KOPR

KOPR documentation

Planner finding charts

Create printable finding charts from the already completed final Planner ephemeris without recomputing comet positions.

Documented finding-chart workflow: Generate maps is single-comet. It reuses final Planner rows, performs deferred authoritative N-body refinement for the physical track, and renders one overview/index page followed by A4 landscape detail sheets.

Prerequisites

Run Generate ephemeris first and use a fresh final Planner result. Only comets present in that final ephemeris can be selected for map preparation.

When the local TYC2 catalogue is not yet qualified, the Generate maps workflow can perform the required setup/qualification on demand. GSC 1.1 data are retrieved and validated through the supported catalogue path as required by the prepared sheets.

Current workflow

  1. Generate a fresh Planner ephemeris.
  2. Choose Generate maps.
  3. Select exactly one map-eligible comet.
  4. If a required local catalogue is missing or damaged, choose Download local, Use online, or Cancel.
  5. KOPR freezes one immutable single-target document and performs deferred physical-track refinement.
  6. Inspect the overview/index and detail pages in Preview.
  7. Choose Save PDF... and atomically export the same qualified document.

Coordinates and catalogues

  • Final Planner N-body rows are reused; missing track epochs are computed only after explicit Generate maps.
  • Local catalogue roots are fixed: ./koprtyc2 and ./koprybsc5. Arbitrary TYC directory selection is retired.
  • Detail-star fusion uses deterministic priority Yale > TYC2 > GSC1.1.
  • The overview independently acquires TYC2+Yale stars to 6.5 mag; GSC is not used for that completeness claim.
  • Yale B−V is provenance only. Finding charts are permanently monochrome.

Bounded physical-track refinement

Each drawable segment is checked with authoritative topocentric N-body probes at 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 of the time interval. If projected page-space error exceeds 0.25 mm, the worst probe becomes an unannotated geometry vertex and the affected segment is measured again.

Hard bounds are depth 8, 4096 N-body epochs per operation and chunks of 32. Fallback two-body geometry is rejected. This is a bounded physical-probe contract, not an analytical proof of continuum error between probe positions.

Physical chronology is strictly increasing epoch_utc; requested_date is annotation/calendar provenance only.

Detail sheets and overview/index

All detail pages use A4 landscape canonical footprints. The first physical page is an overview/index with the complete track, direction of time, bright-star/constellation context and numbered footprints D1, D2, …; detail pages carry the matching Dn identity.

The overview is one square TAN projection: 30° by default, expanding in 1° steps only when needed to include the complete track and all detail footprints, with a hard maximum of 60°. A wider requirement fails closed and asks for a shorter interval.

Immutable Preview identity

Preparation freezes the exact scene content and a SHA-256 identity. After Preview, export performs no catalogue queries, ephemeris recomputation, track re-segmentation, orientation recomputation or label-placement recomputation.

Preview therefore represents the scene that will be written to PDF, rather than a loosely related pre-render.

Monochrome print rendering

Finding charts are black-and-white. Constellation figures are thin black lines beneath stars and the comet track. Overview constellation lines, D-footprint outlines, the comet track and time arrow are clipped to the overview rectangle.

On the overview, 6.5 mag is the smallest star symbol and brighter stars increase monotonically in size through 0.5 mag. The magnitude legend uses the same radius resolver as rendered overview stars. D labels are placed outside every footprint while remaining inside the overview frame.

Catalogue, cache and cancellation hardening

  • TYC2 cancellation stops promptly and must not publish a partial qualification cache.
  • VizieR cancellation stops the mirror sequence promptly.
  • The qualified TYC2 cache uses schema v2 and SHA-256 binding; same-size/same-mtime source mutation invalidates the cache and active catalogue.
  • R247 found and qualified all 36 expected TYC2 tiles in its setup inventory.
  • GSC cached data are revalidated for checksum, spherical footprint, magnitude bounds and Class = 0 provenance.
  • Weak cache schemas are rejected rather than silently trusted.

Qualification status

Theta-38 is source-reported PASS_HEADLESS / ARCHIVE QUALIFIED. Source-reported affected set: 68/68 PASS; current Planner maps: 198 = 197 PASS + 1 allowed PyQt5 skip; re-extracted smoke: 68/68 PASS. Native visual confirmation on a PyQt5 host remained pending in the supplied source report.

Mixed-version protection validates the component matrix before expensive work. Incremental DIFF packages must be applied only to the exact immediate qualified baseline; otherwise replace the complete kopr/ tree from the full Production ZIP.

Related chapters

Observation Planner · Comet element source roles · Troubleshooting · Performance