Skotiq 8.2.0

This release improves overnight runs, linked clients and guiding. Your sky is now opt-in, and the Sim Rig has a separate simulated guide camera for the built-in guider.

Your sky

Your sky is off by default. When it is off, Skotiq explains the storage cost—about 1.5 GB per target per night—and builds no sky-map data. On upgrade, it turns off once and offers Turn back on, Keep off or Delete. Existing data stays unless you confirm deletion.

When enabled, Your sky compresses its data and stops adding at 25 GB. Reaching the cap does not delete existing data.

Night runs

If guiding cannot start or is lost, Skotiq sends a notification and keeps imaging unguided. The run stops for this only when “Stop the run for quality problems” is on.

Shutdown steps, including camera warm-up and mount parking, are found in every plan layout when dawn arrives or a run fails or ends early. A meridian flip leaves a parked mount alone and does not repeat for a target once completed. Quick Start places the flip before parking.

Skip step skips only the current step, and a target’s end time is checked before each frame. Autofocus repeats its sweep when the best focus lies at the edge and retakes a failed frame. A failed focuser move clears the Moving status.

Tonight asks you to cap the telescope before night-end darks, including on a linked client. If you stop the darks, Skotiq still builds masters from the frames already taken.

Slews, including Go to, turn tracking on. When a mount at its limit accepts commands but does not move, Skotiq backs it off the limit and retries the command.

Stopped runs retain their true frame counts and are recorded as stopped. Recovery is offered after an interrupted app session; History can continue a run you stopped deliberately.

Linked clients

A linked client no longer disconnects or pauses the host’s devices. Start and Stop control the host’s session, plan edits write through to the host, and rejoining shows the live run. The host owns warm-up and Start at dark, so both still happen if the client sleeps or disconnects.

Clients show a clear banner when the host is unreachable or the token is wrong. They do not run Quick Start or host processing pipelines, and they poll less often. Settings pages identify settings stored on the host. Device names, counts and health agree between host and client.

The --serve option enables the server for that launch only. Host requests have a time limit so a stuck request cannot keep accumulating connections.

Guiding

The built-in guider uses a separate guide camera, never the imaging camera. Set the guide camera and guide scope in the equipment profile. A new simulated guide camera lets the Sim Rig use the built-in guider.

The guiding card offers actions for the configured guider. Built-in-guider profiles no longer show Open PHD2.

Display and image files

Red night uses pure red. The Plan altitude chart has labeled axes, the capture-bar filter picker moves the filter wheel, and Smart Night keeps typed values without requiring Enter. The top clock shows hours and minutes and updates once a minute, reducing idle display work.

The unused Auto Meridian Flip switch is removed. Configure flips in Settings → Sequencer → Meridian flip. Interface spelling is now American English throughout the reviewed text.

FITS frames include DATE-END, MJD-OBS, TELESCOP, PIERSIDE and EQUINOX. Solved frames include their WCS.

Validation

The QA wave passed the core, bridge, app, UI and desktop Dart suites with host-specific goldens excluded, static analysis, the behavioral audit, Rust tests, clippy and formatting checks on Linux. Simulator checks covered standalone operation and a local host/client pair. These checks do not establish live Windows mount behavior; ASCOM limit recovery and tracking still need hardware confirmation.

Also in this release: 8.1.4

Skotiq 8.1.4 was prepared but not published, so its changes reach most users with 8.2.0.

Framing loads more promptly when a survey server is unavailable. Requests start with CDS; if it is slow, Skotiq tries the official CDS mirror after 0.6 seconds and NASA SkyView after two seconds, and the first successful response supplies the image.

Plan → Tonight reuses shared time and observer calculations across the target catalog, with the same targets, constraints and scoring. In a desktop benchmark, catalog scoring went from 2.28 seconds to 0.89 seconds with identical recommendations.

Changes since 8.1.3

This release includes the 8.1.4 changes (4859beba2, a05b32e8d), the final QA fix wave through 1e8d6c1d5, and release preparation. Desktop, Android and installer versions are 8.2.0, build 35.