL catalogue prepared by Dave Herald is now taken into account by C2A. It is used in the scope of occulation event activities
  • An option has been added into the orbital element importation tools (automatic and manual) in order to prevent object duplication
  • For the automatic loading of bright asteroids orbital elements from the MPC, the current date of the PC is used rather than the date of the map. Furthermore, if the MPC orbital elements are not found for the current year, C2A tries to get those from the previous year
  • It is now possible to display the Besselian date rather than the Julien Day in the dialogue zone at the bottom of the C2A screen
  • The file User.loc that contains the user locations is searched first into the folder "C:\Users\user name\AppData\Local\C2aw" (under Windows 7) which is the folder that contains the user files created by C2A. If the file User.loc is not found in this folder, it is then searched into the C2A installation folder, which is "C:\Program Files\C2A" (or "C:\Program Files (x86)\C2A"). The same process is used for the following files that can be modified by the user: wap.vrs, file that contains all the reference points for a whole sky telescope calibration process; wap.prs, file that contains the reference points used for a polar alignment procedure
  • The names of the bright stars gamma and epsilon Cassiopeiae have been fixed