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Stellarium User Guide - Physics and Astronomy

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1. 4 Major 6 Bchpseg s r s e ee a ee Re RS 10 1 SolarEclipsey 00 F 10 2 Lunar Eclipses 11 1 CONTENTS Chapter 1 Introduction Stellarium is a software project that allows people to use their home computer as a virtual planetarium It will calculate the positions of the Sun and Moon planets and stars and draw how the sky would look to an observer depending on their location and the time It can also draw the constellations and simulate astronomical phenomena such as meteor showers and solar or lunar eclipses Stellarium may be used as an educational tool for teaching about the night sky as an observational aide for amateur astronomers wishing to plan a night s observing or simply as a curiosity it s fun Because of the high quality of the graphics that Stellarium pro duces it is used in some real planetarium projector products Some amateur astronomy groups use it to create sky maps for describing regions of the sky in articles for newsletters and magazines Stellarium is under fairly rapid development and by the time you read this guide a newer version may have been released with even more features that those documented here Check for updates to Stellarium at the Stellarium webite If you have questions and or comments about
2. For example 90915712 When more precision is required the seconds component may include a decimal part for exam ple 90 15 12 432 2 Decimal degrees for example 90 2533 E 3 4 The Magnitude Scale When astronomers talk about magnitude they are referring to the brightness of an object How bright an object appears to be depends on how much light it s giving out and how far it is from the observer Astronomers separate these factors by using two measures absolute magnitude M which is a measure of how much light is being given out by an object and apparent magnitude m which is how bright something appears to be in the sky For example consider two 100 watt lamps one which is a few meters away and one which is a kilometre away Both give out the same amount of light they have the same absolute magnitude However the nearby lamp seems much brighter it has a much greater apparent magnitude When astronomers talk about magnitude without specifying whether they mean apparent or absolute magnitude they are usually referring to apparent magni tude The magnitude scale has its roots in antiquity The Greek astronomer Hipparchus de fined the brightest stars in the sky to be first magnitude and the dimmest visible to the naked eye to be sixth magnitude In the 19th century British astronomer Norman Pogson quantified the scale more precisely defining it as a logarithmic scale where a magnitude 1 object is 100 times as bright as a mag
3. Similarly observers in the Southern hemisphere see the Southern celestial pole at the zenith when they are at the South pole and it moves to the horizon as the observer travels towards the equator 1 Leave time moving on nice and fast and open the configuration window Go to the location tab and click on the map right at the top i e set your location to the North pole See how the stars rotate around a point right at the top of the screen With the field of view set to 90 and the horizon at the bottom of the screen the top of the screen is the zenith 2 Now click on the map again this time a little further South You should see the positions of the stars jump and the centre of rotation has moved a little further down the screen 3 Click on the map even further towards and equator You should see the centre of rotation have moved down again To help with the visualisation of the celestial sphere turn on the equatorial grid by clicking the button on the main tool bar or pressing the on the e key Now you can see grid lines drawn on the sky These lines are like lines of longitude an latitude on the Earth but drawn for the celestial sphere The Celestial Equator is the line around the celestial sphere that is half way between the celestial poles just as the Earth s equator is the line half way between the Earth s poles E 2 Coordinate Systems E 2 1 Altitude Azimuth Coordinates The Altitude Azimuth coordinate system can
4. audit n EN UNE spheric mirror mirror radius float This parameter controls the properties of the pee e spheric mirror dome radius float This parameter controls the properties of the LESEN EE ad spheric mirror zenith y float This parameter controls the properties of the E Hm spheric mirror scaling factor float This parameter controls the properties of the pun ut AM uum localization sky culture string sets the sky culture to use Valid val ues are defined in the second column of data skycultures fab Values western poly nesian egyptian chinese The sky culture affects the constellations localization sky_locale string Sets langauge used for names of objects in the sky e g planets The value is a short locale code e g en de en_GB localization app_locale string Sets langauge used for Stellarium s user in terface The value is a short locale code e g en de en_GB stars star_scale float multiplies the size of the stars Typical value stars star_mag_scale float multiplies the magnitude of the stars higher values mean stars appear brighter Typical value 1 3 stars star_twinkle_amount float sets the amount of twinkling Typical value eee Lac stars max_mag_star_name float sets the magnitude of the stars whose labels stars flag_star_twinkle bool set to false to turn star twinkling off true to stars flag_point_star bool set to false to draw stars at a size that corre sponds to th
5. excluded from the list Because all of the Messier objects are visible with binoculars or small telescopes under favourable conditions they are popular viewing objects for ama teur astronomers In early spring astronomers sometimes gather for Messier Marathons when all of the objects can be viewed over a single night Stellarium includes images of many Messier objects 12 Observing Hints When star gazing there s a few little things which make a lot of difference and are worth taking into account Dark skies For many people getting away from light pollution isn t an easy thing At best it means a drive away from the towns and for many the only chance to see a sky without significant glow from street lighting is on vacation If you can t get away from the cities easily make the most of it when you are away Wrap up warm The best observing conditions are the same conditions that make for cold nights even in the summer time Observing is not a strenuous physical activity so you will feel the cold a lot more than if you were walking around Wear a lot of warm clothing don t sit lie on the floor at least use a camping mat consider taking a deck chair and take a flask of hot drink Dark adaption The true majesty of the night sky only becomes apparent when the eye has had time to become accustomed to the dark This process known as dark adaption can take up to half and hour and as soon as the observer sees a bright lig
6. 32 5 9 TELESCOPE CONTROL CHAPTER 5 ADVANCED USE Figure 5 2 Telescope control 5 9 Telescope Control Version 0 8 1 of Stellarium introduces simple control of motorised telescopes The user selects an object i e by clicking on something a planet a star etc and presses the telescope go to key see section and the telescope will be guided to the object Multiple telescopes may be controlled simultaneously WARNING Stellarium will not prevent your telescope from being pointed at the Sun It is up to the user to ensure proper filtering and safety measures are applied whenever using a telescope 5 9 11 Telescope Servers Stellarium does not control the telescope directly Instead it talks to another program called a telescope server The telescope server program knows how to talk to a particular type of telescope and provides a common interface to Stellarium over TCP IP networking Each telescope to be controlled has one telescope server program which listens to a TCP port through which Stellarium connects to it Up to ten telescopes may be controlled by Stellarium at one time At time of writing there are two telescope servers implemented a dummy test tele scope server and a telescope server for the Meade LX200 33 5 9 TELESCOPE CONTROL CHAPTER 5 ADVANCED USE A name for the telescope e g Ix200 Don t use spaces The network protocol Use TCP The name of the computer on which the telescope server
7. 6 LANGUAGE SETTINGS CHAPTER 4 CONFIGURATION Turns on the drawing of the stars The drawing of the Sun is not affected Stars Names Up to mag Turns on the labelling of named stars There is a spin box next to this option which controls the brightest magnitude of the stars that are la belled remember the lower the number the brighter the star Star Twinkle Amount Turns on star twinkles There is a spin box for setting the amount of Constellations Lines Turns on the drawing of the lines between stars that help to visualise the Ra NNNM Nebulas Names Up to mag Turns on the drawing of nebulae and galaxies A limit may be set as to the magnitude of the objects which will be shown Also display Nebulas without textures When selected nebulae for which there are no images are also displayed ngu Turns on drawing of the planets Mercury Venus etc Moon Scale Magnifies the size of the moon by 4x People perceive the Moon to have a larger angular size than it actually does This feature compensates for this illusion which doesn t apply so much to computer screens as it does in the sky Planets Hints Draws a small circle around the planets and labels them with the ap peer Equatorial Grid Draws grid lines for the RA Dec coordinate system see section Equator Line Draws the celestial equator line Azimuthal Grid Draws grid lines for the Altitude Azimuth coordinate system see sec tion E 2 1 Ecliptic Line Dr
8. Date and Time The second tab in the configuration window is Date amp Time figure A T In this tab you will see controls for adjusting the year month day hour minute and second There is also a display of the current time zone setting and time rate The time zone setting may be set using the TUI see section 3 T 7 for more information 4 2 Setting Your Location The positions of the stars in the sky is dependent on your location on Earth as well as the time and date For Stellarium to show accurately what is or will be was in the sky you must tell it where you are You only need to do this once Stellarium saves your location so you won t need to set it again until you move To set your location choose the Location tab in the configuration window figure 4 2 There are then two methodd that you may use to select your location 1 You can set your location by where you live on the map This is convenient but it isn t very precise You can zoom in and out of the map by rolling the mouse wheel and drag zoomed in the map around with the right mouse button 2 If you know your longitude and latitud you might want to can set it using the controls at the bottom of the window Once you re happy that the location is set correctly click on the Save Location button and close the configuration window Actually there are three methods you can also edit the configuration file This is useful if you want to be mo
9. Find M31 in Binoculars M31 the Andromeda Galaxy is the most distant object visible to the naked eye Finding it in binoculars is a rewarding experience for new comers to observing H 1 1 Simulation 1 Setthe location to a mid Northern latitude if necessary M31 isn t visible for South ern hemisphere observers The UK is ideal 2 Find M31 and set the time so that the sky is dark enough to see it The best time of year for this at Northern latitudes is Autumn Winter although there should be a chance to see it at some time of night throughout the year 3 Set the field of view to 6 or the field of view of your binoculars if they re different 6 is typical for 7x50 bins 4 Practise finding M31 from the bright stars in Cassiopeia and the constellation of Andromeda H 1 2 For Real This part is not going to be possible for many people First you need a good night and a dark sky In urban areas with a lot of light pollution it s going to be very hard to see Andromeda H 2 Handy Angles As described in section E T3 your hand at arm s length provides a few useful estimates for angular size It s useful to know if your handy angles are typical and if not what they are The method here below is just one way to do it feel free to use another method of your own construction Hold your hand at arm s length with your hand open the tips of your thumb and little finger as far apart as you can comfortably hold them Get a friend
10. Observed over very long periods of time the direction the axis of rotation points does actually change The angle between the axis of rotation and the orbital plane stays constant but the direction the axis points the position of the celestial pole transcribes a circle on the stars in the celestial sphere This process is called precession The motion is similar to the way in which a gyroscope slowly twists as figure E 5 illustrates Precession is a slow process The axis of rotation twists through a full 360 about once every 28 000 years Precession has some important implications 1 RA Dec coordinates change over time albeit slowly Measurements of the positions of stars recorded using RA Dec coordinates must also include a date for those coor dinates 2 Polaris the pole star won t stay a good indicator of the location of the Northern celestial pole In 14 000 years time Polaris will be nearly 47 away from the celestial pole E 5 Parallax Parallax is the change of angular position of two stationary points relative to each other as seen by an observer due to the motion of said observer Or more simply put it is the apparent shift of an object against a background due to a change in observer position This can be demonstrated by holding ones thumb up at arm s length Closing one eye note the position of the thumb against the background After swapping which eye is open without moving the thumb appears to be in a different
11. The Moon is at aphelion furthest from Earth in its elliptic orbit and its disc is too small to completely cover the Sun In this case most of the Sun s disc is obscured all except a thin ring around the edge 68 E11 ASTRONOMICAL CATALGEREISIDIX ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA F 10 2 Lunar Eclipses Lunar eclipses occur when the Earth moves between the Sun and the Moon and the Moon is in the Earth s shadow They occur under the same basic conditions as the solar eclipse but can occur more often because the Earth s shadow is so much larger than the Moon s Total lunar eclipses are more noticeable than partial eclipses because the Moon moves fully into the Earth s shadow and there is very noticeable darkening However the Earth s atmosphere refracts light bends it in such a way that some sunlight can still fall on the Moon s surface even during total eclipses In this case there is often a marked reddening of the light as it passes through the atmosphere and this can make the Moon appear a deep red colour 11 Astronomical Catalogues F 11 1 Hipparcos Hipparcos for High Precision Parallax Collecting Satellite was an astrometry mission of the European Space Agency ESA dedicated to the measurement of stellar parallax and the proper motions of stars The project was named in honour of the Greek astronomer Hipparchus Ideas for such a mission dated from 1967 with the mission accepted by ESA in 1980 The satellite was launc
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14. first letter of the name m Stellarium makes a list of objects whose name begins with M Mars Miranda Mimas Mercury Moon The first item in this list Mars is automatically filled in for us Pressing return now would go to Mars but we want Mimas so we keep typing After the letter i Miranda is auto completed Again it s not what we want so we continue After the third letter m Mimas is selected so we simply press return or click the go button to locate it This feature can save some typing and is useful for finding objects whose spelling is not certain 3 1 5 Help Window Figure 3 4 The help window 12 3 1 TOUR CHAPTER 3 INTERFACE GUIDE The Help window is useful as a quite reference to the key strokes that may be used to control various aspects of Stellarium See section for a complete list of key bindings 3 1 6 Information Window Information Stellarium 0 8 0 August 2005 Copyright c 2000 2005 Fabien Chereau et al ogram is modify it under t Figure 3 5 The information window Pressing the i key on the keyboard toggles the display of the information window This displays the version number of Stellarium and some information about the project 3 1 7 The Text Menu As well as the regular key bindings and the tool bars Stellarium has another method for interaction with the user the Text Menu or Text User Interface TUI The TUI is activated using the m key and is navigated using the cu
15. is run ning The TCP port number which the telescope server is listening to delay This determines how Stellarium displays the current location of the telescope This is a numeric value expressed in microsec onds e g 500000 half a second ago Table 5 5 Telescope server parameters For example if you have two Meade LX200 telescopes which are connected to your Linux machine on serial ports dev ttyS0 and dev ttyS1 you would start two telescope server programs like this TelescopeServerLx200 10000 dev ttySO amp TelescopeServerLx200 10001 dev ttyS1 amp In this case the two telescope server programs would listen on TCP ports 10000 and 10001 respectively See the Stellarium wiki for more information how to obtain and build the telescope server programs 5 9 2 Configuration To use telescope control in Stellarium the following are necessary 1 Edit the main configuration file In the astro section set the value of flag_telescopes and flag_telescope_name tO true 2 Set up a telescope and start a telescope server for it see section 5 9 1 3 Add a new section telescopes to the main configuration file One line per telescope is required Each line starts with the numerical ID of the telescope and a colon separated list of connection parameters name protocol hostname port number and delay See table 5 5 for an explanation of these terms For example these settings define two telescopes named f
16. likely to be included in future versionq 5 3 1 Running Scripts 1 Copy the script file to the lt config root gt data scripts directory 2 If Stellarium is running re start it there is a bug in version 0 8 0 that means the file names in this directory are only read at start up 3 Press the m key to open the text menu Use the cursor keys to select option 6 1 local scripts Press return and the select and exit to run text will be highlighted 4 Use the up and down cursors to select your script Press return and then exit the text menu with m and the script will start to execute Note that while scripts are running some key bindings are altered Specifically the time rate keys j and 1 alter the rate at which the script progresses and may press CTRL c to stop the script and result normal operation 5 3 2 Recording Scripts Pressing CTRL r will start and stop script recording On Linux systems and the Mac script files are created in the user s home directory with the name stellarium sts where the is a number On Windows systems the file is placed in the My Documents folder 5 3 3 Editing Scripts Manually editing a script file may be done using a simple text editor To get yourself started record a quick script go to a few objects using find and clicking on them zoom in and out using auto zoom and see what this generates in the script file For a complete list of scripting commands see appendix B 5 3 4 Example
17. many galax ies including the Andromeda galaxy M31 the Pinwheel Galaxy M101 the Sombrero Galaxy M104 and many others Astronomers classify galaxies according to their appearance Some classifications in clude spiral galaxies elliptical galaxies lenticular galaxies and irregular galaxies 7 The Milky Way It s a little hard to work out what our galaxy would look life from far away because when we look up at the night sky we are seeing it from the inside All the stars we can see are part of the Milky Way and we can see them in every direction However there is some structure There is a higher density of stars in particular places There is a band of very dense stars running right round the sky in huge irregular stripe Most of these stars are very dim but the overall effect is that on very dark clear nights we can see a large beautiful area of diffuse light in the sky It is this for which we name our galaxy The reason for this effect is that our galaxy is somewhat like a disc and we are off to one side Thus when we look towards the centre of the disc we see more a great concentration of stars there are more star in that direction As we look out away from the centre of the disc we see less stars we are staring out into the void between galaxies 8 Nebulae Seen with the naked eye binoculars or a small telescope a nebula plural nebulae are fuzzy patches on the sky Historically the term referred to any extended
18. object but the modern definition excludes some types of object such as galaxies Observationally nebulae are popular objects for amateur astronomers they exhibit complex structure spectacular colours and a wide variety of forms Many nebulae are 67 F9 METEORS METEORITES ANPEMBITEBROSIDRONOMICAL PHENOMENA bright enough to be seen using good binoculars or small to medium sized telescopes and are a very photogenic subject for astro photographers Nebulae are associated with a variety of phenomena some being clouds of interstellar dust and gas in the process of collapsing under gravity some being envelopes of gas thrown off during a supernova event so called supernova remnants yet others being the remnants of solar systems around dead stars planetary nebulae Examples of nebulae for which Stellarium has images include the Crab Nebula M1 which is a supernova remnant and the Dumbbell Nebula M27 which is a planetary nebula F 9 Meteors Meteorites and Meteoroids These objects are small pieces of space debris left over from the early days of the solar system that orbit the Sun They come in a variety of shapes sizes an compositions ranging from microscopic dust particles up to about ten meters across Sometimes these objects collide with the Earth The closing speed of these collisions is generally extremely high tens or kilometres per second When such an object ploughs through the Earth s atmosphere a large amount of kin
19. position against the background A similar thing happens due to the Earth s motion around the Sun Nearby stars appear to move against more distant background stars as illustrated in figure E 6 The movement of nearby stars against the background is called stellar parallax or annual parallax 58 E 5 PARALLAX APPENDIX E ASTRONOMICAL CONCEPTS Polaris X y Teng meee dane North pole ecliptic South pole 23 27 Figure E 5 Precession Earth in January M N x S 4 s B x M me g D 2 7 1 i b ppl he 1 i i 7 m i AU M i par H D oe bo ket w T2 Earth in July i B H q 3 View from Earth in January 4 View from Earth in July Figure E 6 Apparent motion due to parallax 59 5 PARALLAX APPENDIX E ASTRONOMICAL CONCEPTS Since we know the distance the radius of the Earth s orbit around the Sun from other methods we can use simple geometry to calculate the distance of the nearby star if we measure annual parallax In figure annual parallax p is half the angular distance between the apparent positions of the nearby star The distance of the nearby object is d Astronomers use a unit of distance called the parsec which is defined as the distance at which a nearby star has p eq Even the nearest stars exhib
20. s just peanuts to space M Astronomers use a variety of units for distance that make sense in the context of the mind boggling vastness of space Astronomical Unit AU This is the mean Earth Sun distance Roughly 150 million kilo metres 1 49598 x 105km The AU is used mainly when discussing the solar system for example the distance of various planets from the Sun Light year A light year is not as some people believe a measure of time It is the dis tance that light travels in a year The speed of light being approximately 300 000 kilometres per second means a light year is a very large distance indeed working out at about 9 5 trillion kilometres 9 46073 x 10 km Light years are most frequently used when describing the distance of stars and galaxies or the sizes of large scale objects like galaxies nebulae etc Parsec A parsec is defined as the distance of an object that has an annual parallax of 1 second of arc This equates to 3 26156 light years 3 08568 x 1013 km Parsecs are most frequently used when describing the distance of stars or the sizes of large scale objects like galaxies nebulae etc E 3 2 Time The length of a day is defined as the amount of time that it takes for the Sun to travel from the highest point in the sky at mid day to the next high point on the next day In astronomy this is called a solar day The apparent motion of the Sun is caused by the rotation of the Earth However in this time the Earth no
21. script This example script shows the occultation of Jupiter by the Moon in 2004 Note that the atmosphere and ground rendering is turned off so that they are not in the way if the location of the observer is set such that the event is not in the night time and or above the horizon This is a useful technique for scripting to avoid the need to set the location clear flag atmosphere off flag ground off wait duration 2 date local 2004 12 718 39 32 select planet Jupiter pointer off flag track object on zoom fov 0 5 wait duration 2 Stellarium wiki has a page containing list of user contributed scripts 24 5 4 CUSTOMISING LANDSCAPES CHAPTER 5 ADVANCED USE timerate rate 30 script action end 5 3 5 Scripting Hints and Tips e When writing scripts it s useful to use the script bar see section 5 2 3 e Explicitly set all the display options at the start of each script you can t guaranteed what state the user s application will have e Explicitly set the location and date time e The clear command is a useful starting point from which to set the display flags 5 4 Customising Landscapes It is possible to create your own landscapes for Stellarium There are three methods which may use to achieve this Single Fish eye Method Using a fish eye panorama image Single Spherical Method Using a spherical panorama image Multiple Image Method Using a series of images split from a 360 strip panorama
22. string set the date display format mode can be sys tem default mddyyyy ddmmyyyy or yyyym 1808601 init_location home_planet string name of solar system body on which to start stellarium This may be set at runtime from the TUI menu 42 Appendix B Scripting Commands Argument Names pause play syn f filename AUDIO_FILENAME Used with play action Format support depends on your binary Ogg Vorbis format is recommended WAV format should work but is discouraged because in this case the audio track will not adjust if the script is fast for warded This is a current limitation of the SDL_Mixer library peer ed ee RE ND a 2 71 clear state natural Turn off fog and all labels lines and art Turn planet star and nebula rendering on Deselect any selected ob jects Return to initial fov and viewing direction If state is natural ground and atmosphere will be turned on oth erwise these will be turned off date local IYYY Y MM DD Thh mm ss Set time to a specified date and or time using current timezone T is literal utc IYYYY MM DDThh mm ss Set time to a specified date and time in UTC time T is literal deselect Deselects current object selection including any constel lation selection See select command 43 APPENDIX B SCRIPTING COMMANDS Command Argument Names Argument Values Notes atmosphere azimuthal_grid on off 0 toggle Set rendering fl
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25. tions of the constellations fields are 1 Constellation abbreviation 2 image filename This will be added to config root textures Should include the png extension Note this is case sensi tive Star 1 x position in image pixel Star 1 y position in image pixel Star 1 HP catalogue number Star 2 x position in image pixel Star 2 y position in image pixel Star 2 HP catalogue number Star 3 x position in image pixel Star 3 y position in image pixel Star 3 HP catalogue number constellationship fab Describes the lines for the constellations The fields are 1 Constellation abbreviation 2 Number of lines After this are pairs of HP catalogue numbers which the lines are drawn between info ini Contains the name for this sky culture as it will ap star_names fab Contains a list of HP catalogue numbers and com 5 8 Taking Screenshots You can save what is the screen to a file by pressing CTRL s Screenshots are taken in bmp format and have filenames something like this stellariuml bmp stellariuim2 bmp the number increments to prevent over writing existing files Stellarium creates screenshots in different directories depending in your system type Windows screenshots get put in your My Documents folder typically the full path is C My Documents Mac OS X screenshots get put on your desktop Linux screenshots get put in your home folder
26. to measure the distance between your thumb and your eye we ll call this D There is a tendency to over stretch the arm when someone is measuring it try to keep the thumb eye distance as it would be if you were looking at some distant object Without changing the shape of your hand measure the distance between the tips of your thumb and little finger It s probably easiest to mark their positions on a piece of 75 H 3 FIND A LUNAR ECLIPSE APPENDIX H EXERCISES paper and measure the distance between the marks we ll call this d Using some simple trigonometry we can estimate the angular distance 0 Repeat the process for the distance across a closed fist three fingers and the tip of the little finger For example for the author D 72 cm d 21 cm so 21 0 2 arctan 777 D 0 1 1 1 09 6 Remember that handy angles not very precise depending on your posture at a given time the values may vary by a fair bit H 3 Find a Lunar Eclipse Stellarium comes with two scripts for finding lunar eclipses but can you find one on a different date H 4 Find a Solar Eclipse Find a Solar Eclipse using Stellarium amp take a screenshot of it H 5 Script a Messier Tour Write a script which shows a tour of five of your favourite messier objects 1 Make a list of five objects to include in your tour 2 Close Stellarium and create a new script file in the lt config root gt data scripts directory Call it someth
27. user can select what options will be set when the program is started in future Table 4 2 shows a list of these options and describes what they do 4 6 Language Settings Stellarium supports several languages to some degree although the internationalisation process is not yet complete When you first start Stellarium it will try to determine the most appropriate language settings from your system settings You may also customise your language settings in the Language tab of the configuration window see figure 4 5 In the language tab there are the following controls Program Language This is the language which is used for the user interface of the pro gram i e text in windows mouse over hints for the button bars etc If you change this setting you must save settings and re start stellarium for your changes to take effect Sky Language This is the language used to label astonomical objects such as the planets Changes to this setting come into effect immediatley Sky Culture The sky culture is the astronomical tradition used to define the constellations and common star names This setting also affects constellation art which at time of writing is only available for the Western sky culture Changes to this setting come into effect immediatley Save as default button This buttons saves yor language settings so that future Stellarium sessions use the settings If you do not save your changes will be lost when Stellatum exits 4
28. which it s brightness varies Since the luminosity and therefore absolute magnitude can be calculated Cepheid variables may be used to determine the distance of the star when the annual parallax is too small to be a reliable guide Extrinsic variables are stars of constant brightness that show changes in brightness as seen from the Earth These include rotating variables or stars whose apparent brightness change due to rotation and eclipsing binaries Our Moon The Moon is the large satellite which orbits the Earth approximately every 28 days It is seen as a large bright disc in the early night sky that rises later each day and changes shape into a crescent until it disappears near the Sun After this it rises during the day then gets larger until it again becomes a large bright disc again F 3 1 Phases of the Moon As the moon moves round its orbit the amount that is illuminated by the sun as seen from a vantage point on Earth changes The result of this is that approximately once per orbit the moon s face gradually changes from being totally in shadow to being fully illuminated and back to being in shadow again This process is divided up into various phases as described in table E3 65 4 THE MAJOR PLANETS APPENDIX F ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA 4 The Major Planets Unlike the stars whose relative positions remain constant the planets seem to move across the sky over time the word planet comes from the Greek for wa
29. wrong key and lose an hours work D 0 1 The Camera Digital cameras are easy and cheaply available these days so whatever you have should do One mega pixel resolution is quite sufficient The camera needs to be mounted on a tripod so that reasonably orientated pictures can be taken Select a time of day that is quite bright with a neutral cloudy sky so there will be no shadows and a sky of the same overall texture This will make it easier to remove later The pictures were all saved in the JPG format which was used as the common format for all processes up to the removal of the background With a camera that takes 4 3 ratio pictures I found 14 evenly spaced pictures gave the best 360 panorama in the program I used to produce it 48 APPENDIX D CREATING A PERSONALISED LANDSCAPE FOR STELLARIUM Figure D 1 360 panorama 0 2 Processing into a Panorama This is the most complicated part of the process of generating the panorama I used two separate programs to do this Firstly I used Microsoft Paint which is part of the Windows operating system to cleanup and resize the pictures to 800x600 size and so make them easier to handle in the panorama program If you have prominent foreground items like posts wires etc that occur in adjacent pictures the panorama program will have difficulty in discerning them because of the 3D effect and may give double images I overcame this by painting out the offending item by cut and paste between
30. 10 less than the value obtained by some other methods By early 2004 the controversy remained unresolved Stellarium uses the Hipparcos Catalogue for star data as well as having traditional names for many of the brighter stars The stars tab of the search window allows for search ing based on a Hipparcos Catalogue number as well as traditional names e g the star Sadalmelik in the constellation of Aquarius can be found by searching for the name or it s Hipparcos number 109074 11 2 The Messier Objects The Messier objects are a set of astronomical objects catalogued by Charles Messier in his catalogue of Nebulae and Star Clusters first published in 1774 The original motivation behind the catalogue was that Messier was a comet hunter and was frustrated by objects which resembled but were not comets He therefore compiled a list of these objects 69 12 OBSERVING HINTS APPENDIX ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA The first edition covered 45 objects numbered M1 to M45 The total list consists of 110 objects ranging from M1 to M110 The final catalogue was published in 1781 and printed in the Connaissance des Temps in 1784 Many of these objects are still known by their Messier number Because the Messier list was compiled by astronomers in the Northern Hemisphere it contains only objects from the north celestial pole to a celestial latitude of about 35 Many impressive Southern objects such as the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are
31. 3 Constellations The constellations are groupings of stars that are visually close to one another in the sky The actual groupings are fairly arbitrary different cultures have group stars together into different constellations In many cultures the various constellations have been associated with mythological entities As such people have often projected pictures into the skies as can be seen in figure E T which shows the constellation of Ursa Major On the left is a picture with the image of the mythical Great Bear on the right only a line art version is shown The seven bright stars of Ursa Major are widely recognised known variously as the plough the pan handle and the big dipper This sub grouping is known as an asterism a distinct grouping of stars On the right the picture of the bear has been removed and only a constellation diagram remains Stellarium can draw both constellation diagrams and artistic representations of the con stellations Multiple sky cultures are supported Western Polynesian Egyptian and Chi nese constellations are available although at time of writing the non Western constellations are not complete and as yet there are no artistic representations of these sky cultures Aside from historical and mythological value to the modern astronomer the constella tions provide a way to segment the sky for the purposes of describing locations of objects indeed one of the first tasks for an amateur observe
32. EX magellanic cloud 70 magnitude 13 20 57 absolute 57 61 apparent 57 61 main sequence 64 map T6 53 Mars 66 Mercury 66 Messier 22 69 Messier Charles 69 Meteor 68 meteor craters 68 meteor shower 5 Meteorites 68 Meteoroids 68 Milky Way 67 milli arc second 56 minor planets 66 minutes of arc Miranda mirror 18 Moon TO 20 2457165 multiple star systems nadir 25 53 naked eye 72 named stars navigation 53 nebula 67 nebulae 20 67 69 nebulae textures 20 obliquity of the ecliptic 58 observer 25 OpenGL 6 optical doubles optical multiples orbit 58 65 orbital plane 58 Orionis 63 panorama 25 parallax 55 58 69 parsec 55 57 phases planet 66 Earth hints TO Jupiter 10 66 Mars Mercury Neptune Pluto Saturn 66 INDEX Uranus 66 Venus planetarium planetary nebulae planetoids 66 Pogson Norman 57 pole celestial 52 53 58 Earth 52 53 pole star 58 precession 55 precessionFigure presentations prograde 56 proper motion 69 proper name 72 RA 53 RA Dec 63 resolution 19 23 retrograde 56 right ascension 53 581 63 Russell Henry Norris satellite Saturn 12 66 screen mode script script bar 23 25 scripts 24 editing hints amp tips recording seconds of arc 56 shooting stars 68 sidereal da
33. ICAL PHENOMENA E13 Handy Angles Being able to estimate angular distance can be very useful when trying to find objects from star maps in the sky One way to do this with a device called a crossbo Crossbows are a nice way get an idea of angular distances but carrying one about is a little cumbersome A more convenient alternative is to hold up an object such as a pencil at arm s length If you know the length of the pencil d and the distance of it from your eye D you can calculate it s angular size using this formula d 2 arctan arctan sn Another more handy ahem method is to use the size of your hand at arm s length Tip of little finger About 1 Middle three fingers About 4 Across the knuckles of the fist About 10 Open hand About 18 Using you hand in this way is not very precise but it s close enough to give you some way to translate an idea like Mars will be 45 above the Southeastern horizon at 21 30 Of course there is variation from person to person but the variation is compensated for somewhat by the fact that people with long arms tend to have larger hands In exercise H 2 you will work out your own handy angles 8 An astronomical crossbow is essentially a stick with a ruler attached to the end The non ruler end of the stick is held up to the face and the user sights along the stick towards the object that is being observed The length of the stick is such that the markings on
34. OUR CHAPTER 3 INTERFACE GUIDE 3 1 11 Time Travel When Stellarium starts up it sets it s clock to the same time and date as the system clock However Stellarium s clock is not fixed to same time and date as the system clock or indeed to the same speed We may tell Stellarium to change how fast time should pass and even make time go backwards So the first thing we shall do is to travel into the future Let s take a look at the time tool bar table B 2 If you hover the mouse cursor over the buttons a short description of the button s purpose and keyboard shortcut will appear a Decrease the rate at which time passes DJ Make time pass as normal o ime pas Increase the rate at which time passes Return to the current time amp date Table 3 2 Time control tool bar buttons OK so lets go see the future Click the mouse once on the increase time speed button EH Not a whole lot seems to happen However take a look at the clock at the top left of the screen You should see the time going by faster than a normal clock Click the button a second time Now the time is going by faster than before If it s night time you might also notice that the stars have started to move slightly across the sky If it s daytime you might be able to see the sun moving but it s less apparent than the movement of the stars Increase the rate at which time passes again by clicking on the button a third time Now time is really flying Le
35. Stellarium User Guide Matthew Gates 27th June 2006 Copyright 2006 Matthew Gates Permission is granted to copy distribute and or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License Version 1 2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation with no Invariant Sec tions no Front Cover Texts and no Back Cover Texts A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License Contents 1 Introductio 2 Installatio 2 1 System Requirement 2 3 Installation 2 31 Window 232 MacOS X 3 1 1 Time TER VoM 3 1 6 Information Windo 4 5 Rendering Option 4 6 Language Setting 5 31 Running Scripts 16 16 16 18 18 19 19 CONTENTS 5 3 5 Scripting Hints and 5 4 1 Single Fish eve Method 5 4 2 Single Panorama Method 5 5 Adding amp Modifying Extended Object 5 53 Modifying nebula textures fab 5 5 4 Editing Image File 5 6 Other Configuration File 5 9 3 Keyboard Control 5 10 Image Flipping A Configuration file B Scripting Commands Precision D Creating a Personalised Landscape for Stellariu D 0 3 Removing the background to make it transparent E Astronomical Concepts E 2 2 Right Ascension Declinati
36. ags One argument name per com bright_nebulae mand allowed currently track object is only useful cardinal_points while an object is selected The following flags are key chart user settings and are not accessible from scripts en constellation_art able_move_keys enable_move_mouse enable_tui_menu constellation_boundaries enable zoom keys gravity labels help horizon infos constellation drawing menu show appname show date show fov show fps constellation names show gravity ui show time show topbar utc time constellation pick ecliptic line enable move enable tui menu enable zoom keys equator line equatorial grid fog gravity labels help infos moon scaled landscape manual zoom menu meridian line milky way nebulae nebula names night object trails planets planet names planet orbits point star script gui debug show appname show date show fov show fps show gravity ui show script show selected object info show time show topbar show tui datetime show tui short obj info star names star twinkle stars track object uii 44 APPENDIX B SCRIPTING COMMANDS altitude ALTITUDE_ANGLE For positioning the center of the image in horizontal co ordinates Zero is at the horizon 90 is at the zenith azimuth AZIMUTH_ANGLE For positioning the center of the image in horizontal co ordinates Zero is North 90 is East coordinate_system viewport horizontal What
37. al Data and Functional Relationships Science and Technology New Series 1989 3 Mark R Chartrand and Wil Tirion charts National Audubon Society Field Guide of the Night Sky Alfred A Knopf Inc 1991 4 Robert Dinwiddie Ian Ridpath Pam Spence Giles Sparrow Carole Stott David Hughes Kevin Tildsley Philip Eales and Iain Nicolson Universe Dorling Kindersley 2005 5 Various Wikibooks Astronomy Wikimedia Foundation 81 Index Agol variables 61 altitude 53 angle Andromeda angles 56 angular fish eye projection 18 annual parallax 58 apparent magnitude arc minutes arc second 55 arc seconds 56 asterism 62 asteroids 66 astro photography 68 astrometry 61 astronomical unit 55 Atmosphere 20 atmosphere atmospheric effects 52 fog 10 AU 55 auto completion 12 auto zoom 10 axis of rotation azimuth 53 angle 53 azimuth angle 53 Bayer Johan binaries 61 binoculars 72 75 brightness 57 brown dwarfs cardinal points 20 52 celestial equator 53 53 celestial pole 52 53 celestial sphere 52 5369 63161 Cepheid variable 65 clock 9 52 cluster comet Comet Halley common name common names 62 config root directory 22 configuration file configuration window language tab 19 constellation 10 20 72 Andromeda 7 5 Aquarius 69 Canis Major Cassiopeia 75 diagram 6 Ursa Major 62 constellat
38. ame Other Name s Dubhe and Merak The Pointers 1 83 2 36 The two rightmost of the seven Northern hemisphere observers are very stars that form the main shape of fortunate to have two stars that point to The Plough Ursa Major wards Polaris which lie very close to the northern celestial pole Whatever the time of night or season of the year they are al ways an immediate clue to the location of the pole star Messier 31 The An Spiral Galaxy Find the three bright stars that con M31 is the most distant object visible to the dromeda Galaxy stitute the main part of the con naked eye and among the few nebulae that stellation of Andromeda From the can be seen without a telescope or power middle of these look toward the ful binoculars Under good conditions it constellation of Cassiopeia appears as a large fuzzy patch of light It is a galaxy containing billions of stars whose distance is roughly three million light years from Earth The Garnet Star Mu Cephei Star 4 25 Cephius lies above the W shape A supergiant of spectral class M with Variable of Cassiopeia The Garnet Star a strong red colour Given it s name by lies slightly to one side of a point Sir William Herschel in the 18th century half way between 5 Cephei and 21 the colour is striking in comparison to it s Cephei blue white neighbours 4 and 5 Lyrae Epsilon Lyrae Double Star gt Look near to Vega Alpha Lyrae In binoculars epsilon Lyrae is resolved into o
39. and tool to select the sky sections bit by bit zoom in on the image to see what you are doing this would have been easy if the sky had been cloudless because colour match does this selection I cut each selection out It took about an hour to remove all the sky because it was cloudy and leave just the skyline image as a suitable mask Clicking the magic wand in the sky area when all the sky has been removed will show an out line mask of the removed sky Zoom in and carefully check the whole area to make sure there is no sky left Leave this mask there Re select the alpha channel and turn the other channels off The alpha channel will be visible and the mask should be showing Re select Edit in Quick mask mode and then Edit in standard mode to edit Select the brush tool and toggle to the black foreground Fill in the masked area with a large brush size The colour black will only go into the masked area It wont spill over so the job is quite easy When this is done you will have created your alpha layer Check the size of the image and if it is greater than 5000 pixels wide reduce its size by a fixed percentage till it is under this limit The limit was necessary for one of the programs I used but may not be always necessary However any greater resolution will be wasted and the file size will be excessive Save the whole image in the compressed tiff form or PNG form The only formats that preserve the alpha channel This image is the h
40. aris 83m FOV 50 FPS 34 79 Figure 3 2 Screenshot showing off some of Stellarium s visual effects Stellarium can do a whole lot more than just draw the stars Figure shows some of Stellarium s visual effects including constellation line and boundry drawing constellation art planet hints and atmospheric fogging around the bright Moon The controls main tool 10 3 1 TOUR CHAPTER 3 INTERFACE GUIDE bar provides a mechanism for turning on and off the visual effects Table 3 6 describes the operations of buttons on the main tool bar and gives their keyboard shortcuts c Draws the constellation lines v Draws the name of the constellations Constellation Art Superimposes artistic representations of the constellations over the stars Azimuth Grid Draws grid lines for the Alt Azi coordinate system Equatorial Grid Draws grid lines for the RA Dec coordinate system Toggles drawing of the ground Turn this off Toggle Ground to see objects that are below the horizon Toggle Cardinal Points Toggles marking of the North South East and West points on the horizon Toggle Atmosphere Toggles atmospheric effects Most notably makes the stars visible in the daytime Nebulae amp Galaxies Toggles marking the positions of Nebulae and Galaxies when the FOV is too wide to see them Coordinate System Enter Toggles between Alt Azi amp RA Dec coordi nate systems Centres the view on the selected object Flips the ima
41. at sets the amount of time the constellation art takes to fade in or out in seconds Typical value 1 5 fi 5 6 8 fi up astro flag planets hints bool set to false to hide the planet hints on start up names and circular highlights flag planets orbits set to true to show the planet orbits on start up astro flag light travel time bool set to true to improve accuracy in the move ment of the planets by compensating for the time it takes for light to travel This has an impact on performance astro flag object trails bool turns on and off dawing of object trails which show the movement of the planets over time flag nebula set to false to hide the nebulae on start up flag nebula name set to true to show the nebula labels on start up astro flag nebula long name bool set to true to show the nebula long labels on start up astro flag nebula display no text urbool set to true to supress displaying of nebula textures flag milky way set to false to hide the Milky Way astro milky way intensity float sets the relative brightness with which the milky way is drawn Typical value 1 to 10 astro max mag nebula name float sets the magnitude of the nebulae whose name is shown Typical value 8 astro nebula scale float sets how much to scale nebulae a setting of 1 will display nebulae at normal size astro flag bright nebulae float set to true to increase nebulae brightness to enhance viewing less realistic flag nebu
42. aws the ecliptic line Ground Draws the ground If this option is de selected the ground becomes transparent Note that the daylight effects go a bit weird if you do this so it s usually a good idea to turn of atmosphere if you turn off ground It might also be helpful to use the equatorial coordinate system when the ground is turned off Cardinal Points Draws markers for North South East and West on the horizon Atmosphere Draws atmospheric effects This means the sky brightens when the sun is above the horizon and that there is a haze around the moon og Draws a slight fog near to the horizon Meteor Rate per minute Changes the rate at which meteors are displayed Table 4 2 Display options in the configuration window rendering tab 20 4 6 LANGUAGE SETTINGS CHAPTER 4 CONFIGURATION Configuration Sky Language cs cs da da de de en en es es Sky Culture Chinese Egyptian Polynesian Westem Save as default Figure 4 5 Configuration window language tab 21 Chapter 5 Advanced Use 5 1 Files and Directories Stellarium comes with several data and image files These hold information such as the positions and details of stars texture files for fonts landscapes and the Messier objects These files are gathered into a few sub directories of a directory called the config root directory The precise location of the config root directory will vary depending on the operating system and installation opt
43. be used to describe a direction of view the azimuth angle and a height in the sky the altitude angle The azimuth angle is measured clockwise round from due North Hence North itself is 0 East 90 Southwest is 135 and so on The altitude angle is measured up from the horizon Looking directly up at the zenith would be 90 half way between the zenith and the horizon is 45 and so on The point opposite the zenith is called the nadir The Altitude Azimuth coordinate system is attractive in that it is intuitive most people are familiar with azimuth angles from bearings in the context of navigation and the altitude angle is something most people can visualise pretty easily However the altitude azimuth coordinate system is not suitable for describing the gen eral position of stars and other objects in the sky the altitude and azimuth values for an object in the sky change with time and the location of the observer Stellarium can draw grid lines for altitude azimuth coordinates Use the button on the main tool bar to activate this grid or press the z key E 2 2 Right Ascension Declination Coordinates Like the Altitude Azimuth system the Right Ascension Declination RA Dec coordinate system uses two angles to describe positions in the sky These angles are measured from standard points on the celestial sphere Right ascension and declination are to the celestial sphere what longitude and latitude are to terrestrial map makers The N
44. bital period of about 2 8 days that causes a regular partial eclipse Although Algol s fluctua tions in magnitude have been known since at least the 17th century it was the first to be proved to be due to an eclipsing compan ion it is therefore the prototype Eclipsing Variable Sirius Alpha Canis Majoris Star 1 47 Sirius is easily found by following Sirius is a white dwarf star at a compara the line of three stars in Orion s belt tively close 8 6 light years This proximity southwards and it s high innate luminance makes it the brightest star in our sky Sirius is a double star it s companion is much dimmer but very hot and is believed to be smaller than the earth M44 Open Cluster 3 7 Cancer lies about halfway between There are probably 350 or so stars in this E the twins Castor amp Pollux in cluster although it appears to the naked eye Gemini and Regulus the brightest simply as a misty patch It contains a mix star in Leo The Beehive can be ture of stars from red giants to white dwarf found between Asellus Borealis and and is estimated to be some 700 million Asellus Australis years old 27 Cephei Delta Cephei Variable Star 4 0 Avg Locate the four stars that form the Delta Cephei gives it s name to a whole square of Cepheus One corner of class of variables all of which are pulsat the square has two other bright stars ing high mass stars in the later stages of nearby forming a distinctive trian their evolution Del
45. cities fab Each line is one record which describes a city which will appear on the map in the location tab of the configuration dialog Each record is TAB separated with the following fields City name State Province or lt gt for none spaces replaced with underscores Country Latitude Longitude Altitude Time zone Show at zoom level name fab This file defines the Flamsteed designation for a star see section IF 2 4 2 Each line of the file contains one record of two fields separated by the pipe character The first field is the Hippar cos catalogue number of the star the second is the Flamsteed designation e g 72370 Q_Aps ssystem ini Contains the orbital elements and other properties for solar sys tem bodies zone tab Time zone information constellations_boundaries dat This file provides data necessary for Stellarium to draw the boundaries of he constellations Table 5 2 Configuration files 5 7 Sky Cultures Sky cultures are defined in the sub directories of lt config root gt data sky_cultures Each sub directory contains settings files for one sky culture using the files as described in table 5 3 constellation names eng fab This file contains a list of names for each constel lation from the three latter abbreviation of the con stellation 31 5 8 TAKING SCREENSHOTS CHAPTER 5 ADVANCED USE constellationsart fab This file contains the details of pictorial representa
46. color chart_color float R G B sets the colour of the chart in RGB values night_color where 1 is the maximum e g 1 0 1 0 1 0 chart_color for white tui flag_enable_tui_menu bool set to true if you want to enable the TUI peo tui flag_show_gravity_ui bool set to true if you want to see labels that expe feo eee rience gravity suited for dome projections tui flag_show_tui_datetime bool set to true if you want to see a date and time ese 1 label suited for dome projections tui flag show tui short obj info bool set to true if you want to see object info navigation preset sky time float preset sky time used by the dome ver sion Unit is Julian Day Typical value 2451514 250011573 navigation startup time mode string set the start up time mode can be actual start with current real world time or Preset start at time defined by preset sky time flag enable zoom keys set to false if you want to disable the zoom keys navigation flag manual zoom bool set to false for normal zoom behaviour as decribed in this guide When set to true the auto zoom feature only moves in a small amount and must be pressed many times navigation flag enable move keys bool set to false if you want to disable the arrow p eR e navigation flag enable move mouse doesn t seem to do very much init fov initial field of view in degrees typical value 6 39 APPENDIX A CONFIGURATION FILE navigation init_view_pos float
47. coordinate system to use to position the image Must be defined at image load Can not be changed later Default is viewport SECONDS How long to take to complete the command i name IMAGE_NAME Used to refer to the image in later calls to manipulate the image Images must be in PNG format If images do not have dimensions that are powers of 2 128 256 etc they are re sized when loaded to meet this requirement i 0 is transparent default 1 is opaque ALPHA can be fractional Note that images are drawn in the order they were loaded How large to draw the image In viewport coordinates at 1 the image is scaled to fit maximized in the viewport In horizontal coordinates this defines the maximum angular width of the image in degrees xpos X_POSITION Where to draw center of image 0 is center of viewport 1 is right edge of viewport ypos Y_POSITION Where to draw center of image 0 is center of viewport 1 is top edge of viewport landscape load PATH Load landscape Arguments have same names and pos sible values as in landscapes ini file except that texture file names need to be specified in full including the path relative to the script Also add argument action load RADIANS Change the viewing angle by RADIANS altitude script action play end pause resume record cancelrecord Note that pause toggles playback If a script plays another script the first will terminate select If no arg
48. default location this will be C Program Files Stellarium config Linux The configuration file is located in the user s home directory in a sub directory called stellarium with the filename config ini 22 5 2 THE MAIN CONFIGURATION FILE CHAPTER 5 ADVANCED USE MacOS X The configuration file is located in the Library Preferences sub directory of the user s home directory The file name is config ini The configuration file is a regular text file so all you need to edit it is a text editor like Notepad on Windows Text Edit on the Mac or nano vi gedit etc on Linux The following sub sections contain details on how to make commonly used modifica tions to the configuration file A complete list of configuration file values may be found in appendix A 5 2 1 Setting Your Location Precisely The user interface for setting the observer s longitude and latitude isn t very precise For users with a penchant for accuracy satisfaction may be achieved by editing the values in the configuration file like this init_location name Widdringon latitude 55 14 30 00 longitude 01 3776 00 altitude 53 The values for longitude and latitude are positive for North and East negative for South and West The format of the number is in degrees minutes and seconds The value for the altitude is in meters 5 2 2 Setting the Display Resolution If your screen resolution is not listed in the video tab of the configuration window y
49. e to move you landscape in altitude to align your visible horizon angle Edit ground_angle_rotatez to align your ground with the rest of the landscape Leave the other entries they are suitable as is Your landscape will now appear on the landscape menu and can be selected as required 51 Appendix E Astronomical Concepts This section includes some general notes on astronomy in an effort to outline some concepts that are helpful to understand features of Stellarium Material here is only an overview and the reader is encouraged to get hold of a couple of good books on the subject A good place to start is a compact guide and ephemeris such as the National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Night Sky 3 Also recommended is a more complete textbook such as Universe There also some nice resources on the net like the Wikibooks Astronomy 5 1 Celestial Sphere The Celestial Sphere is a concept which helps us think about the positions of objects in the sky Looking up at the sky you might imagine that it is a huge dome or top half of a sphere and the stars are points of light on that sphere Visualising the sky in such a manner it appears that the sphere moves taking all the stars with it it seems to rotate If watch the movement of the stars we can see that they seem to rotate around a static point about once a day Stellarium is the perfect tool to demonstrate this 1 Open the configuration window sel
50. e the constellation viewing flag constellation isolate s when set to true constallation lines bound aries and art will be limited to the constella tion of the selected star if that star is on one of the constellation lines viewing flag constellation pick stellation star viewing flag_azimutal_grid bool set to true if you want to see the azimuthal p grid on start up viewing flag equatorial grid bool set to true if you want to see the equatorial pou a Pe set to true if you only want to see the line drawing art and name of the selected con viewing flag equator line bool set to true if you want to see the equator line viewing flag ecliptic line bool set to true if you want to see the ecliptic line viewing flag meridian line bool set to true if you want to see the meridian viewing flag cardinal points bool set to false if you don t want to see the car pue eee 40 APPENDIX A CONFIGURATION FILE viewing flag_gravity_labels bool set to true if you want labels to undergo pc BENE ral viewing flag moon scaled bool change to false if you want to see the real 2 viewing moon_scale float sets the moon scale factor to correlate to our perception of the moon s size Typical value 4 viewing constellation_art_intensity float this number multiplies the brightness of the p constellation art images Typical value 0 5 viewing constellation art fade duratjofflo
51. ect the location tab Set the location to be some where in mid Northern latitudes The United Kingdom is an ideal location for this demonstration 2 Turn off atmospheric rendering and ensure cardinal points are turned on This will keep the sky dark so the Sun doesn t prevent us from seeing the motion of the stars when it is above the horizon 3 Pan round to point North and make sure the field of view is about 90 4 Pan up so the N cardinal point on the horizon is at the bottom of the screen 5 Now increase the time rate Press 1 1 1 1 this should set the time rate so the stars can be seen to rotate around a point in the sky about once every ten seconds If you watch Stellarium s clock you ll see this is the time it takes for one day to pass as this accelerated rate The point which the stars appear to move around is one of the Celestial Poles The apparent movement of the stars is due to the rotation of the Earth The location of the observer on the surface of the Earth affects how she perceives the motion of the stars To an observer standing at Earth s North Pole the stars all seem to rotate around the zenith the point directly directly upward As the observer moves South towards the equator the 52 2 COORDINATE SYSTEMS APPENDIX E ASTRONOMICAL CONCEPTS location of the celestial pole moves down towards the horizon At the Earth s equator the North celestial pole appears to be on the Northern horizon
52. eir brightness When set to true all stars are drawn at single pixel size flag 8 1 flag_help set to true to show help on start up fl 8 8 A EREXIT gui ag show topbar bool set to true to show the info bar at top of the screen g flag_show_appname bool set to true to show the application name in the top bar flag show selected object infbool set to false if you don t want info about the EN ad string Selects the font e g DejaVuSans ttf 37 APPENDIX A CONFIGURATION FILE color night_color chart_color color night_color chart_color color night_color chart_color color night_color chart_color color night_color chart_color color night_color chart_color color night_color chart_color color night_color chart_color color night_color chart_color color night_color chart_color color night_color chart_color D set to false if you don t want to see at how many frames per second Stellarium is ren dering flag_show_fov bool set to false if you don t want to see how many degrees your field of view is mouse_cursor_timeout flag_script_allow_ui flag_show_flip_buttons azimuthal_color gui_base_color gui_text_color equatorial_color equator_color ecliptic_colour meridian_color const_lines_colour const_names_colour const_boundary_colour nebula_label_colour 38 gui flag_show_scrip
53. et is swept away from the Sun by the Solar wind forming the tail Comets whose orbit brings them close to the Sun more frequently than every 200 years are considered to be short period comets the most famous of which is probably Comet Halley named after the British astronomer Edmund Halley which has an orbital period of roughly 76 years F 6 Galaxies Stars it seems are gregarious they like to live together in groups These groups are called galaxies The number of stars in a typical galaxy is literally astronomical many billions sometimes ever hundreds of billions of stars Our own star the sun is part of a galaxy When we look up at the night sky all the stars we can see are in the same galaxy We call our own galaxy the Milky Way or sometimes simply the Galaxy Other galaxies appear in the sky as dim fuzzy blobs Only four are normally visible to the naked eye The Andromeda galaxy M31 visible in the Northern hemisphere the two Magellanic clouds visible in the Southern hemisphere and the home galaxy Milky Way visible in parts from north and south under dark skies There are thought to be billions of galaxies in the universe comprised of an unimagin ably large number of stars The vast majority of galaxies are so far away that they are very dim and cannot be seen without large telescopes but there are dozens of galaxies which may be observed in medium to large sized amateur instruments Stellarium includes images of
54. etex is the number of side textures for the landscape tex0 tex lt nbsidetex 1 gt are the side texture file names These should exist in the config root textures landscapes directory in PNG format nbside is the number of side textures sideO side lt nbside 1 gt are the descriptions of how the side textures should be arranged in the program Each description contains five fields separated by colon characters 27 5 5 ADDING amp MODIFYING EXTENDED 5 ADVANCED USE 2 The first field is the ID of the texture e g 0 the remaining fields are the coordinates used to place the texture in the scene groundtex is the name of the ground texture file ground is the description of the projection of the ground texture in the scene fogtex is the name of the texture file for fog in this landscape fog is the description of the projection of the fox texture in the scene nb decor repeat is the number of times to repeat the side textures in the 360 panorama decor alt angle is the vertical angular size of the textures i e how high they go into the sky decor angle shift vertical angular offset of the scenery textures at which height are the side textures placed decor angle rotatez angular rotation of the scenery around the vertical axis This is handy for rotating the landscape so North is in the correct direction ground angle shift vertical angular offset of the ground texture at which heigh
55. etic energy is converted into heat and light and a visible flash or streak can often be seen with the naked eye Even the smallest particles can cause these events which are commonly known as shooting stars While smaller objects tend to burn up in the atmosphere larger denser objects can penetrate the atmosphere and strike the surface of the planet sometimes leaving meteor craters Sometimes the angle of the collision means that larger objects pass through the atmo sphere but do not strike the Earth When this happens spectacular fireballs are sometimes seen Meteoroids is the name given to such objects when they are floating in space A Meteor is the name given to the visible atmospheric phenomenon Meteorites is the name given to objects that penetrate the atmosphere and land on the surface 10 Eclipses Eclipses occur when an apparently large celestial body planet moon etc moves between the observer that s you and a more distant object the more distant object being eclipsed by the nearer one F 10 1 Solar Eclipses Solar eclipses occur when our Moon moves between the Earth and the Sun This happens when the inclined orbit of the Moon causes its path to cross our line of sight to the Sun In essence it is the observer falling under the shadow of the moon There are three types of solar eclipses Partial The Moon only covers part of the Sun s surface Total The Moon completely obscures the Sun s surface Annular
56. ge in the horizontal plane Note Space CTRL SHIFT h this button is not enable by default See sec T0 Flip image vertical CTRL SHIFT v Flips the image in the vertical plane Note this button is not enable by default See section 5 10 Q Search CTRL f Toggle the display of the object search win dow Configuration A 1 digit one Toggle the display of the configuration win dow Night Mode none Toggle night mode which changes the col oring of same display elements to be easier on the dark adapted eye Table 3 6 Main tool bar buttons 11 3 1 TOUR CHAPTER 3 INTERFACE GUIDE 3 1 4 The Object Search Window Object Search Search for 3turn Polaris HP6218 Orion M31 Q GO Autocompletion is TODO Figure 3 3 The search window The Object Search window provides a convenient way to locate objects in the sky Sim ply type in the name of an object to find and then click the go button or press return Stellarium will point you at that object in the sky As you type Stellarium will make a list of objects which begin with what you have typed so far and the first item in this list will be automatically added to what you are typing after the cursor When you have typed enough letters to get to the object you are interested in you can press return without having to complete the whole name For example suppose we want to locate Mimas a moon of Saturn After typing the
57. ger Sets the number of bits per pixel Values 16 24 32 horizontal_offset view port horizontal offset vertical_offset view port vertical offset video maximum fps float Maximum number of frame per second to be video distorter string This is used when the spheric mirror display mode is activated Values include none and fisheye to spheric mirror video minimum fps integer sets the minimum number of frames per sec __ NEN LUE aad video maximum fps integer sets the maximum number of frames per sec ond to display at This is useful to reduce power consumption in laptops projection type string sets projection mode Values perspective projection viewport string how the view port looks Values maxi spheric mirror projector gamma float This parameter controls the properties of the EM uM o spheric mirror projector position x float This parameter controls the properties of the Eee spheric_mirror projector_position_y float This parameter controls the properties of the p ee m ee spheric_mirror projector_position_z float This parameter controls the properties of the peg P e spheric_mirror mirror_position_x float This parameter controls the properties of the Eee p 36 APPENDIX A CONFIGURATION FILE In spheric mirror mirror position y float This parameter controls the properties of the p _ Feel spheric mirror mirror position z float This parameter controls the properties of the
58. he maximum field of view in this mode is 270 stereographic This mode is similar to fish eye projection mode The maximum field of view in this mode is 270 spheric mirror This is a special mode intended to use with a projector and a spher ical mirror Note that in this mode everthing dialog boxes and other user interface items will be very distorted and backwards on the screen so that they are legible after reflection by the spheric mirror Disk viewport This check box when selected adds a black circular border around the main view Using the zoom functions to set the field of view it s possible to simulate looking through binoculars or a telescope eyepiece useful if you want to know how much of a constellation you can see at once with a given instrument 18 4 5 RENDERING OPTIONS CHAPTER 4 CONFIGURATION Figure 4 4 Configuration window rendering tab Display resolution You may select what resolution Stellarium runs in using this control Choose the highest resolution you can but be aware that the higher the resolution the slower Stellarium will react If moving from one object to another isn t a smooth process try a lower resolution 4 5 Rendering Options The Rendering tab figure 4 in the configuration window allows for adjustment of the way Stellarium draws the scene All the controls are check boxes or numerical spin buttons By choosing values and then clicking the button labelled Set as default the
59. hed by an Ariane 4 on 8 August 1989 The original goal was to place the satellite in a geostationary orbit above the earth however a booster rocket failure resulted in a highly elliptical orbit from 315 to 22 300 miles altitude Despite this difficulty all of the scientific goals were accomplished Communications were terminated on 15 August 1993 The program was divided in two parts the Hipparcos experiment whose goal was to measure the five astrometric parameters of some 120 000 stars to a precision of some 2 to 4 milli arc seconds and the Tycho experiment whose goal was the measurement of the astrometric and two colour photometric properties of some 400 000 additional stars to a somewhat lower precision The final Hipparcos Catalogue 120 000 stars with 1 milli arc second level astrometry and the final Tycho Catalogue more than one million stars with 20 30 milli arc second astrometry and two colour photometry were completed in August 1996 The catalogues were published by ESA in June 1997 The Hipparcos and Tycho data have been used to create the Millennium Star Atlas an all sky atlas of one million stars to visual magnitude 11 from the Hipparcos and Tycho Catalogues and 10 000 non stellar objects included to complement the catalogue data There were questions over whether Hipparcos has a systematic error of about milli arc second in at least some parts of the sky The value determined by Hipparcos for the distance to the Pleiades is about
60. ht they must start the process over Red light doesn t compromise dark adaption as much as white light so use a red torch if possible and one that is as dim as you can manage with A single red LED light is ideal The Moon Unless you re particularly interested in observing the Moon on a given night it can be a nuisance it can be so bright as to make observation of dimmer objects such as nebulae impossible When planning what you want to observe take the phase and position of the Moon into account Of course Stellarium is the ideal tool for finding this out Averted vision A curious fact about the eye is that it is more sensitive to dim light towards the edge of the field of view If an object is slightly too dim to see directly lookin slightly off to the side but concentrating on the object s location can often reveal 8 Angular distance Learn how to estimate angular distances Learn the angular distances described in section If you have a pair of binoculars find out the angular distance across the field of view and use this as a standard measure This curious phenomena is the cause of much childhood anxiety about the dark shapes and patterns which can be seen out of the corner of the eye dissapear when looked at directly Most binoculars state the field of view somewhere on the body of the instrument Failing that check the documentation if you have any or check with the manufacturer 70 E13 HANDY ANGLES APPENDIX ASTRONOM
61. ies orbiting the Sun in more or less regular orbits mostly between Mars and Jupiter They are generally rocky bodies like the inner terrestrial planets but of much smaller size There are countless in number ranging in size from about ten meters to thousands of kilometres Note that are time of writing Stellarium does not simulate asteroids 5 2 Comets A comet is a small body in the solar system that orbits the Sun and at least occasionally exhibits a coma or atmosphere and or a tail Comets have a very eccentric orbit very elliptical and as such spend most of their time a very long way from the Sun Comets are composed of rock dust and ices When they come close to the Sun the heat evaporates the ices causing a gaseous release This 4There is some controversy among astronomers as to whether Pluto should be considered one of the Major planets because of it s small size and eccentric orbit There is also some controversy as to whether some other Pluto like bodies should be added to the list The consensus at the moment seems to be that while Pluto is not really a major planet it will remain classed as one for historical and practical reasons 5OK it s a silly thing to say gas giants really aren t something you can take down the local swimming pool and throw in the deep end It s a nice thought though 66 GALAXIES APPENDIX ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA gas and loose material which comes away from the body of the com
62. im age a ground image After preparing the image s the lt config root gt data landscapes ini file must be modified The single image methods require less manipulation of landscapes ini but may produce less optimal results in terms of memory usage or image distortion 5 4 1 Single Fish eye Method The Trees landscape that is provided with Stellarium is an example of the single fish eye method and provides a good illustration The centre of the image is the spot directly above the observer the zenith The point below the observer the nadir becomes a circle that just touches the edges of the image The remaining areas of the image the rounded corners are not used The image file should be saved in PNG format with an alpha transparency layer Wher ever the image is translapent that is where Stellarium will render the sky The image should be saved in the config root textures landscapes directory Each fish eye landscape image must have a section in the config root data landscapes ini file For example the Trees landscape which comes with Stellarium is represented by this section trees name Trees type fisheye maptex landscapes trees_512 png texturefov 210 Where name is what appears in the landscape tab of the configuration window type identifies the method used for this landscape fisheye in this case maptex is the path of the image file for this landsape from the config root directory text
63. ing ending in sts for example mytour sts 3 Put your scripting command in the file You should use a regular text editor to edit it e g notepad 4 Start Stellarium and run your script Hints and tips e Youcan record actions which you perform in Stellarium using the CTRL r key e Change the main configuration file so that Stellarium runs in windowed mode this way you can edit your script without having to shut down Stellarium Just be sure that you put the script file in the config root data scripts directory before starting Stellarium else it will not find it 76 Appendix I GNU Free Documentation License Version 1 2 November 2002 Copyright C 2000 2001 2002 Free Software Foundation Inc 51 Franklin St Fifth Floor Boston MA 02110 1301 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document but changing it is not allowed 0 PREAMBLE The purpose of this License is to make a manual textbook or other functional and useful document free in the sense of freedom to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it with or without modifying it either commercially or noncommercially Secondarily this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others This License is a kind of copyleft which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in
64. ion art constellations 62 coordinate system 53 crossbow customising landscapes 25 date S T6 25 Dec 53 declination 53 58 disk viewport display display resolution dwarf stars 64 Earth 56 60 orbit 58 rotation 55 rotation of 52 eccentric 66 eclipse 5 24 68 eclipsing binaries ecliptic 20 61 elliptical galaxies 67 equator 20 52 53 celestial 53 53 equatorial 20 equatorial grid 53 ESA 53 European Space Agency 69 extended object extended objects extrinsic eyepiece 18 INDEX field of view BI T8 52 53 75 fig stichedlandscapes file config ini 22 configuration 22 configuration misc 30 landscapes ini script fille landscapes ini 25 fireballs 68 first point of aries 55 fish eye 18 25 Flamsteed John fog font 22 Fov BIKO full screen mode galaxy 20 2 8 giants Greenwich 55 grid 20 53 equatorial Halley Edmund Hertzsprung Ejnar Hipparchus 57 Hipparcos 55 63 69 catalogue experiment horizon image files interstellar clouds 68 intrinsic irregular galaxies Jovian planets Jupiter TO 24 66 landscape landscapes language settings latitude 16 23 53 72 75 lenticular galaxies 67 light year 55 location 16 longitude Luminosity 57 luminosity 64 65 luminosity class M31 73 macros 24 83 IND
65. ions that were used Windows The config folder is a sub folder of the main Stellarium folder C Program Files Stellarium if you used the default installation location MacOS X The config root directory is the Contents Resources directory inside the Stel larium application bundle Linux The config root directory is lt prefix gt share stellarium where prefix is the installation prefix that was chosen when Stellarium was built This is generally usr or usr local 5 2 The Main Configuration File The main configuration file is read each time Stellarium starts up and settings such as the observer s location and display preferences are taken from it Ideally this mechanism should be totally transparent to the user anything that is configurable should be configured in the program GUI However at time of writing Stellarium isn t quite complete in this respect Some settings can only be changed by directly editing the configuration file This section describes some of the settings a user may wish to modify in this way and how to do it If the configuration file does not exist when Stellarium is run e g the first time the user starts the program one will be created with default values for all settings The location of the configuration file varies depending on the OS you re running Stel larium on Windows The configuration file config ini is in the config sub directory of the main Stellarium directory If you installed to the
66. irst_1x200 and second_1x200 These telescopes are controlled by two separate instances of the LX200 telescope server running on the local machine on TCP ports 10000 and 10001 respectively astro flag_telescopes true flag_telescope_name true telescopes 1 first_1x200 TCP localhost 10000 500000 2 second_1x200 TCP localhost 10001 500000 5 9 3 Keyboard Controls To make a telescope point at the currently selected object in Stellarium simply press CTRL telescope number e g for the telescope first 1x200 configured in the ex ample in section press CTRL41 34 5 10 IMAGE FLIPPING CHAPTER 5 ADVANCED USE 5 10 Image Flipping When viewing through a telescope the image one sees is often mirrored To aide use with a telescope Stellarium can flip the image of the sky in the horizontal and or vertical planes There two ways to do this the keyboard commands CTRL SHIFTth and CTRL4SHIFT v and using the image flipping toolbar buttons The toolbar buttons are not enabled by default To enable them you must edit the main configuration file and set the following options gui flag_show_flip_buttons true 35 Appendix A Configuration file video fullscreen boolean if true Stellarium will start up in full screen mode If false Stellarium will start in win dowed mode video screen_w integer sets the display width value in pixels e g S NN 2 768 video bbp_mode inte
67. is 1 arc second from 2000 B C 6000 A D Earth Moon barycenter Mars Precision is 1 arc second from 4000 B C 8000 A D Pluto Pluto s position is valid from 1885 A D 2099 A D Earth s Moon ELP2000 82B Unsure about interval of validity or precision at time of writing Possibly valid from 1828 A D to 2047 A D Galilean satellites Valid from 500 A D 3500 A D Uranus Neptune 47 Appendix D Creating a Personalised Landscape for Stellarium by Barry Gerdes 2005 12 19 Although this procedure is based on the Microsoft Windows System the basics will apply to any platform that can run the programs mentioned or similar programs on the preferred system The first thing needed for a personalised landscape to superimpose on the horizon dis play is a 360 panorama with a transparent background To make this you will need the following e A digital camera on a tripod or stable platform e A program to convert the pictures into a 360 panorama e A program to remove the background and convert the panorama into about 8 square pictures in PNG format for insertion into Stellarium as the sides and if possible a similar square picture of the base you are standing on to form the ground This last requirement is only really possible if this area is relatively featureless as the problem of knitting a complex base is well nigh impossible e Patience Maybe a soundproof room so that the swearing wont be heard when you press the
68. it very small movement due to parallax The closest star to the Earth other than the Sun is Proxima Centuri It has an annual parallax of 0 77199 corresponding to a distance of 1 295 parsecs 4 22 light years Even with the most sensitive instruments for measuring the positions of the stars it is only possible to use parallax to determine the distance of stars up to about 1 600 light years from the Earth after which the annual parallax is so small it cannot be measured accurately enough 60 Appendix F Astronomical Phenomena This chapter focuses on the observational side of astronomy what we see when we look at the sky 1 The Sun Without a doubt the most prominent object in the sky is the Sun The Sun is so bright that when it is in the sky it s light is scattered by the atmosphere to such an extent that almost all other objects in the sky are rendered invisible The Sun is a star like many others but it is much closer to the Earth at approximately 150 million kilometres The next nearest star Proxima Centuri is approximately 260 000 times further away from us than the Sun The Sun is also known as Sol it s Latin name Over the course of a year the Sun appears to move round the celestial sphere in a great circle known as the ecliptic Stellarium can draw the ecliptic on the sky To toggle drawing of the ecliptic press the 4 or key WARNING Looking at the Sun can permanently damage the eye Never look at the Sun witho
69. l network using public has access to download using public standard network protocols a complete Transparent copy of the Document free of added material If you use the latter option you must take reasonably prudent steps when you begin distribution of Opaque copies in quantity to ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque copy directly or through your agents or retailers of that edition to the public It is requested but not required that you contact the authors of the Document well before redistributing any large number of copies to give them a chance to provide you with an updated version of the Document 4 MODIFICATIONS You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document thus licensing distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it In addition you must do these things in the Modified Version A Use in the Title Page and on the covers if any a title distinct from that of the Document and from those of previous versions which should if there were any be listed in the History section of the Document You may use the same title as a previous version if the original publisher of that version give
70. la ngc enables disables display of all NGC objects astro flag telescopes bool enables telescope control if set to true stel larium will attempt to connect to a telescope server according to the values in the tele scopes section of the config file 41 APPENDIX A CONFIGURATION FILE astro LN name bool enables disables name labels on telescope in dicators telescopes telescope number string In this section the ID is the nmber of the tele scope and the value is a colon separated list of parameters name protocol hostname port number delay init location name string sets your location s name This is an arbi init location latitude sets the latitude coordinate of the observer Value is in degrees minutes seconds Pos itive degree values mean North negative South e g 55 14 30 00 sets the longitude coordinate of the observer Value is in degrees minutes seconds Posi tive degree values mean East negative West e g 01 37 6 00 init location altitude float observer s altitude above mean sea level in E init_location landscape_name string sets the you see Other options pue eese ees guereins trees hurricane hogerielen init location time zone string sets the time zone At time of writing the po ewe only valid value is system_default init location time display format string set the time display format mode can be sys init location date display format
71. later version applies to it you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been published not as a draft by the Free Software Foundation If the Document does not specify a version number of this License you may choose any version ever published not as a draft by the Free Software Foundation 79 Appendix J Acknowledgements Primary author Sky guide exercise ideas Celestial sphere diagrams nu merous corrections Mac platform specifics Windows platform specifics Large parts of Appendix F Customisation of fab files Makeing a custom landscape Appendix D Matthew Gates matthew porpoisehead net gt Paul Robinson lt probinson at directspecs dot co dot uk gt Andras Mohari lt mayday at mailpont dot hu gt Rudy Gobits lt R Gobits at xs4all dot nl gt Dirk Schwarzhans lt mei mail at gmx dot de gt Barry Gerdes lt barrygastro at hotmail dot com gt Additional material has been incorporated into the guide from sources that are pub lished under the GNU FDL including material from Wikipedia and the Astronomy book at Wikibooks 80 Bibliography 1 Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker s Guide to the Galaxy Pan Macmillan 1979 2 L H Aller I Appenzeller B Baschek H W Duerbeck T Herczeg E Lamla Meyer Hofmeister Schmidt Kaler Scholz W Seggewiss W Seitter and V Weidemann Landolt B rnstein Numeric
72. moon s disc is fully in shadow or there New Moon is just a slither of illuminated surface on the edge Less than half the disc is illuminated but Waxing Crescent a more is illuminated each night First Quarter Approximately half the disc is illuminated and increasing each night Waeing Gibbous More than half of the disc is illuminated and still increasing each night Full Moon The whole disc of the moon is illuminated More than half of the disc is illuminated Waning Gibbous 4 but amount gets smaller each night Approximately half the disc is illuminated but this gets less each night Wanine Less than half the disc of the moon is illu sias minated and this gets less each night Table F 3 Phases of the moon 2 6 Variables Most stars are of nearly constant luminosity The Sun is a good example of one which goes through relatively little variation in brightness usually about 0 1 over an 11 year solar cycle Many stars however undergo significant variations in luminosity and these are known as variable stars There are many types of variable stars falling into two categories intrinsic and extrinsic Intrinsic variables are stars which have intrinsic variations in brightness that is the star itself gets brighter and dimmer There are several types of intrinsic variables probably the best known and more important of which is the Cepheid variable whose luminosity is related to the period with
73. mplex skyline I had and I had learnt a little more on how to drive it before I found an executable form of The Gimp For the rest I used a combi nation of both programs I will describe the alpha channel process in detail for Photoshop A lot of this would be suitable for The Gimp as they are very similar programs but I have only tried the bare essential in The Gimp to prove to myself that it could be done 1 Load the panorama picture into Photoshop 2 Create an alpha channel using the channel pop up window This channel was then selected as the only channel visible and it was all black at this stage It needs to be all white To edit this took me some time to discover how What I did was click on Edit in Quick mask mode and then Edit in standard mode This procedure was the only way I found I could edit Click on the magic wand and click it on the channel picture It will put a mask around the whole picture Next I selected the brush tool and toggled the foreground to white and painted the whole channel white using a very large brush size 445 pixels 3 Next I turned the alpha channel off and selected the other channels to get the orig inal picture I got rid of the full mask that I had forgotten to remove by selecting Step backwards from the edit menu I first tried the magnetic loop tool to select the 49 APPENDIX D CREATING A PERSONALISED LANDSCAPE FOR STELLARIUM sections for a mask but it was too fiddly for me I then used the magic w
74. nderer The planets are like the Earth massive bodies that are in orbit around the Sun Moving from the Sun outwards the major planets are Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune and Plut F 4 1 Terrestrial Planets The planets closest to the sun are called collectively the terrestrial planets The terrestrial planets are Mercury Venus Earth and Mars The terrestrial planets are relatively small comparatively dense and have solid rocky surface Most of their mass is made from solid matter which is mostly rocky and or metal lic in nature 4 2 Jovian Planets Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune make up the Jovian planets They are much more massive than the terrestrial planets and do not have a solid surface Jupiter is the largest of all the planets with a mass over 300 times that of the Earth The Jovian planets do not have a solid surface the vast majority of their mass being in gaseous form although they may have rocky or metallic cores Because of this they have an average density which is much less than the terrestrial planets Saturn s mean density is only about 0 7 g cm it would float in water 1 5 The Minor Planets As well as the Major Planets the solar system also contains innumerable smaller bodies in orbit around the Sun These are generally classed as the minor planets or planetoids and include asteroids and sometimes comets 5 1 Asteroids Asteroids are celestial bod
75. ne of the brightest stars in the sky two separate stars Remarkably each of these is also a double star although this will only be seen with a telescope and all four stars form a physical system 72 APPENDIX G SKY GUIDE Shean Other Names Hercules Cluster Globular 5 8 Located approximately of the way This cluster of hundreds of thousands of Cluster along a line from 40 to 44 Herculis mature stars that appears as a circular cloud using the naked eye or binoculars a large telescope is required to resolve in dividual stars Oddly the cluster appears to contain one young star and several areas that are almost devoid of stars M45 The Pleiades The Open Cluster 1 2 Avg Lies a little under halfway between Depending upon conditions six to 9 of the Seven Sisters Aldebaran in Taurus and Almaak in blueish stars in this famous cluster will be Andromeda visible to someone with average eyesight and in binoculars it is a glorious sight The cluster has more than 500 members in to tal many of which are shown to be sur rounded by nebulous material in long ex posure photographs Algol The Demon Star Variable Star 3 0 Avg Halfway between Aldebaran Once every three days or so Algol s bright Beta Persei Taurus and the middle star of the ness changes from 2 1 to 3 4 and back W of Cassiopeia within a matter of hours The reason for this change is that Algol has a dimmer gi ant companion star with an or
76. ng can now be dragged to the bottom of the frame It will not go any further so there is no trouble aligning This bottom stop did not work on The Gimp and so it was harder to cut and place the picture section It is most important to align the pictures to the bottom Save the picture with the name you intend to call your landscape as xxxxxx1 png Repeat steps 11 and 12 for the rest of the pictures till you have all the elements for your landscape Place your pictures in the lt config root gt textures landscapes folder Edit the lt config root gt data landscapes ini file I used wordpad Select the section Guereins copy the section and paste it at the bottom of the file On your insertion edit the name Guereins in every instance to the name you have given your landscape Dont forget to make the number of tex entries agree with the number of your pictures If you havent made a groundtex picture use one of the existing ones from the file or make a square blank picture of your own idea Because I took my pictures from the roof of the house I used an edited picture of the roof of my house from Google Earth It was pretty cruddy low resolution but served the purpose Next you need to orientate your picture North with true North This is done roughly by making the arrangement of sidel to siden suit your site as close as possible Now you need to edit the value of decor angle rotatez to move your landscape in azimuth Edit decor alt angl
77. nguage 4 Stars 4 Show 4 2 Star Magnitude Multiplier 4 3 Maximum Magnitude to Label 4 4 Twinkling 5 Colors J Constellation Lines 5 2 Constellation Names 5 3 Constellarion Art Intensity 5 4 Constellation Boundaries 5 9 Cardinal Points 5 6 Planet Names 941 Planet Orbits 5 8 Planet Trails 5 9 Meridian Line 510 Azimuthal Grid 5 11 Equatorial Grid 5 12 Equator Line 5 13 Ecliptic Line 5 14 Nebula Names 5 15 Nebula Circles 6 Effects 6 Landscape 62 Manual zoom 6 3 Object Sizing Rule 6 4 Magnitude Sizing Multiplier 6 5 Milky Way intensity 6 6 Maximum Nebula Magnitude to Label 6 7 Zoom Duration 6 8 Cursor Timeout 7 Scripts 7 Local Script 72 CD DVD Script 8 Administration 8 Load Default Configuration 8 2 Save Current Configuration as Default 8 3 Update me via Internet 8 4 Set UI Locale Table 3 8 Text yser interface menu Chapter 4 Configuration Most of Stellarium s configuration is done using the configuration window To open the configuration window click the button on the main tool bar You can also press the 1 key digit one to open the configuration window The window has several tabs for configuring various aspects of the program In addition to the configuration window some operations may also be performed using the text menu see section B L Some options may only be configured by editing the configuration file See section 5 2 for more details 4 1 Setting the
78. nitude 6 object a difference of five magnitudes The zero point of the modern scale was originally defined as the brightness of the star Vega however this was re defined more formally in 1982 2 Objects brighter than Vega given negative magnitudes The absolute magnitude of a star is defined as the magnitude a star would appear if it were 10 parsecs from the observer Table E 2 lists several objects that may be seen in the sky their apparent magnitude and their absolute magnitude where applicable only stars have an absolute magnitude value The planets and the Moon don t give out light like a star does they reflect the light from the Sun E 3 5 Luminosity Luminosity is an expression of the total energy radiated by a star It may be measured in watts however astronomers tend to use another expression solar luminosities where an object with twice the Sun s luminosity is considered to have two solar luminosities and so on Luminosity is related to absolute magnitude 57 4 PRECESSION APPENDIX E ASTRONOMICAL CONCEPTS Figure E 4 Obliquity of the Ecliptic 4 Precession As the Earth orbits the Sun throughout the year the axis of rotation the line running through the North and South poles of the Earth seems to point towards the same posi tion on the celestial sphere as can be seen in figure E 4 The angle between the axis of rotation and the orbital plane is called the obliquity of the ecliptic It is 23 27
79. notice and that you preserve all their Warranty Disclaimers The combined work need only contain one copy of this License and multiple identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy If there are multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but different contents make the title of each such section unique by adding at the end of it in parentheses the name of the original author or publisher of that section if known or else a unique number Make the same adjustment to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work In the combination you must combine any sections Entitled History in the various original documents forming one section Entitled History likewise combine any sections Entitled Acknowledgements and any sections Entitled Dedications You must delete all sections Entitled Endorsements 6 COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents released under this License and replace the individual copies of this License in the various documents with a single copy that is included in the collection provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all other respects You may extract a single document from such a collection and distribute it individually under this License provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted document and follow this License in
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81. of the texture file in the fish eye method 26 5 4 CUSTOMISING LANDSCAPES CHAPTER 5 ADVANCED USE On the negative side it is more difficult to create this type of landscape merging the ground texture with the side textures can prove tricky The modification of the lt config root gt data landscapes ini file is also somewhat more complicated Here s an exam ple of the section from landscape ini which describes the Guereins landscape Guereins name Guereins type old_style nbsidetex 8 tex0 landscapes guereins4 texl landscapes guereins5 tex2 landscapes guereins6 tex3 landscapes guereins7 tex4 landscapes guereins8 tex5 landscapes guereinsl tex6 landscapes guereins2 tex7 landscapes guereins3 nbside 8 514 0 tex0 0 0 005 1 1 sidel tex1 0 0 005 1 1 side2 tex2 0 0 005 1 1 side3 tex3 0 0 005 1 1 side4 tex4 0 0 005 1 1 side5 tex5 0 0 005 1 1 side6 tex6 0 0 005 1 1 side7 tex7 0 0 005 1 1 groundtex landscapes guereinsb ground groundtex 0 0 1 1 fogtex fog fog fogtex 0 0 1 1 nb_decor_repeat 1 decor_alt_angle 40 decor_angle_shift 22 decor_angle_rotatez 0 ground_angle_shift 22 ground_angle_rotatez 45 fog_alt_angle 20 fog angle shift 3 draw ground first 1 Where name is the name that will appear in the landscape tab of the configuration window for this landscape type should be old style for the multiple image method nbsid
82. on Coordinate E 5 Paralla Astronomical Phenomena 2 1 F 2 2 Optical Doubles amp Optical Multiple 24 2 2 4 3 Flamsteed Designatio Catalogue 5 4 Customisine Landscapes 5 4 3 Multiple Image Method 5 5 1 Modifying 2000 04 14 5 5 2 Modifying ngc2000names dat 65 TEETH TP TIT 59 PTS D 01 D 0 2 Processing into a Panorama E l Celestial E 2 Coordinate 21 Altitude Azimuth Coordinated EE eer eee err eC CeCe ee EI The SUM 222 255 552 e EAE Ee BK eR Multiple Star Systems E2 3 _ Constellations een E2 4 Star Nameg 2 4 1 BaverDesienation CONTENTS CONTENTS F 2 5 Spectral Type amp Luminosity Clas F 3 1 Phases of the Moo 4 1 Terrestrial Planet 5 11 Asteroid F 9 Meteors Meteorites and Meteoroid iE11 Astronomical Catalogue F 11 2 The Messier Object F 12 Observing Hint F 13 Handy Angle G Sky Guide H 1 Find M31 in Binocular 1 11 Simulatio H 5 Script a Messier Tou GNU Free Documentation License Acknowledgements Bibliography 26 Variabley
83. orizon picture Give it a name tif or png Whichever format you save it in After making the panorama tif I noticed that the trees still had areas of the original sky embedded that werent blanked by the alpha layer I found that I could add these sections piece by piece to the alpha layer with the magic wand and paint them out This took some time as there were a large number to be removed However the result was worth the effort as it allows the sky display to be seen through the trees Especially at high zooms ins Another little trick I discovered was that the panorama could be saved as a JPEG file no alpha channel and the alpha channel also saved as a separate JPEG file This can save space for transmission And allow manipulation of the original file in another program as long as the skyline is unchanged At a later date the two files can be re combined in Photoshop to re form the TIFF file with alpha channel Using this trick I did a little patching and painting on the original picture in Paint on the original JPEG form When completed I loaded it into Photoshop and added the blank alpha channel to it I was then able to paste the previously created alpha layer into the new picture It worked perfectly The panorama now needs to be broken up into suitable square images for insertion into a landscape It took me some time to get the hang of this but the process I found best was in The Gimp It was the easiest to cut the main panorama in
84. orthern celestial pole has a declination of 90 the celestial equator has a declina tion of 0 and the Southern celestial pole has a declination of 90 53 2 COORDINATE SYSTEMS APPENDIX ASTRONOMICAL CONCEPTS zenith altitude nadir Figure E 1 Altitude amp Azimuth zenith North pole South pole nadir Figure E 2 Right Ascension amp Declination 54 UNITS APPENDIX E ASTRONOMICAL CONCEPTS Right ascension is measured as an angle round from a point in the sky known as the first point of Aries in the same way that longitude is measured around the Earth from Greenwich Figure E 2 illustrates RA Dec coordinates Unlike Altitude Azimuth coordinates RA Dec coordinates of a star do not change if the observer changes latitude and do not change over the course of the day due to the rotation of the Earth the story is complicated a little by precession and parallax see sections EA and E 5 respectively for details RA Dec coordinates are frequently used in star catalogues such as the Hipparcos catalogue Stellarium can draw grid lines for RA Dec coordinates Use the button on the main tool bar to activate this grid or press the e key E 3 Units E 3 1 Distance As Douglas Adams pointed out in the Hitchhiker s Guide to the Galaxy 1 Space is big You just won t believe how vastly hugely mind bogglingly big itis I mean you may think it s a long way down the road to the chemist s but that
85. otices in the Document and any Warranty Disclaimers provided that you also include the original English version of this License and the original versions of those notices and disclaimers In case of a disagreement between the translation and the original version of this License or a notice or disclaimer the original version will prevail If a section in the Document is Entitled Acknowledgements Dedications or History the requirement section 4 to Preserve its Title section 1 will typically require changing the actual title 9 TERMINATION You may not copy modify sublicense or distribute the Document except as expressly provided for under this License Any other attempt to copy modify sublicense or distribute the Document is void and will automatically terminate your rights under this License However parties who have received copies or rights from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance 10 FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE The Free Software Foundation may publish new revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns See http www gnu org copyleft Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License or any
86. ou may edit the configuration file to select it It is also possible to specify how Stellarium should start in windowed or full screen mode video fullscreen true screen_w 1680 screen_h 1050 5 2 3 Enabling the Script Bar Individual script commands see section 5 3 may be entered and executed interactively using a feature called the script bar This feature is not enabled by default but you can enable it by altering the configuration file gui flag_show_script_bar true The script bar appears in the main tool bar as a long button containing a gt prompt Clicking on it with the mouse will give it focus it will grab keyboard input After typing a command e g select planet Mercury pressing Enter will execute it You may also use the up and down cursor keys to navigate through previously executed commands 5 2 4 Setting the Time Zone Stellarium tries to determine the time zone based on your system settings It is possible to over ride this by specifying the time zone in the main configuration file init location timezone CET 23 5 3 SCRIPTING CHAPTER 5 ADVANCED USE 5 3 Scripting Stellarium has the ability to record and play back sequences of commands in much the same way some applications allow the recording and executing of macros Using this mechanism it is possible to create presentations of astronomical events using Stellarium Two scripts come with Stellarium that explore lunar eclipses More are
87. ound aries in RGB values where is the maxi mum e g 1 0 1 0 1 0 for white sets the colour of the nebula labels in RGB values where 1 is the maximum is the maximum e g 1 0 1 0 1 0 for white APPENDIX A CONFIGURATION FILE color nebula_circle_colour sets the colour of the circle of the nebula la night_color bels in RGB values where 1 is the maxi chart_color mum e g 1 0 1 0 1 0 for white color star_label_colour float R G B sets the colour of the star labels in RGB night_color values where is the maximum e g chart_color 1 0 1 0 1 0 for white color star_circle_colour float R G B sets the colour of the circle of the star labels night_color in RGB values where is the maximum chart_color e g 1 0 1 0 1 0 for white color cardinal_colour float R G B sets the colour of the cardinal points in night_color RGB values where is the maximum e g chart_color 1 0 1 0 1 0 for white color planet_names_colour float R G B sets the colour of the planet names in RGB night_color values where is the maximum e g chart_color 1 0 1 0 1 0 for white color planet_orbits_colour float R G B sets the colour of the planet orbits in RGB night_color values where is the maximum e g chart_color 1 0 1 0 1 0 for white color object_trails_color float R G B sets the colour of the object trails in RGB night_color values where is the maximum e g chart_color 1 0 1 0 1 0 for white
88. r is learning the constellations the process of becoming familiar with the relative positions of the constellations at what time of year a constellation is visible and in which constellations observationally interesting objects reside Internationally astronomers have adopted the Western Greek Roman con stellations as a common system for segmenting the sky As such some formalisation has been adopted each constellation having a proper name which is in Latin and a three letter abbreviation of that name For example Ursa Major has the abbreviation UMa 2 4 Star Names Stars can have many names The brighter stars often have common names relating to myth ical characters from the various traditions For example the brightest star in the sky Sirius Contributions of artwork for these sky cultures would be very welcome post in the forums if you can help 62 2 STARS APPENDIX ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA Fomalhaut a PsA Magnitude 1 19 RADE 22h58m00s 29 35 16 AZA 175 05 48 11 39 21 Distance 25 07 Light Years Cat HP 113368 Spectral Type A Figure F 2 Stellarium displaying information about a star is also known as The Dog Star the name Canis Major the constellation Sirius is found in is Latin for The Great Dog There are several more formal naming conventions that are in common use 2 41 Bayer Designation German astronomer Johan Bayer devised one such system in the 16 17th century His
89. re precise than is possible with the existing user interface See section for more details f you don t know your longitude and latitude you may find this site helpful 16 4 2 SETTING YOUR LOCATION CHAPTER 4 CONFIGURATION Figure 4 1 Configuration window Date amp Time tab Figure 4 2 Configuration window location tab 17 4 3 SETTING THE LANDSCAPE GRAPHICS CHAPTER 4 CONFIGURATION Configuration Video Screen Resolution 1680x1050 1440x900 1400x1050 1280x1024 1280x960 1280x800 gram for pply Save as default Figure 4 3 Setting up the video mode 4 3 Setting the Landscape Graphics Stellarium has several horizon graphics or landscapes These may be changed by choos ing the options under the Landscapes tab in the configuration window 4 4 Video Mode Settings The Video tab in the configuration window figure 4 3 offers the following setting options Projection Selecting items in this list changes the projection method which Stellarium uses to draw the sky Options are perspective Perspective projection keeps the horizon a straight line The maximum field of view is 100 fisheye Stellarium draws the sky using angular fish eye projection In angular fish eye projection straight lines become curves when they appear a large angular distance from the centre of the field of view like the distortions seen with very wide angle camera lenses This is more pronounced as the user zooms out T
90. robably best off using it If not you can download and build the source Don t worry it uses automake and autoconf so it s nice and easy see the the wikilfor detailed instructions If you re doing it the manual way dependencies are e Some OpenGL implementation e g nvidia GLX e SDL e Zlib e libpng e SDL mixer optional for audio support 2 4 Running Stellarium Windows The Stellarium installer creates an item in the Start Menu under in Programs section Select this to run Stellarium MacOS X Double click on Stellarium wherever you put it Linux If your distribution had a package you ll probably already have an item in the Gnome or KDE application menus If not just use a open a terminal and type stellarium Chapter 3 Interface Guide Figure 3 1 A composite screenshot showing Stellarium in both night time left and day time right 31 Tour After you run Stellarium for the first time you will see a something like one of the sides of the image shown Figure B 1 depending on the time of day that you start the program At the top of the screen you will see the date the time Stellarium s version number the location of the observer the field of view FOV and the current frame rate FPS In the bottom left corner of the screen is the main tool bar In the bottom right corner of the screen is the time tool bar The rest of the screen is a graphical representation of the sky and the ground 3 1 T
91. rsor keys Table 3 8 shows the commands that are available from the TUI menu Many of the options in the TUI menu are duplicated elsewhere in the interface For example the ability to set the maximum star magnitude to label is also accessible via the configuration window see section 4 3 1 8 Other Keyboard Commands As mentioned in section not all keys are documented in the Help window Some features of Stellarium are only available via the keyboard and are not easy to discover Here is a full listing of Stellarium s key bindings OOO e O ae E 2 e LL eme RR 1 13 3 1 TOUR CHAPTER 3 INTERFACE GUIDE p O O E NN 7 Zo Te E ema 2 Toggle tnigrmation window Cycle through draw ecliptic draw ecliptic amp planet trails draw neither Pi ise time rate or decrease script speed if a script is running k 1 Increase time rate or increase script speed if script is running emn LLL 4 EET Set time cale I Second pat second 14 3 1 TOUR CHAPTER 3 INTERFACE GUIDE 1 Set Location 15 Latitude 1 2 Longitude 1 3 Altitude 1 4 Solar System Body 2 Set Time 2 Sky Time 2 2 Set Time Zone 2 3 Preset Sky Time 2 4 Sky Time At Start up 2 5 Time Display Format 2 6 Date Display Format 3 General 3 Sky Culture 3 2 Sky La
92. s look out for doctored alarm clocks that have been set to run in sidereal time The Earth spins on it s axis in the same direction that it orbits the Sun This is called prograde motion When a planet has prograde motion it s sidereal day is longer than it s solar day The length of the sidereal day on Earth is three minutes and 56 seconds longer than a solar day If the Earth pan on it s axis in the opposite direct to it s orbit retrograde motion the sidereal day would be shorter than the solar day E 3 3 Angles Astronomers typically use degrees to measure angles Since many observations require very precise measurement the degree is subdivided into sixty minutes of arc also known as arc minutes Each minute of arc is further subdivided into sixty seconds of arc or arc seconds Thus one degree is equal to 3600 seconds of arc Finer grades of precision are usually expressed using the SI prefixes with arc seconds e g milli arc seconds one milli arc second is one thousandth of an arc second E 3 3 1 Notation Degrees are denoted using the symbol after a number Minutes of arc are denoted with a and seconds of arc are denoted using Angles are frequently given in two formats 56 UNITS APPENDIX E ASTRONOMICAL CONCEPTS Sirius the brightest star 1 A Venus at brightest 4 Full Moon at brightest 12 6 Table E 2 Magnitudes of well known objects 1 DMS format degrees minutes and seconds
93. s generic paint programs or for drawings some widely available drawing editor and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup or absence of markup has been arranged to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent An image format is not Transparent if used for any substantial amount of text A copy that is not Transparent is called Opaque Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII without markup Texinfo input format IATEX input format SGML or XML using a publicly available DTD and standard conforming simple HTML PostScript or PDF designed for human modification Examples of transparent image formats include PNG XCF and JPG Opaque formats include proprietary formats that can be read and edited only by proprietary word processors SGML or XML for which the DTD and or processing tools are not generally available and the machine generated HTML PostScript or PDF produced by some word processors for output purposes only The Title Page means for a printed book the title page itself plus such following pages as are needed to hold legibly the material this License requires to appear in the title page For works in formats which do not have any title page as such Title Page means the text near the most prominent appearance of
94. s initial viewing direction This is a vector with x y z coordinates x being N S S ve y being E W E ve z being up down up ve Thus to look South at the horizon use 1 0 0 To look Northwest and up at 45 use 1 1 1 and so on auto move duration duration for the program to move to point at navigation mouse zoom float Sets the mouse zoom amount mouse wheel navigation move_speed float Sets the speed of movement 5 an object when the space bar is pressed Typ ical value 2 0 navigation viewing_mode string if set to horizon the viewing mode simu late an alt azi mount if set to equatorial the viewing mode simulates an equatorial mount navigation flag_manual_zoom bool set to true if you want to auto zoom in incre polo landscape flag langscape bool set to false if you don t want to see the land D reme landscape flag fog bool set to false if you don t want to see fog on pr a landscape flag atmosphere bool set to false if you don t want to see atmo viewing atmosphere fade duration float sets the time it takes for the atmosphere to p eem viewing flag constellation drawing bool setto true if you want to see the constellation pes line drawings on start up viewing flag constellation name bool setto true if you want to see the constellation viewing flag constellation art bool set to true if you want to see the constellation viewing flag constellation boundariqs setto true if you want to se
95. s permission B List on the Title Page as authors one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version together with at least five of the principal authors of the Document all of its principal authors if it has fewer than five unless they release you from this requirement C State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified Version as the publisher D Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document E Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent to the other copyright notices Include immediately after the copyright notices a license notice giving the public permission to use the Modified Version under the terms of this License in the form shown in the Addendum below G Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant Sections and required Cover Texts given in the Document s license notice H Include an unaltered copy of this License 1 Preserve the section Entitled History Preserve its Title and add to it an item stating at least the title year new authors and publisher of the Modified Version as given on the Title Page If there is no section Entitled History in the Document create one stating the title year authors and publisher of the Document as given on its Title Page then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated in the previous sentence J Preserve the network location if any given in the D
96. scheme names the stars according to the constellation in which they lie prefixed by a lower case Greek letter starting at for the brightest star in the constellation and proceeding with B y in descending order of apparent magnitude For example such a Bayer Designation for Sirius is Canis Majoris note that the genitive form of the constellation name is used There are some exceptions to the descending magnitude ordering and some multiple stars both real and optical are named with a numerical superscript after the Greek letter e g xl n Orionis 2 4 2 Flamsteed Designation English astronomer John Flamsteed numbered stars in each constellation in order of in creasing right ascension followed by the form of the constellation name for example 61 Cygni F 2 4 3 Catalogues As described in section various star catalogues assign numbers to stars which often used in addition to other names Stellarium gets it s star data from the Hipparcos catalogue and as such stars in Stellarium are generally referred to with their Hipparcos number e g HP 62223 Figure shows the information Stellarium displays when a star is selected At the top the common name and Flamsteed designation are shown followed by the RA Dec coordinates apparent magnitude distance and Hipparcos number 2 5 Spectral Type amp Luminosity Class Stars have many different colours Seen with the naked eye most appear to be whi
97. sing the Page Down Press the backslash key and see how Stellarium returns to the original field of view how zoomed the view is and direction of view It s also possible to move around using the mouse If you left click and drag somewhere on the sky you can pull the view around Another method of moving is to select some object in the sky left click on the object and press the Space key to centre the view on that object Similarly selecting an object and pressing the forward slash key will centre on the object and zoom right in on it The forward slash and backslash keys auto zoom in an out to different levels depending on what is selected If the object selected is a planet or moon in a sub system with a lot of moons e g Jupiter the initial zoom in will go to an intermediate level where the whole sub system should be visible A second zoom will go to the full zoom level on the selected object Similarly if you are fully zoomed in on a moon of Jupiter the first auto zoom out will go to the sub system zoom level Subsequent auto zoom out will fully zoom out and return the initial direction of view For objects that are not part of a sub system the initial auto zoom in will zoom right in on the selected object the exact field of view depending on the size type of the selected object and the initial auto zoom out will return to the initial FOV and direction of view 3 1 3 Main Tool bar 21 17 11 Stellarium 0 8 0 Earth P
98. star with a surface temperature of around 5 500 K Spectral types may be further sub divided using a numerical suffixes ranging from 0 9 where 0 is the hottest and 9 is the coolest Table shows the details of the various spectral types For about 90 of stars the absolute magnitude increases as the spectral type tends to the O hot end of the scale Thus the whiter hotter stars tend to have a greater luminosity These stars are called main sequence stars There are however a number of stars that have spectral type at the M end of the scale and yet they have a high absolute magnitude These stars have a very large size and consequently are known as giants the largest of these known as super giants There are also stars whose absolute magnitude is very low regardless of the spectral class These are known as dwarf stars among them white dwarfs and brown dwarfs A luminosity class is an indication of the type of star whether it is main sequence a giant or a dwarf Luminosity classes are denoted by a number in roman numerals as described in table F2 Plotting the luminosity of stars against their spectral type surface temperature gives a diagram called a Hertzsprung Russell diagram after the two astronomers Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell who devised it 3A common aide to memory for the letters used in spectral types is the mnemonic Oh Be A Fine Girl Kiss Me 64 F3 OUR MOON APPENDIX ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA The
99. t only spins it also moves slightly round it s orbit Thus in one solar day the Earth does not spin exactly 360 on it s axis Another way to measure day length is to consider how long it takes for the Earth to rotate exactly 360 This is known as one sidereal day Figure E 3 illustrates the motion of the Earth as seen looking down on the Earth orbiting the Sun The red triangle on the Earth represents the location of an observer The figure shows the Earth at four times 1 The Sun is directly overhead it is mid day 55 UNITS APPENDIX E ASTRONOMICAL CONCEPTS Figure E 3 Solar and Sidereal days 2 Twelve hours have passed since 1 The Earth has rotated round and the observer is on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun It is mid night The Earth has also moved round in it s orbit a little 3 The Earth has rotated exactly 360 Exactly one sidereal day has passed since 1 4 It is mid day again exactly one solar day since 1 Note that the Earth has rotated more than 360 since 1 It should be noted that in figure E 3 the the sizes of the Sun and Earth and not to scale More importantly the distance the Earth moves around it s orbit is much exaggerated In one real solar day the Earth takes a year to travel round the Sun 3654 solar days It takes exactly one sidereal day for the celestial sphere to make one revolution in the sky Astronomers find sidereal time useful when observing When visiting observatorie
100. t the ground texture is placed ground angle rotatez angular rotation of the ground texture around the vertical axis When the sides are rotated the ground texturer may beed to me ratated as well to match up with the sides fog alt angle vertical angular size of the fog texture how fog looks fog angle shift vertical angular offset of the fog texture at what height is it drawn draw ground first if 1 the ground is drawn in front of the scenery i e the side textures will overlap over the ground texture A step by step account of the creation of a custom landscape has been contributed by Barry Gerdes See Appendix D 5 5 Adding amp Modifying Extended Objects Extended objects are those which are external to the solar system and are not point sources like stars Extended objects include galaxies planetary nebulae and star clusters These ob jects may or may not have images associated with them Stellarium comes with a catalogue of about 13 000 extended objects with images of over 70 To add a new extended object add an entry in the config root data ngc2000 dat file with the details of the object See section 5 5 T for details of the file format If the object has name not just a catalogue number you should add one or more records to the config root data ngc2000names dat file See section 5 5 2 for de tails of the file format If you wish to associate a texture image with the object you must also add a record to
101. t time move on at this fast speed for a little while Notice how the stars move across the sky If you wait a little while you ll see the Sun rising and setting It s a bit like one of those time lapse movies except there are no clouds Stellarium not only allows for moving forward through time you can go backwards too Click on the real time speed button n The stars and or the Sun should stop scooting across the sky Now press the decrease time speed button once Look at the clock Time has stopped Click the Decrease time speed button four or five more times Now we re falling back through time at quite a rate about one day every ten seconds Enough time travel for now Wait until it s night time and then click the Real time speed button With a little luck you will now be looking at the night sky 3 1 2 Moving Around the Sky Pan the view left right up and down Backslash Auto zoom out to original field of view and viewing direction Select an object in the sky Centre view on selected object Forward slash Auto zoom in to selected object Table 3 4 Controls to do with movement 3 1 TOUR CHAPTER 3 INTERFACE GUIDE As well as travelling through time Stellarium lets to look around the sky freely and zoom in and out There are several ways to accomplish this listed in table 3 4 Let s try it Use the cursors to move around left right up and down Zoom in a little using the Page Up key and back out again u
102. t_bar bool set to true if you want to have access to the script bar set to 0 if you want to keep the mouse cursor visible at all times 0 values mean the cursor will be hidden after that many seconds of inactivity when set to false the normal movement con trols will be disabled when a script is playing true enables them enables disables display of the image flip ping buttons in the main toolbar see section 5 10 sets the colour of the azimuthal grid in RGB values where is the maximum e g 1 0 1 0 1 0 for white these three numbers determine the colour of the interface in RGB values where is the maximum e g 1 0 1 0 1 0 for white these three numbers determine the colour of the text in RGB values where is the maxi mum e g 1 0 1 0 1 0 for white sets the colour of the equatorial grid in RGB values where is the maximum e g 1 0 1 0 1 0 for white sets the colour of the equatorial line in RGB values where is the maximum e g 1 0 1 0 1 0 for white sets the colour of the ecliptic line in RGB values where is the maximum e g 1 0 1 0 1 0 for white sets the colour of the meridian line in RGB values where is the maximum e g 1 0 1 0 1 0 for white sets the colour of the constellation lines in RGB values where is the maximum e g 1 0 1 0 1 0 for white sets the colour of the constellation names in RGB values where is the maximum e g 1 0 1 0 1 0 for white sets the colour of the constellation b
103. ta Cephei is also a dou gle delta is at the head of this tri ble star with a companion of magnitude 6 3 angle in the direction of Cassiopeia visible in binoculars 73 APPENDIX G SKY GUIDE Other Name s eed Loreto Guide Orion Nebula Nebula Almost in the middle of the area bounded by Orion s belt and the stars Saiph and Rigel HP 62223 La Superba X Forms a neat triangle with Phad and Canum Venaticorum Alkaid in Ursa Major Double Star 52 amp 53 Bootis Nu Bootis 1 amp 2 Follow a line from Seginus to Nekkar and then continue for the same distance again to arrive at this double star 74 The Orion Nebula is the brightest nebula visible in the night sky and lies at about 1 500 light years from earth It is a truly gigantic gas and dust cloud that extends for several hundred light years reaching almost halfway across the constellation of Orion The nebula contains a cluster of hot young stars known as the Trapezium and more stars are believed to be forming within the cloud La Superba is a Carbon Star a group of relatively cool gigantic usually variable stars that have an outer shell containing high levels of carbon This shell is very ef ficient at absorbing short wavelength blue light giving carbon stars a distinctive red or orange tint This pair are of different spectral type and 52 Bootis at approximately 800 light is twice as far away as 53 Appendix H Exercises H 1
104. te but this is due to the response of the eye at low light levels the eye is not sensitive to colour Typically the unaided eye can start to see differences in colour only for stars that have apparent magnitude brighter than 1 Betelgeuse for example has a distinctly red tinge to it and Sirius appears to be blu Thousands of years ago Sirius was reported in many account to have a red tinge to it a good explanation for which is yet to be found 63 2 STARS APPENDIX ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA Spectral Type Surface Temperature K 28 000 50 000 10 000 28 000 7 500 10 000 White blue 4 900 6 000 3 500 4 900 20005500 Rea Table F 1 Spectral Types Bright giants 6 000 7 500 Yellow white Sub dwarfs White dwarfs Table F 2 Luminosity Class II By splitting the light from a star using a prism attached to a telescope and measuring the relative intensities of the colours of light the star emits the spectra a great deal of interesting information can be discovered about a star including its surface temperature and the presence of various elements in its atmosphere Astronomers groups stars with similar spectra into spectral types denoted by one of the following letters O B A F G K and Type O stars have a high surface temperature up to around 50 000 K while the at other end of the scale the M stars are red and have a much cooler surface temperature typically 3000 K The Sun is a type G
105. that filenames may not contains spaces and are case sensitive The record format is as follows 29 5 6 OTHER CONFIGURATION FILES CHAPTER 5 ADVANCED USE Declination Texture rotation 5 5 4 Editing Image Files Images should be copied to the textures directory They should be in PNG format Images should have an aspect ratio of 1 i e it should be square and should have a width amp height of 2 pixels where n is a positive integer i e 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 and so Black is interpretted as being 100 transparent Ensure that the background of the image is totally black i e has RGB values 0 0 0 and not simply nearly black since this can cause an ugly grey square around the object There is a lot of software that can create modify PNG images The author recommends the GNU Image Manipulation Program GIMP since it is more than up to the job and is free software in the same spirit as Stellarium itself 5 6 Other Configuration Files In addition to the ngc2000 dat ngc2000names dat and nebula textures fab files discussed in section 5 5 the config root data directory contains several other files Many of these files may be edited easily to change Stellarium s behavioul4 See table 5 2 Not all files in the config root gt data directory are listed here only the ones which the advanced user is most likely to want to modify 30 5 7 SKY CULTURES CHAPTER 5 ADVANCED USE Table 5 3
106. the config root gt data nebula_textures fab file See section 5 5 3 for details of the file format 28 5 5 ADDING amp MODIFYING EXTENDED OBJIEEISPTER 5 ADVANCED USE 5 5 1 Modifying ngc2000 dat Each deep sky image has one line in the ngc2000 dat file in the config root data folder The file is a plain ASCII file and may be edited with a normal text editor Each line M one record each record SS aa oL the following fields e e IO the catalogue type I Index Catalogue anything else means NGC fe a 3s Sets nType Possible values NEB OC OC NEB GC Gb NEB N Nb NEB PN 3 C4N NEB CN NEB UNKNOWN Lir o 9499 Rish ascention hour ight ascendon minute gu s 9t Magnitude i 5 5 2 Modifying ngc2000names dat Each line in the ngc2000names dat file contains one record A record relates an extended object catalogue number from ngc2000 dat with a name A single catalogue number may have more than one record in this file record structure is as follows 355 Name Note that messier numbers should be then three spaces then the number qme END y y Ex __ Catalog sube 5 5 3 Modifying nebula textures fab Each line in the nebula textures fab file is one record Records are whitespace separated so there are not strictly any offsets for particlar fields Note
107. the ruler are a known angular distance apart e g 1 The markings on the ruler are often marked with luminescent paint for night time use has a nice illustration of the design and use of a crossbow The ruler is held in a curve by a piece of string giving a better indication of the reason for the name The curve is there to make all parts of the ruler perpendicular to the line of sight which improves the accuracy of the device 71 Appendix G Sky Guide This section lists some astronomical objects that can be located using Stellarium All of them can be seen with the naked eye or binoculars Since many astronomical objects have more than one name often having a proper name a common name and various cata logue numbers the table lists the name as it appears in Stellarium use this name when using Stellarium s search function and any other commonly used names The Location Guide column gives brief instructions for finding each object using nearby bright stars or groups of stars when looking at the real sky a little time spent learning the major constellations visible from your latitude will pay dividends when it comes to locating fainter and more interesting objects When trying to locate these objects in the night sky keep in mind that Stellarium displays many stars that are too faint to be visible without optical aid and even bright stars can be dimmed by poor atmospheric conditions and light pollution Stellarum N
108. the two pictures Quite easy with a little practice using the zoom in facility and I found the MSpaint program the easiest to do this in When I had my 14 processed pictures I inserted them into the panorama program I used a program called the Panorama Factory Version 1 6 is a freebee that works well and can be downloaded from the internet a Google search will find it I used version 3 4 that is better and cost about 40 off the Internet This program has many options and can be configured to suit most cameras and can make a seamless 360 panorama in barrel form that will take a highly trained eye to find where the joins occur The resulting panorama was then loaded into Paint and trimmed to a suitable size Mine ended up 4606 x 461 pixels I stretched the 4606 to 4610 pixels almost no distortion that would allow cutting into 10 461x461 pictures at a later date If the height of the panorama had been greater I could have made fewer pictures and so shown more of the foreground See figure D I D 0 3 Removing the background to make it transparent This is the most complex part of the process and requires a program that can produce transparency to parts of your picture commonly called an alpha channel Two programs I know of will do this The very expensive and sophisticated Adobe Photoshop and a freebee called The Gimp I used Photoshop to produce the alpha channel because selection of the area for trans parency was more positive with the co
109. the work s title preceding the beginning of the body of the text A section Entitled XYZ means a named subunit of the Document whose title either is precisely XYZ or contains XYZ in parentheses following text that translates XYZ in another language Here XYZ stands for a specific section name mentioned 77 APPENDIX 1 GNU FREE DOCUMENTATION LICENSE below such as Acknowledgements Dedications Endorsements or History To Preserve the Title of such a section when you modify the Document means that it remains a section Entitled XYZ according to this definition The Document may include Warranty Disclaimers next to the notice which states that this License applies to the Document These Warranty Disclaimers are considered to be included by reference in this License but only as regards disclaiming warranties any other implication that these Warranty Disclaimers may have is void and has no effect on the meaning of this License 2 VERBATIM COPYING You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium either commercially or noncommercially provided that this License the copyright notices and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute However you may accept compensation in exchange for
110. this guide please email author For comments about Stellarium itself visit the Chapter 2 Installation 2 1 System Requirements e Linux Unix Windows 95 98 2000 NT XP or MacOS X 10 3 x or greater e A 3D graphics card with a support for OpenGL At least a Voodoo3 or a TNT2 is recommended for smooth animation e A dark room for realistic rendering details like the Milky Way or star twinkling can t be seen in a bright room 2 20 Downloading You should visit the Stellarium website Download packages for various platforms are available directly from the main page Choose the correct package for your operating syste 2 3 Installation 2 3 1 Windows 1 Double click on the stellarium 0 8 0 exe file to run the installer 2 Follow the on screen instructions 2 3 2 MacOS X 1 Locate the stellarium 0 8 0 dmg file in finder and double click on it or open it using the disk copy progra 2 Have a browse of the readme file and drag Stellariumto the Applications folder or somewhere else if you prefer Linux users your distribution may already carry Stellarium as part of the distro just look in your package manager Note that at the time of writing there are some problems with the MacOS X installation process See the forums and for up to date notes 2 4 RUNNING STELLARIUM CHAPTER 2 INSTALLATION 2 3 3 Linux Check if your distribution has a package for Stellarium already if so you re p
111. to sections as it has a mask scale in the tool bar Load the panorama file with alpha channel into The Gimp Then using the mask tool cut out the squares of the predetermined size starting from the left hand side of the picture I don t think it is necessary to make them exact squares but I did not experiment with this aspect The position of the cut will be shown on the lower tool bar Accuracy is improved if you use the maximum zoom that will fit on the page Create a new picture from the file menu then select and adjust the size to your pre determined size then select transparent for the background Because of the alpha channel the transparent section will be automatically clipped of much of the trans parent part of the picture Paste the cutting into the new picture If it is smaller 50 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 APPENDIX D CREATING A PERSONALISED LANDSCAPE FOR STELLARIUM than your predetermined size it will go to the centre leaving some of the transparent background at the bottom of the picture Save the file in the PNG format Moving the picture to the bottom of the window is much easier in Photoshop although quite possible in The Gimp I repeated steps 8 and 9 till I had all sections of the panorama saved Next I re loaded Photoshop and opened the first of the saved pictures Then from the menu selected the picture with the mask tool and then selected move Next clicking on the picture will cut it out The cutti
112. u may add a section Entitled Endorsements provided it contains nothing but endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties for example statements of peer review or that the text has been approved by an organization as the authoritative definition of a standard You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front Cover Text and a passage of up to 25 words as a Back Cover Text to the end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified Version Only one passage of Front Cover Text and one of Back Cover Text may be added by or through arrangements made by any one entity If the Document already includes a cover text for the same cover previously added by you or by arrangement made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of you may not add another but you may replace the old one on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the old one 78 APPENDIX I GNU FREE DOCUMENTATION LICENSE The author s and publisher s of the Document do not by this License give permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified Version 5 COMBINING DOCUMENTS You may combine the Document with other documents released under this License under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions provided that you include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of all of the original documents unmodified and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license
113. uments are supplied deselects current ob ject Leaves constellation selection alone See deselect command constellation CONSTELLATION SHORT NAME 3 character abbreviation from constellationship fab case ni lt insensitive constellation_star HP_NUMBER select the constellation which is made up by the specified star nebula NEBULA_NAME Name as defined in messier fab 45 APPENDIX B SCRIPTING COMMANDS command Argument Names Argument Values pointer on 1 off 0 Whether to draw the highlighting pointer around the se lected object Default is on E LLL E eme eese eme LLL EI Een 71 meme pee oo ieee rr 71 8E 0771 ee 1 O emm mei 2 7 i 7 zoom auto in initial out initial returns to configured initial fov and viewing di rection 46 Appendix C Precision Stellarium uses the 5 87 method to calculate the variation in position of the planets over time As with other methods the precision of the calulations vary according to the planet and the time for which one makes the calculation Reasons for these inaccuracies include the fact that the motion of the planet isn t as predictable as Newtonian mechanics would have us believe As far as Stellarium is concerned the user should bear in mind the following properties of the VSOP87 method Mercury Venus Precision
114. urefov is the field of view that the image covers in degrees 25 5 4 CUSTOMISING LANDSCAPES CHAPTER 5 ADVANCED USE Figure 5 1 Multiple Image Method of making landscapes 5 4 2 Single Panorama Method This method uses a more usual type of panorama the kind which is produced directly from software such as autostitich The panorama file should be copied into the lt config root textures landscapes directory and a section added to the config root gt data landscapes ini file The Moon landscape which comes with Stellarium 0 8 0 provides a good example of the landscapes ini section for this type moon name Moon type spherical maptex landscapes apollol7 png Where name is what appears in the landscape tab of the configuration window type identifies the method used for this landscape spherical in this case maptex is the path of the image file for this landsape from the config root directory 5 4 3 Multiple Image Method The multiple image method works by having a 360 panorama of the horizon split into a number of smaller side textures and a separate ground texture This has the advantage over the single image method that the detail level of the horizon can be increased further without ending up with a single very large image file The ground texture can be a lower resolution than the parorama images Memory usage may be more efficient because there are no unused texture parts like the corners
115. ut using the proper filters By far the safest way to observe the Sun it to look at it on computer screen courtesy of Stellarium 2 Stars The Sun is just one of billions of stars Even though many stars have a much greater absolute magnitude than the Sun the give out more light they have an enormously smaller apparent magnitude due to their large distance Stars have a variety of forms different sizes brightnesses temperatures even different colours Measuring the position distance and attributes of the stars is known as astrometry 21 Multiple Star Systems Many stars have a stellar companions As many as six stars can be found orbiting one another in close association Such associations are known a multiple star systems binary systems being the most common with two stars Multiple star systems are more common than solitary stars putting our Sun in the minority group Sometimes multiple stars orbit one another in a way that means one will periodically eclipse the other These eclipsing binaries or Agol variables 61 2 STARS APPENDIX ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA Figure E 1 The constellation of Ursa Major 2 2 Optical Doubles amp Optical Multiples Sometimes two or more stars appear to be very close to one another in the sky but in fact have great separation being aligned from the point of view of the observer but of different distances Such pairings are known as optical doubles and optical multiples 2
116. y 55 skins sky culture Sol 61 solar day 55 solar system 28 55 spectra spectral type speed of light 55 spheric mirror projection 18 spherical 25 spiral galaxies star dog star the Sirius star cluster 28 star clusters 69 Stars 67 stars 16222362636861 INDEX Betelgeuse 63 Polaris Proxima Centuri Sadalmelik 69 Sirius 63 stellar parallax 58 stereographic projection sub system 0 Sun 5159671658160 61 66 super giants 64 supernova remnant 68 system clock 9 telescope control 23 telescope server 33 terrestrial planets 66 text menu 13 13 16 texture file texture files 30 time PTA 5153 time rate time zone tool bar main 8 10 16 23 53 time 8 9 transparency 25 TUL 13 I6 twinkle Tycho catalogue 69 units Uranus variable stars Agol 61 vector Venus 66 viewport 18 visual effects white dwarfs 64 window configuration 13116 landscapes tab 18 25H27 language tab 32 location tab 16 31 52 53 rendering tab 19 video tab 18 23 find 12 help 13 13 information 13 search 12 windowed mode INDEX INDEX zenith 31 52 53 zoom 85

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