I have an older iPhone SE 5, but the software’s up to date, and starting a couple weeks ago, I’ve had trouble doing object searches. The What’s in the Sky Tonight and Telescope Simulator pages load fine but when I search for an object from either it either spins for a long time and then gives me an error, or just crashes and re-loads the WITST or Simulator page. At first the problem was intermittent, but now the search never works. I don’t see similar reports, so assume it’s on my end…but I use Telescopius far more on my phone than my PC, so hoping to resolve the issue.
Sorry for the late reply…Thanksgiving travel and all… Anyhow, yesterday before I tried upgrading, searches started working, but very slow. This morning I got the extended database popup, but couldn’t seem to log in, and searches weren’t working again. This evening it’s the same and when I tried upgrading, the version now is 231123.1924 and still can’t search (spins for a bit and then reverts back to the Telescope Simulator home page.
What device are you using? The extended database can be a bit too much for some devices at the moment. You can try changing the database back to Essential in https://telescopius.com/settings.
Thanks, that fixed it! I have a very old iPhone SE with 128GB. Just before I read your message though, so while still using the extended database, I found that the search failed when there wasn’t an exact match. ‘51’ and ‘m51’ failed but ‘m 51’ worked. On the other hand, ‘1333’ and ‘ngc 1333’ failed but ‘ngc1333’ didn’t. FWIW.
… matched a lot of objects and the obvious choices were missing. When the name match score is tied, there is a secondary sort in place but it was clearly faulty. I’ve just released an upgrade to fix this. Now, when the name match score is the same, targets are sorted secondarily by popularity, and only then by match position inside the ID. Now, searching for 51 and 1333 give these results, with M 51 and NGC 1333 at the top of the list:
This change is live starting version 231124.1750 - I hope this helps!
Let me know if searching for “m51” and “m 51” or “ngc133” vs. “ngc 1333” still don’twork for you after you get the upgrade. It works for me, but if it doesn’t for you then it would clearly be a bug.
That’s the version I have, but to be clear the search issues only occur when I’m using the Extended database. Earlier with that database, if the search wasn’t an exact match (I’m assuming) the search would crash and refresh the page I was on. Now when I search using that database, it crashes on every search. With the Essential database, I have no search issues.
Using the extended database, if I go to Targets and pick a type, Deep Sky say, then I get a list as expected. But if I then perform a search from there, the same thing happens as when I’m on the Simulator page.
After reviewing the global search stats, I decided to add the remaining NGC and IC objects to the essential database, and some other objects. This means 75% more objects in the essential database.
This should work fine on old devices with less memory.
The change is already live but each device can take up to 24 hours to get the updated version. If you want to give it a go right away to see how it performs, you can open Telescopius in an incognito window.
