First off… please don’t be disheartened to not see a thing you were really hoping for in SGPro 4.4. Whenever possible, we would like to make SGPro releases much more concise and avoid large releases like 4.3. It won’t always be possible, but it is for 4.4. It should be a highly focused and generally short beta. And then on to new things…
What is SGPro 4.4?
In summary, SGPro 4.4 overhauls Plate Solving:
- Retiring of the primary and secondary (blind) solver
- Introduction of the Chain Solver (all plate solves in SGPro now use the Chain Solver unless otherwise specified)
- Chain Solver can contain a single plate solver multiple times, but configured in different ways (e.g. different catalogs, etc)
- All plate solvers now indicate if they are ready to solve and, if not, provide specific corrective actions and links required (downloads, etc)
- Overhaul of manual plate solving UI (hints form and results form)
- Formal, native integration with ASTAP (current integration uses ASTAP’s PlateSolve2 interface and, as such, is unable to be fully used within SGPro)
- Formal implementation with ANSVR (currently, ANSVR is configured via Astrometry.NET URL and using it means you cannot use the Astrometry.NET site)
- Addition of ANSVR tools and actions in the new ANSVR settings dialog.
- Formal support for all Pinpoint catalogs including Atlas
- Fixed a bug with PlateSolve3 where solving at x,y mouse coordinates would return incorrect results.
- Fixed several inconsistent equatorial PA values for several different solvers
Here’s the new Chain Solver:
For additional details and a preview of the formal documentation for the Chain Solver:
Beta Testers
Anyone with a current license is free to use the beta…
What to look out for:
- Obviously we want to make sure that all actions involving plate solve continue to work as expected.
- In addition, please ensure that SGPro 4.4 successfully converts your SGPro 4.3 plate solve settings for the primary and backup blind solver into the equivalent chain solver config (with no work from you… all automatically). This migration will occur for all sequences and equipment profiles.
Note for folks running 4.3 and 4.4: For the most part, you should continue to be able to open SGPro 4.4 sequences in SGPro 4.3, but it should be noted that saving a sequence in 4.3 will permanently delete any Chain Solver config you may have worked on…
Targeting a beta release some time this weekend.
