So, after almost a month of researching KStars code-base and writing simple mock-ups, it’s time to begin actual coding. The aim of my project is to provide full printing support for KStars, including finder charts and observation logger forms. As logger forms will use some of the code developed for finder charts, it’s an obvious decision to implement finder charts first.

Finder charts, as the name suggest, are helpful for finding sky objects, particularly stars – mainly because they contain images of sky centered at the point of interest with different zoom levels, enabling you to quickly find the object you are looking for and begin the observation. Apart from multiple fields-of-view, finder charts should contain legend with star magnitudes and of course scale of the chart. There will also be an option to add customized annotations to the objects presented on the finder chart.

The first task on my checklist is the implementation of customizable legends for finder charts – I will keep you updated with results, with some working finder chart examples in a few weeks.

Good luck for everybody working on their GSoC and SoK projects!