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OK, it's on.
Stellarium
- Thread starter Da Blob
- Start date
BirdValiant
Redshirt
- Local time
- Yesterday 11:15 PM
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2011
- Messages
- 7
Stellarium is an invaluable tool for stargazing. I recommend getting to know the shortcut keys. F3 will be your new best friend.
If you have a telescope, the Ocular plugin is quite useful. (I hope that, at some point, someone will program in the observed brightness and resolution through a particular telescope into that plugin as well.) Also if you have a telescope, you should also download the extra star catalogs (in the configuration menu) for more accurate depictions of the sky with more light-gathering power.
To emulate what you actually see at a particular site, you need to mess around with the relative and absolute scales for the stars and the level of light pollution. For my dark-adjusted eyes and at a dark sky site, with no moon, I find that the following settings closely emulate what I actually see: Absolute scale=1.4, Relative scale=0.50, and Light pollution=1; however, the Milky Way is shown too bright at these settings. When the moon is present, the Light Pollution increases to 3 or 4.
Double stars don't resolve as they should (especially with the Ocular plugin, at least with my small display), but can be made to by turning down relative star brightness and zooming really close.
Some fun things to do:
*change the date to thousands of years before or after present. Axial precession really changes things up!
*set location to Mimas, with Saturn visible in the sky. It stretches over 90 degrees. I wish NASA would send a probe with a wide-angle video camera to Mimas to watch this spectacular sight, probably the best in the solar system.
*set time and date to a solar or lunar eclipse
The program Celestia is cool for flying around the cosmos and can actually be used as a stellarium, but in this usage it's clunky and the stars don't look like they should.
If you have a telescope, the Ocular plugin is quite useful. (I hope that, at some point, someone will program in the observed brightness and resolution through a particular telescope into that plugin as well.) Also if you have a telescope, you should also download the extra star catalogs (in the configuration menu) for more accurate depictions of the sky with more light-gathering power.
To emulate what you actually see at a particular site, you need to mess around with the relative and absolute scales for the stars and the level of light pollution. For my dark-adjusted eyes and at a dark sky site, with no moon, I find that the following settings closely emulate what I actually see: Absolute scale=1.4, Relative scale=0.50, and Light pollution=1; however, the Milky Way is shown too bright at these settings. When the moon is present, the Light Pollution increases to 3 or 4.
Double stars don't resolve as they should (especially with the Ocular plugin, at least with my small display), but can be made to by turning down relative star brightness and zooming really close.
Some fun things to do:
*change the date to thousands of years before or after present. Axial precession really changes things up!
*set location to Mimas, with Saturn visible in the sky. It stretches over 90 degrees. I wish NASA would send a probe with a wide-angle video camera to Mimas to watch this spectacular sight, probably the best in the solar system.
*set time and date to a solar or lunar eclipse
The program Celestia is cool for flying around the cosmos and can actually be used as a stellarium, but in this usage it's clunky and the stars don't look like they should.
Wish
Wellington
