I have some objects that appear in multiple observing lists, e.g. when I import third-party lists of AstroLeague targets they sometimes include objects that I had previously added to one of my own lists. When I display the contents of one of these other lists, it would be convenient to filter out all the objects that I have already observed. And there are radio buttons in the dialogue that appear to allow this, but they have no effect, i.e. existing observations for objects in the list are ignored And yet, if I select the object from the list, I can proceed to display its information and, from there, display a list of its observations, so the app definitely knows about them.
This is confusing. The behaviour in the observing list "member" dialogue suggests that the filter is acting only on observations that were generated from that observing list - when I display one of my own lists, members with an existing observation generated from that list have a tick against them, and the filtering behaves in line with those ticks. But the behaviour from the object info dialogue clearly shows that the app can navigate to all observations for an object, from whichever list they were generated.
I think this behaviour is not helpful. If an object appears in an observing list, I want to see (as a tick) and be able to filter (radio button) on its "observed" status, whether or not the observation was initiated from that particular list. I just want to distinguish the items I've seen, or not seen. I really don't care which observing list prompted the observation - I do care which session the observation is linked to, but that's already catered for elsewhere.
The app clearly has the information in its database to do this, so would you consider making this change?
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13 comments
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Keiron Smith Official comment DevOps reference: https://starrynight.unfuddle.com/a#/projects/7965/tickets/by_number/1481
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Chris This has been a long standing complaint that you can't log an observation to multiple lists, a big shortcoming in SkySafari, and the problem is a much bigger problem now that many, like me, have logged 1000 objects that are tied to only one list and I won't be going back trying to correct that when they finally add the feature. This makes for many steps every time I work on a list to see if an object hasbeen observed, and many incomplete lists because I'm not going to the hassle to duplicate my observations up to 5 times. This is probably the biggest shortcoming in the app, and it's been complained about for years unfortunately. Because of it, I keep an entire database separate from SkySafari that I update after every observing session just so I can query and find out if I've finished my observing lists. Imagine if you could download a league list in SkySafari and automatically have a view into which objects you needed to observe to finish it, or have the option to start over with a clean list and observe each one.
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Jamie Andrews Ah, right. I'm a recent convert to SkySafari and I've only just spotted this. I was hoping I was mistaken, apparently not.
That's a real shame, in general I love the app.
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Jamie Andrews Can anyone who has updated to V7 tell me whether this point has been fixed in that version?
i.e. are observations still tied to an observing list?
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Jamie Andrews Having just upgraded to V7, I can now answer my own question: no, it is unchanged.
Is there any acceptance that this behaviour is undesirable?
Ideally, SS would support both "display objects not observed from this observing list" and "display objects that have never been observed, ever", but for me, the latter is more important.
I notice that, when I exported my SS observations from LiveSky using the OpenAstronomyLog format, the individual observations are not linked to observing lists.
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Keiron Smith I'm going to ask Pedro Braganca to comment on this issue - as developers have reviewed this request in the past, and looks like it is lined up to be changed in a future version.
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Keiron Smith Jamie, Chris, please discuss this issue further here.
[Feature Request] Objects Marked As Observed Should Show As Observed In Only The Working List
Thanks!
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Pedro Braganca v7 iOS version now has an option to filter by "Unobserved in any list". We will be bringing this filter to the Android version in 7.0.5. It will allow you to exclude objects that have been observed (have a log entry) in any list you have, not just the current list.
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Jamie Andrews That's excellent news, Pedro.
Many thanks.
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Jamie Andrews Pedro,
I'm now on Pro 7.0.5.1 and I see the new option "unobserved in any list".
This is working as you described, so thanks for incorporating that, it was my biggest gripe about SS :-)
Just one thing about this, though, (and it's is a bit obscure) -
If I have an observing list that I've not used to observe from yet, then select "Observed in this list" from the filter list and press "back" (i.e. the Android action), then it displays no objects, just as expected, and all is good. But if I select that filter option and then press the "X" in the top-right-hand corner (SS action) instead, then I return to the main chart screen (no problem with that), but if I then go back into the list that I filtered, I find that this time, the filter/sort icon has disappeared from the top row. So it's now impossible to get the contents of the original list back. You can't edit it either, because it tells you to switch to "display all" first - which you can't do. I thought I would have to re-create my (quite long) list, but then I found that I could choose to share it in an email to myself, then re-import it, and thankfully the imported list defaults to "show all".
I did also test two other filters. By creating a list that had only objects that had never been observed in any list. When I filtered on "objects not observed in any list", it does the same thing - if you return with the back button, it returns you to an empty list, but with the filter icon still displayed, whereas if you press the "X", then when you re-enter the list there is no sort/filter icon. It's the same behaviour when all the objects in a list HAVE been observed from that list and you choose "objects not observed in this list".
So, not a priority fix I think, as I will try to remember not to press the "X", but if I do, then I'll email the list to myself to unlock it. But if anyone is going into that code for any reason, they might want to take a look.
Thanks
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Luca Vanzella Hi Pedro,
I am on Pro 7.1.4.0 Android and I have the same issue as Jamie Andrews reported on Sep 8, 2022 - listed below. But when I try the workaround to email myself the Observing list, when I go to import it, I get "unrecognized file type", so I can't use the list anymore. It would be nice if this is fixed. Thanks.
Issue:
If I have an observing list that I've not used to observe from yet, then select "Observed in this list" from the filter list and press "back" (i.e. the Android action), then it displays no objects, just as expected, and all is good. But if I select that filter option and then press the "X" in the top-right-hand corner (SS action) instead, then I return to the main chart screen (no problem with that), but if I then go back into the list that I filtered, I find that this time, the filter/sort icon has disappeared from the top row. So it's now impossible to get the contents of the original list back. You can't edit it either, because it tells you to switch to "display all" first - which you can't do.
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Luca Vanzella Re: my previous post on this. I opened the skylist file I emailed myself in a text editor and discovered that it is NOT in the correct format. That's why it won't import.
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Pedro Braganca Thanks Luca and Jamie. I've reported your observations to the dev team.
DevOps reference: https://starrynight.unfuddle.com/a#/projects/7965/tickets/by_number/2538
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