v3.7.9

[englishfox90]

The headline is all-sky calibration that holds up on hosting-site and partly obstructed rigs, plus steadier labels and the NINA target on the overlay.

Before you start: if you use the NINA plugin, you will need to update the PFR Sentinel NINA plugin too. It's what sends your target to Sentinel. If you saved weather coordinates in degrees-minutes-seconds, Sentinel will ask once which hemisphere you meant. Everything else, calibration included, carries over unchanged.

All-sky calibration

• Calibration now knows what your own gear hides. Sentinel learns which parts of the sky your pier, mount and scopes block over the first couple of nights, keeps that map across restarts, and offers "Reset Equipment Map" if you move things (All-sky: labels drift and vanish on a hosting-site rig — model admitted 100 px off a stable measured pole, chance-level fit rated Good (discussion #76) #93, feat(allsky): persisted equipment map and label persistence (#93, package 1) #96).
• Frames are only trusted when the roof is really open and real stars are visible. A lit closed roof, an exposure that's too short, or a frame of pure sensor noise can no longer feed bad data into the fit. A roof-closed verdict needs two closed frames in a row, so one misread frame can't blank the overlay (feat(allsky): observable-sky gate — roof verdict corroborated by star evidence (#93, package 2) #98).
• Fits are checked against chance. A calibration that only looks good by coincidence is rated lower, and the saved one is re-checked on dark frames (sun at least 15° down). It is only discredited after two clearly poor results in a row, so dusk no longer flags a good model. If one is discredited, Sentinel withholds the overlay, searches again and tells you once (feat(allsky): chance-aware quality and incumbent re-judging (#93, package 3) #97, fix(allsky): judge single-frame calibration fits against chance before they fill the slot #112, fix(allsky): withhold the overlay, escape seedless and notify once a saved model is discredited #114, fix(allsky): don't discredit the saved model on twilight frames; keep every guided solve #131).
• With Polaris hidden, Sentinel can find the celestial pole from how the star field turns overnight, ignoring fixed equipment LEDs (feat(allsky): pole from the rotating field, static-light rejection (#93, package 4) #99, feat(allsky): pole-constrained solve and admission (#93, package 5) #100).
• New Calibration History on the Lens Calibration card lists every calibration that went live and can restore any of them, including your last guided solve. A guided solve is also kept in its own file, so automatic refinements can't overwrite it (Dev builds: 3.7.9 #105, fix(allsky): don't discredit the saved model on twilight frames; keep every guided solve #131, feat(allsky): calibration history with Restore and Restore last guided #134).

Guided Calibration

• The star picker is now a large, zoomable, pannable window with a Stretch slider for brightness that remembers your setting (Improved All Sky Calibration #79, feat(allsky): guided calibration that stays open, zooms, and says what went wrong (#79) #81, Guided calibration: suggestion circles and labels unreadable on the stretched frame; no way to exclude a star without deleting it (discussion #105) #124, feat(allsky): guided calibration stretch slider, halo labels, and exclude-without-delete #127).
• After three stars, Sentinel suggests the rest. Drag a suggestion onto the real star to identify it (feat(allsky): drag a suggested star onto its real position in guided calibration #111). Suggestions now keep working when much of the sky is blocked (fix(allsky): guided star suggestions keep voting on an obstructed rig #113).
• You can exclude a star without deleting it (feat(allsky): guided calibration stretch slider, halo labels, and exclude-without-delete #127). A failed solve points at the star most likely wrong (feat(allsky): guided calibration that stays open, zooms, and says what went wrong (#79) #81).
• Solving no longer closes the window. You review the result over your frame and save it when you're happy. The quality badge turns amber if a saved calibration can't be reconfirmed (feat(allsky): guided calibration that stays open, zooms, and says what went wrong (#79) #81).

All-sky labels and the NINA target

• Labels no longer flicker on a timelapse or vanish when the exposure changes. They appear after two sightings, linger about 10 frames and fade in and out (fix(allsky): keep overlay labels through an exposure change #83, fix(allsky): labels persist through vote noise; a sighted star keeps its label #132, All-sky labels pop on and off in the timelapse: drawn-label persistence, fade, horizon cutoff, Messier label style #144, fix(allsky): hold, debounce and fade the drawn labels so a timelapse stops popping #147).
• Messier and NGC labels show the common name by default, with name-and-number or number-only as options (All-sky labels pop on and off in the timelapse: drawn-label persistence, fade, horizon cutoff, Messier label style #144, feat(allsky): Messier and NGC label text style, common name by default #148). New label size presets (Large is the old size) and an optional "Show labels behind equipment" (fix(allsky): no labels on a closed roof at start-up, Label size preset, FITS export without astropy #123, fix(allsky): planet labels on the right like star labels; opt-in labels behind equipment #130).
• Planet names sit to the right of the planet, and the Moon's name sits clear of its glare with a dark outline (fix(allsky): planet labels on the right like star labels; opt-in labels behind equipment #130, fix(allsky): set the Moon's label outside its glare, with an outline #135). With a closed roof at start-up, no labels are drawn on the first frame or sent to Discord (fix(allsky): no labels on a closed roof at start-up, Label size preset, FITS export without astropy #123).
• The overlay can show the target NINA is imaging: its name and a box for your field of view, rotated to the sequence's angle, or a marker when the box won't fit. A new NINA Target card sets colour, size, line width and how long the target stays up after NINA goes quiet. The plugin sends the target whether or not its panel is open and shows what it last sent. Both logs say what happened to it (feat: show the NINA target and its field of view on the all-sky overlay #143, NINA target: visible box without the cross, logging, plugin target column; README Discord #150).

Machine learning

• The roof and sky classifiers are retrained on a larger, hand-checked dataset. Sky now runs on a stronger pretrained model, most noticeably better on Partly Cloudy and Overcast (feat(ml): retrain on the rechecked dataset; sky classifier on an ImageNet-pretrained ResNet18 #103).
• A frame of pure sensor noise is marked "unreliable" on the status strip instead of getting a confident wrong reading. This is informational only; roof safety is unchanged (feat(ml): flag frames that are only sensor noise (reporting only) #85).
• The models' day/night flag uses real sunrise and sunset for your Weather Setup location instead of a fixed clock (fix(ml): feed the models real astronomical night, and stop calling a confident Closed "uncertain" #87).

Timelapse, logs and settings

• YouTube descriptions can include a night summary from your image library: times, temperatures, clear percentage, stars, seeing, roof state, gaps and weather. New descriptions use it. Existing ones are left alone (Night statistics in the YouTube upload description (and optionally a text ticker on the timelapse) #145, feat(timelapse): night statistics in the YouTube upload description #146).
• Logs search re-filters what's on screen with a match count, levels work as thresholds (DEBUG through ERROR), and lines containing "<...>" no longer vanish (feat(logs): search re-filters history; log levels become a hierarchy #149). An occasional memory and CPU line warns about steady growth, and timelapse frames use less memory (feat(diagnostics): resource monitor log line and one-copy timelapse frames #116).
• Degrees-minutes-seconds coordinates are no longer misread on load, which could put your observatory in the wrong hemisphere (fix(config): normalise weather coordinates on load and ask which hemisphere an unsigned DMS value meant #101). The Imperial units choice is now actually saved (Weather Units: choosing Imperial is never saved — overlays stay in m/s and °C, and the combo resets to Metric on restart (discussion #105) #125, fix(weather): save and apply the Imperial units choice #126).

Fixes

• Output Framing fields no longer clip four-digit values, and the card sits with the other always-open cards (fix(ui): Output Framing inputs no longer clip; card grouped with the collapsibles #78).
• Dev-mode FITS export works in the installed app (fix(allsky): no labels on a closed roof at start-up, Label size preset, FITS export without astropy #123).
• Updated bundled libraries (watchdog, posthog, QtAwesome, Fluent Widgets, astropy, scipy, scikit-learn) (build(deps): Bump the python-minor-and-patch group across 1 directory with 2 updates #92, build(deps): Update astropy requirement from >=5.0.0 to >=8.0.1 #107, build(deps): Update scikit-learn requirement from >=1.3.0 to >=1.9.1 #108, build(deps): Update scipy requirement from >=1.10.0 to >=1.18.1 #110, build(deps): raise posthog, watchdog, QtAwesome, Fluent-Widgets and torchvision floors #136).

Full Changelog: v3.7.7...v3.7.9

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This discussion was created from the release v3.7.9.