# Configuring &kstars;

## Setting the Geographic Location

Here is a screenshot of the Set Geographic Location window: Changing the Geographic Location Set Location Window

There is a list of over 3400 predefined cities available to choose from. You set your location by highlighting a city from this list. Each city is represented in the world map as a small dot, and when a city is highlighted in the list, a red crosshairs appears on its location in the map.

It is not practical to scroll through the full list of 3400 locations, looking for a specific city. To make searches easier, the list can be filtered by entering text in the boxes below the map. For example, in the screenshot, the text `A` appears in the City filter: box, while `Te` has been entered in the Province filter: box, and `USA` is in the Country filter: box. Note that all of the cities displayed in the list have city, province, and country names that begin with the entered filter strings, and that the message below the filter boxes indicates that 6 cities are matched by the filters. Also notice that the dots representing these six cities in the map have been colored white, while the unmatched cities remain gray.

The list can also be filtered by location in the map. Clicking anywhere in the world map will show only those cities within two degrees of the clicked location. At this time, you can search by name, or by location, but not both at once. In other words, when you click on the map, the name filters are ignored, and vice versa.

The longitude, latitude and time zone information for the currently-selected location are displayed in the boxes at the bottom of the window. If you feel that any of these values are inaccurate, you can modify them and press the + (Add City) button to record your custom version of the location. You can also define a completely new location by pressing the Clear Fields button, and entering the data for the new location. Note that all fields except the optional Province:/Country: must be filled before the new location can be added to the list. &kstars; will automatically load your custom locations for all future sessions. Please note, at this point, the only way to remove a custom location is to remove the appropriate line from the file `kstars/mycities.dat` in your folder ``qtpaths` `--paths GenericDataLocation`` .

If you add custom locations (or modify existing ones), please send us your `mycities.dat` file so that we can add your locations to the master list.

## Setting the Time

When &kstars; starts up, the time is set to your computer's system clock, and the &kstars; clock is running to keep up with the real time. If you want to stop the clock, select the Time Stop Clock menu item, or simply click on the Stop Clock icon in the toolbar. You can make the clock run slower or faster than normal, or even make it run backward, using the time-step spinbox in the toolbar. This spinbox has two sets of up/down buttons. The first one will step through all 83 available time steps, one by one. The second one will skip to the next higher (or lower) unit of time, which allows you to make large timestep changes more quickly.

You can set the time and date by selecting the Time Set Time... menu item, or by pressing the Time icon in the toolbar. The Set Time window uses a standard &kde; Date Picker widget, coupled with a spinbox for setting the hours and minutes. If you want to re-synchronize the simulation clock back to the current CPU time, just select the Time Set Time to Now menu item.

&kstars; can accept very remote dates beyond the usual limits imposed by QDate. Currently, you can set the date between the years -100000 and +100000. We may extend this range even further in future releases. However, please be aware that the accuracy of the simulation becomes more and more degraded as more remote dates are examined. This is especially true for the positions of solar system bodies.

## The Configure &kstars; Window

The Configure - &kstars; window allows you to modify a wide range of display options. You can access the window with the Configure toolbar icon, or by selecting the Settings Configure &kstars;... menu item. The window is depicted below:

Configure - &kstars; Window Configure - &kstars; Window

The Configure - &kstars; window is divided into twelve pages: Catalogs, Solar System, Satellites, Supernovae, Guides, Terrain, Colors, FITS, INDI, Ekos, Xplanet and Advanced.

In the Catalogs page, you determine several properties concerning the display of the star and deep sky object catalogs.

In the Solar System page, you can specify whether the Sun, Moon, planets, comets and asteroids are displayed.

The Satellites page allows you to set the satellites view options.

The Supernovae page allows you to manage how supernovae are displayed by &kstars;.

The Guides page lets you toggle whether non-objects are displayed (&ie;, constellation lines, constellation names, the Milky Way contour).

  It is possible to choose a Sky culture: for the constellation lines and names on this page. The current version of &kstars; includes data for more than a dozen sky cultures.

The Terrain page allows you to set the terrain or landscape image and configure its speedup options.

The Colors page allows you to set the color scheme, and to define new custom color schemes.

For detailed explanation of the options on the FITS page see the Configure FITS section.

For detailed explanation of the options on the INDI page see the Configure INDI section.

For detailed explanation of Ekos astrophotography suite, see the Ekos section of this manual.

The Xplanet page provides fine-grained control over Solar system planet surface renderer Xplanet (should be installed separately).

The Advanced page provides fine-grained control over the more subtle behaviors of &kstars;.

## Catalogs

Catalogs Window Catalogs Window

In the Catalogs page, you can configure which object catalogs are displayed by &kstars;, as well as how much information you would like to be included on the Sky Map. By default, &kstars; includes ~300,000 named and unnamed stars up to magnitude 8. For Deep Sky Objects, the included catalog is the New General Catalog (NGC) including the Index Catalog (IC) and the Messier Catalog.

The New General Catalog of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (abbreviated as NGC) is a catalog of ca 7,840 deep-sky objects.

The Index Catalog of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (abbreviated as IC) serves as a supplement to the NGC, and contains an additional 5,386 objects, collectively known as the IC objects.

You can install new catalogs using &kstars; Add-On Installer. You can open it via the Data Download New Data... menu item. You can choose from a list of catalogs, including (but not limited to):

- Steinicke NGC/IC Catalog: is a more complete NGC/IC catalog.

- Abell Planetary Nebulae Catalog: is a catalog of 86 planetary nebulae. The maximum magnitude is represented by Abell 47's value of 19.5.

- Sharpless HII region Catalog: is the Sharpless (Sh2) catalog of HII regions (diffuse nebulae).

- Hickson Compact Groups: is a catalog consisting of 99 compact groups of galaxies.

- Tycho-2 Star Catalog: is a catalog of more than 2.5 million of the brightest stars. It contains stars with a magnitude value from 8.0 to 12.5.

- USNO NOMAD Catalog: is a catalog of about 100 million stars with magnitude from 12.5 to 16.5. Note that is requires Tycho-2 to be installed.

The following is a summary of catalogs in &kstars;:

### Stars Catalogs

Name | Abbreviation | Number of objects | Magnitude | Add-On | Default
--- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---
Default Catalog | Default | ~300,000 | Up to 8 magnitude | No | Yes
Tycho-2 | Tycho2 | more than 2.5 million | 8.0-12.5 | Yes | No
Naval Observatory Merged Astronomic Dataset | USNO NOMAD | 100 million | 12.5-16.5 | Yes | No

### Deep-sky objects Catalogs

Name | Abbreviation | Number of objects | Magnitude | Add-On | Default
--- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---
New General Catalog of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (OpenNGC) | NGC | 7,840 | - | No | Yes
Steinicke NGC/IC | - | - | - | Yes | No
Abell Planetary Nebulae Catalog | - | 86 | Up to 19.5 magnitude | Yes | No
Sharpless HII region Catalog | Sh2 | - | - | Yes | No
Hickson Compact Groups | - | 99 | - | Yes | No

A potentially more up-to-date listing can be found in the catalog repository documentation.

The Stars section allows you to manage how stars are displayed in &kstars;. You can choose to see the stars or not by checking the Star catalogs checkbox. If you check it, then multiple options will be enabled. Thus, you can set how many stars are drawn on the map using the Star density: slider. You can also customize &kstars; to toggle star name and magnitudes. Star names are drawn next to bright stars. To display labels of fainter stars, increase the Label density: slider.

Below the stars section, the Deep-Sky Objects section controls the display of several non-stellar object catalogs. You can toggle the display of Deep Sky Objects and control the display of their names and magnitudes. By default, the list of deep-sky objects includes the Messier, NGC and IC catalogs. Addons catalogs are available via the Data Download New Data... menu item where you can download catalogs provided by &kstars; team and the community through the catalog packaging repository. The DSO minimal zoom: slider controls the minimal zoom level for which the DSOs are shown. Increasing the minimal zoom level can lead to performance improvements when panning the skymap zoomed-out. The DSO cache percentage: slider regulates how much of the DSO master catalog is being kept in memory. If you experience memory issues with large catalogs, try lowering the percentage. The Label density: slider controls the perceived density of labels for the DSOs. If labels start to overlap and the skymap begins to look too crowded, try tuning this option. The Faint limit zoomed in/out: regulates up to which magnitude objects are shown on the skymap (higher magnitude is fainter). If Show objects of unknown magnitude is ticked, objects of unknown magnitude are always shown.

The following sections will detail how DSO catalogs work in &kstars; and how they're managed.

### The DSO Catalog Database

This section aims at introducing the catalog database of &kstars; in simple but technical terms. It can be skipped without missing anything essential but helps understanding how to deal with and create (custom) catalogs.

DSO catalogs in &kstars; are just SQL (sqlite3) database tables. Each catalog is represented by its own table which contains all its objects and an entry in a catalog metadata table. Additionally, catalogs may be imported or exported from and into stand-alone database files.

Each object has the usual properties like name and coordinates but additionally features two IDs. The first ID is the unique identifier for the specific object and is calculated by hashing all the object fields along with the catalog id. Because objects can be contained in several catalogs each object has an additional object id (OID) that identifies the physical object and may be shared by several objects of different catalogs.

To speed up object lookup all enabled catalogs are merged into a master table. Each catalog has a priority number and if several objects with the same OID occur the one from the catalog with the highest priority is loaded. The objects from the master catalog are then drawn on the sky and generally available in &kstars;.

Currently, deduplication (the assignment of OIDs) is only supported by the tooling of the catalog packaging repository. The aim of this tool-chain is to reproducibly build catalogs in a homogeneous environment. Every catalog is implemented as a python module and provides standard methods to acquire data, parse it and find duplicates in other catalogs. All downloadable catalogs are implemented this way. If you'd like to make a catalog of your own available for &kstars;, it is recommended that you implement it as a package in the repository. The tooling provided there is so flexible, that it should work for you. For more information on how to do that see the catalog repository documentation. If you are not familiar with python programming you can request the addition of a catalog by opening a ticket in the repository or contacting the maintainers. &kstars; provides also provides means to create custom catalogs by manually entering data or importing CSV tables, but those are less flexible and offer no deduplication.

### The Catalog Management &GUI;

The catalog management &GUI; is reached via the Data Manage DSO Catalogs... menu item and is displayed below.

DSO Manager The DSO catalog management interface. The DSO catalog management interface.

On the left, a list of catalogs is displayed. In this list, you can read off key catalog properties, including whether a catalog is enabled, what its ID is and what its name is. The Mutable column signifies whether the catalog can be edited or not. Catalogs which have been downloaded from the catalog repository via the Data Download New Data... menu item are usually immutable whereas user-created catalogs aren't. You can always Clone a catalog to make it mutable.

The buttons in the upper right corner allow you to add catalogs to the database.

Import Catalog...

  Import a catalog in the `.kscat` format from a file.

  This is usually done to try out new versions of catalogs that haven't yet been picked up by the usual download server.

With the buttons in the lower right corner, you can add, remove, modify and explore catalogs. Their actions always refer to the currently selected catalog (the highlighted row on the left).

Create Catalog...

  Create a new catalog. See .

Enable / Disable

  Enable or disable a catalog.

  This is reflected in the skymap upon closing the catalog management &GUI;.

Remove

  Remove a catalog from the catalog database.

  This is reflected in the skymap upon closing the catalog management &GUI;.

Export...

  Export a catalog into a `.kscat` file.

  The resulting file can be imported with Import Catalog... button.

Clone...

  Make an exact copy of the catalog and insert it into the database.

  This is useful if you wish to make modifications to an immutable catalog.

  Note however that this is not the recommended way to alter catalogs that are provided by the catalog packaging repository &ie; the catalogs downloaded via the Data Download New Data... menu item.

Colors

  Open the catalog color editor (See .).

  This will open a dialog which allows you to set the colors in which objects from the selected catalog will be displayed for each color scheme.

More...

  Open the catalog details dialog. (See .)

  In there, you can see the contents of the catalog, as well as some more meta information. Amongst other things, you can also edit its contents (if it is mutable).

### Creating a new Catalog

Catalog creation dialog
Catalog creation dialog.

This dialog reached through the catalog management &GUI; (see ). The ID: field will be automatically chosen but can be changed. The Color: field configures in which color the objects of the catalog will be displayed. All the other values are optional or have sensible defaults. You can, of course, change these values at a later point.

Upon clicking Ok an empty catalog with the meta data entered into the dialog will be added to the database and can then be filled with objects. (See and .)

### Catalog Color Editor

Catalog color editor
The catalog color editor.

This dialog reached through the catalog management &GUI; (see ). Each button represents the color that objects will be drawn in for a specific color scheme. Clicking on a button will allow you to choose a color with a color picker. The button colors are initialized with the default colors from the catalog specification. The color "default" is the color which will be chosen for the catalog if there is no color set for a color scheme.

### Catalog Details Dialog

Catalog details dialog
The catalog details dialog.

This dialog reached through the catalog management &GUI; (see ). In the top left corner, the catalog metadata is being displayed. On the right, a table of all objects in the catalog is being shown. The search line above the table filters objects by name. Double-clicking a row opens the object details dialog (see ).

Selecting a row enables the Object menu on the left. Selecting multiple rows performs the single-object action for each selected object.

Edit...

  Edit the catalog object. (See ).

Remove

  Removes the object from the catalog.

Below the Object section, the general catalog options are situated.

Edit Catalog Meta...

  Edit the catalog metadata displayed in the top left. This opens the dialog described in .

Add Object...

  Add an object to the catalog. (See .)

Import CSV...

  Import objects from a tabular text format (csv, tsv, &etc;) into the catalog. (See .)

#### Adding/Editing Objects

Add/Edit DSO Dialog
Add/Edit DSO Dialog

This dialog allows to create or edit a deep sky object (DSO). The Basics section contains fields that have to be filled in.

Name:

  The name of the object which will be displayed in the sky.

Type:

  The type of the object.

RA / Dec (°, J2000):

  The coordinates of the object in degrees and with respect to the J2000 epoch.

Apparent magnitude:

  The apparent magnitude of the object.

The Optional section contains data fields that are optional, is divided into two subsections. They are set to and can be left at their defaults.

The Size Info in Arcminutes subsection. The object is modeled as an ellipse which is described by its major and minor axis.

The Misc subsection.

Long name:

  A longer, more descriptive name.

  Usually, the long name is something like Andromeda Galaxy for the object M31. It can contain alternative designations and names in other catalogs as well.

Catalog identifier:

  A catalog internal identifier.

  For example the screenshot above, the object originates from the OpenNGC catalog where each row is identified by NGCXXXX.

Flux:

  The flux of the object. Only applies for radio sources.

Position angle (°):

  If the object is extended, it must have some orientation in the sky. The position angle is the angle between its major axis and a straight line to the north pole.

#### Importing CSV (and similar formats)

Importing CSV Catalogs
Importing CSV Catalogs

The screenshot above shows the CSV import dialog in its default state. In the Input section, you can configure the csv parser. The Comment prefix: is the character that signals commented-out lines in the input. The Separator: should be adjusted to fit your input. Usually, it is , or ; but other separators can occur. Finally, you can choose to skip a number of lines at the beginning of the file. Select/Read button lets you choose a csv file to read with the above configuration. After that, the dialog will look as in the screenshot below.

Importing CSV Catalogs, Populated
Importing CSV Catalogs

In the top right you can choose whether coordinates are being expressed in degrees or hours/minutes/seconds. The Mapping section lets you map columns in the CSV file to data fields in &kstars;. Selecting Ignore assigns the default value for this field. Entering your own text will use this as the value for every object being read. The Type Mapping section maps strings to object types. You can add and remove mappings by clicking + or -. When you're done mapping, you can test your settings by clicking Preview to read the first few objects from the csv. If you are satisfied you can click OK to import the whole catalog or adjust your settings and preview again. As a reference, a mapping for the OpenNGC catalog is shown in the below screenshot.

Importing CSV Catalogs, OpenNGC
Importing CSV Catalogs

## Solar System

Solar System Window
Solar System Window

In the Solar System page, you can specify whether the Sun, Moon, planets, comets and asteroids are displayed, and whether the major bodies are drawn as colored circles or actual images. You can also toggle whether solar system bodies have name labels attached, and control how many of the comets and asteroids get name labels. There is an option to automatically attach a temporary orbit trail whenever a solar system body is tracked, and another to toggle whether the color of the orbit trail fades into the background sky color.

## Satellites

Satellites Window
Satellites Window

The Satellites page allows you to set the satellites view options. Firstly, you can see or hide the satellites on the skymap using Show satellites checkbox from the top View Options section. By default, satellites are drawn as small light red filled circles with an optional dark red name label next to them. You can enable or disable these labels by checking or not the Show labels checkbox. It is located below the Show satellites checkbox, within the View Options section.

The colors of the dots representing satellites and their name labels can be easily customized using the Colors page from the same Configure - &kstars; window. In addition, satellites can be drawn just like regular stars by checking the Draw satellites like stars checkbox. To display only the visible satellites from your current geographic location and time, select Show only visible satellites.

&kstars; can draw artificial satellites from many predefined groups. Thus, you can select to display a particular group, multiple groups or partially select subgroups. Under each group, a list of individual satellites is presented. To select all satellites from a group, you need to check the group checkbox. You can also select only the satellites of interest in each group. The satellites orbital elements can be updated via the internet by pressing the Update TLEs button. Another way for updating the satellites orbital elements is to use the Data Updates Update Satellites Orbital Elements menu item. If you know the name of a desired satellite then you can use the search satellites method that &kstars; provides. You need to enter the name of satellite in the Search satellites text box and the list will be reduced only to its best matches.

You can add new satellites to &kstars; default satellites set by editing the `kstars/data/satellites.dat` file. As each line of this file is a group of satellites, you need to add a new entry for your desired satellites group. An entry should have the following format: `Group Name;local_filename;url`. For example: `Iridium;iridium.tle;https://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/iridium.txt`.

## Supernovae

Supernovae Window
Supernovae Window

The Supernovae page allows you to decide if the supernovae are displayed or not by checking the Show supernovae checkbox. By default, supernovae are drawn as small light orange + mark. As for satellites, the color of supernovae can be easily customized using the Colors page.

You can set the magnitude limit for showing a supernova as well as magnitude limit for supernova alerts using the spin boxes control. The limiting magnitude is the faintest apparent magnitude of an skyobject that is visible with the naked-eye or a telescope.

The list of recent supernovae can be updated via the Data Updates Update Recent Supernovae data menu item.

## Guides

Guides Window
Guides Window

The Guides page lets you toggle whether non-objects are displayed (&ie;, constellation lines, constellation names, the Milky Way contour, the celestial equator, the ecliptic, the horizon line, and the opaque ground). You can also choose a sky culture, whether you would like to see Latin constellation names, IAU-standard three-letter abbreviations, or constellation names using your local language.

## Terrain

Terrain Window
Terrain Window

The Terrain page lets you configure whether the terrain (landscape) image will be shown on the skymap.

The user is responsible for creating a partially-transparent image, that is overlayed onto the sky map. This image should have transparent regions that the user creates to let the skymap show through, and opaque regions representing the trees, buildings, the landscape around the telescope. There is a particular format required, and this is a significant effort. There are many resources on the web that explain how this is done for Stellarium. The details of image creation are the same.

Initially, the user captures a full sphere equirectangular projection image from approximately the same point-of-view as his/her telescope. This kind of image can be captured with the Google Camera App, or the Google YouTube App on iPhone, or likely many other camera apps. The user then needs to edit the resulting image so that the sky is erased/transparent, and save it as a PNG. Finally, the user needs to determine where North is in the image, so it can eventually be aligned with the skymap. Once all that is done, the sky map can simulate the local sky view including the local terrain.

Once the image is created, it is possible to upload it via the Terrain page and configure the azimuth correction value (in degrees) that allows the user to rotate the view so north in the sky map is aligned with the north in the image.

Moreover, some speedup options can be configured to achieve the best user experience when rendering the terrain on the sky map.

You can toggle the terrain overlay on and off using a keyboard shortcut &Ctrl;&Shift;T and the View Show Terrain menu item.

## Colors

Colors Window
Colors Window

The Colors page allows you to set the color scheme, and to define custom color schemes. The tab is split into two panels:

The left panel shows a list of all display items with adjustable colors. Click on any item to bring up a color selection window to adjust its color. Below the list is the Star color mode: dropdown box. By default, &kstars; draws stars with a realistic color tint according to the spectral type of the star. However, you may also choose to draw the stars as solid white, black or red circles. If you are using the realistic star colors, you can set the saturation level of the star colors with the Star color intensity: spinbox.

The right panel lists the defined color schemes. There are four predefined schemes: the Default Colors scheme, Star Chart, which uses black stars on a white background, Night Vision, which uses only shades of red in order to protect dark-adapted vision, and Moonless Night, a more realistic, dark theme. Additionally, you can save the current color settings as a custom scheme by clicking the Save As... button. It will prompt you for a name for the new scheme, and then your scheme will appear in the list in all future &kstars; sessions. To remove a custom scheme, simply highlight it in the list, and press the Remove button.

## FITS

FITS Window
FITS Window

FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) is a popular open standard for storage, transmission and processing of digital data. For the details, one is referred to the corresponding Wikipedia article. This page allows you to configure presentation and processing of FITS data in &kstars;.

The left panel is for configuring FITS viewer itself.

Check the Use FITS viewer item if you want automatically display received images in the FITS Viewer.

The Single preview tab item is to display all captured FITS images in a single tab instead of multiple tabs per image. The Single window capture item is to display captured FITS images from all cameras in a single FITS Viewer window instead of a dedicated window to each camera. The Single window open item is to display opened FITS images in a single FITS Viewer window instead of a dedicated window to each file and the Independent window item is to make FITS Viewer window independent from &kstars;.

The right panel lists processing options. The Auto stretch item is to always apply auto stretch to images in FITS Viewer, Limited resources mode is to enable limited resource mode to turn off any resource-intensive operations, namely: Auto debayer (bayered images will not be debayered; only grayscale images are shown), Auto WCS (World Coordinate System data will not be processed; WCS maps sky coordinates to image coordinates; equatorial grid lines, object identification, and telescope slew within an image are disabled), and 3D cube (RGB images will not be processed; only grayscale images are shown). You can switch off some of these resource-greedy operations separately as well.

## INDI

INDI Window
INDI Window

For detailed explanation of the options on the INDI page see the Configure INDI section.

## Ekos

Ekos Window
Ekos Window

Ekos is an astrophotography suite, a complete astrophotography solution that can control all INDI devices including numerous telescopes, CCDs, DSLRs, focusers, filters, and a lot more. Ekos supports highly accurate tracking using online and offline astrometry solver, autofocus and autoguiding capabilities, and capture of single or multiple images using the powerful built in sequence manager. For detailed explanation of Ekos, see the Ekos section of this manual.

## Xplanet

Xplanet Window
Xplanet Window

Xplanet (should be installed separately) is a solar system planet surface renderer. This page allows you to configure presentation and processing of Xplanet data in &kstars;.

## Advanced

Advanced Window
Advanced Window

The Advanced page provides fine-grained control over the more subtle behaviors of &kstars;.

The Correct for atmospheric refraction checkbox controls whether the positions of objects are corrected for the effects of the atmosphere. Because the atmosphere is a spherical shell, light from outer space is bent as it passes through the atmosphere to our telescopes or eyes on the Earth's surface. The effect is largest for objects near the horizon, and actually changes the predicted rise or set times of objects by a few minutes. In fact, when you see a sunset, the Sun's actual position is already well below the horizon; atmospheric refraction makes it seem as if the Sun is still in the sky. Note that atmospheric refraction is never applied if you are using Equatorial coordinates.

The Use animated slewing checkbox controls how the display changes when a new focus position is selected in the map. By default, you will see the sky drift or slew to the new position; if you uncheck this option, then the display will instead snap immediately to the new focus position.

If the Attach label to centered object checkbox is selected, then a name label will automatically be attached to an object when it is being tracked by the program. The label will be removed when the object is no longer being tracked. Note that you can also manually attach a persistent name label to any object with its popup menu.

There are three situations when &kstars; must redraw the sky display very rapidly: when a new focus position is selected (and Use animated slewing is checked), when the sky is dragged with the mouse, and when the time step is large. In these situations, the positions of all objects must be recomputed as rapidly as possible, which can put a large load on the CPU. If the CPU cannot keep up with the demand, then the display will seem sluggish or jerky. To mitigate this, &kstars; will hide certain objects during these rapid-redraw situations, as long as the Hide objects while moving checkbox is selected. The timestep threshold above which objects will be hidden is determined by the Also hide if time step larger than: timestep-spinbox. You can specify the objects that should be hidden in the Configure Hidden Objects section.

## Customizing the Display

There are several ways to modify the display to your liking.

- Toggle whether the Info Boxes are drawn in the Settings Info Boxes submenu. In addition, you can manipulate the three Info Boxes with the mouse. Each box has additional lines of data that are hidden by default. You can toggle whether these additional lines are visible by double-clicking a box to shade it. Also, you can reposition a box by dragging it with the mouse. When a box hits a window edge, it will stick to the edge when the window is resized.

- Toggle whether the Toolbars are drawn in the Settings Toolbars Shown submenu. Like most &kde; toolbars, they can also be dragged around and anchored on any window edge, or even detached from the window completely if they are unlocked.

- Select a different color scheme in the Settings Color Schemes submenu. There are four predefined color schemes, and you can define your own in the Configure - &kstars; window.

- Choose an FOV Symbol using the Settings FOV Symbols submenu. FOV is an acronym for field-of-view. An FOV symbol is drawn at the center of the window to indicate where the display is pointing. Different symbols have different angular sizes; you can use a symbol to show what the view through a particular telescope would look like. For example, if you choose the 7x35 Binoculars FOV symbol, then a circle is drawn on the display that is 9.2 degrees in diameter; this is the field-of-view for 7x35 binoculars.

  You can define your own FOV symbols (or modify the existing symbols) using the Edit FOV Symbols... menu item, which launches the FOV Editor:

  Field-of-View Symbols Editor
  FOV Symbol Editor

  The list of defined FOV symbols is displayed on the left. On the right are buttons for adding a new symbol, editing the highlighted symbol's properties, and removing the highlighted symbol from the list. Note that you can even modify or remove the four predefined symbols (if you remove all symbols, the four defaults will be restored the next time you start &kstars;). Below these three buttons is a graphical preview display showing the highlighted symbol from the list. When the New... or Edit... button is pressed, the New FOV Indicator window is opened:

  New Field-of-View Symbol
  New FOV Symbol

  This window lets you modify the four properties that define a FOV symbol: name, size, shape, and color. The angular size for the symbol can either be entered directly in the Field of View edit box, or you can use the Eyepiece/Camera Tabs to calculate the field-of-view angle, given parameters of your telescope/eyepiece or telescope/camera setup. The five available shapes are: Square, Circle, Crosshairs, Bullseye and Semitransparent circle. Once you have specified all four parameters, press Ok, and the symbol will appear in the list of defined symbols. It will also be available from the Settings FOV Symbols submenu.

&hips;