Hi, all. Today we rolled out some relatively minor upgrades to VSP. There is nothing groundbreaking here. It's mostly minor tweaks and bug fixes. But I'm outlining them here for your information:
Additions
- There is a new "reset all" button that will reset all fields in the user interface to their default values.
- The variable star designator (cross hairs at the center of the chart) now appears on all charts, regardless of the limiting magnitude.
- We have new documentation about how you can embed charts into your web pages or personal software packages using the GET method. We still hope to have a more formal, advanced API developed in the future. The documentation is at http://www.aavso.org/accessing-variable-star-plotter-get-method .
- The printing of the chart title has been moved down the page just a bit.
- Certain "remarks" for a star that are entered into VSX are plotted at the bottom of the chart.
- If using a ChartID, all other UI settings are ignored.
Bug Fixes
- The ChartID function was not returning the correct values for non V-band photometry for comp stars that had their photometry updated between now and when the chart was originally plotted. This is fixed.
- Certain characters in the optional chart "title" field caused VSP to create blank pages. This has been fixed.
- Leading spaces are now stripped from the UI fields.
Error Checking Improvements
- When plotting a chart for a star without an AUID, the error message used to state that the star could not be found. Now it states that if it doesn't have an AUID to contact HQ to have one assigned.
- When the external DSS server is down, the error message displayed now describes that the best thing you can do is just wait and try again later.
Thanks to Michael Koppelman who continues to maintain the VSP chart rendering code on volunteer time. And also to Wolfgang Renz and Chris Watson for their assistance. Ben Briggs, our 2011 Margaret Mayall Summer Student, also helped out.