[HN Gopher] Stellarium
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Stellarium
Author : throwoutway
Score : 219 points
Date : 2022-03-06 03:36 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stellarium.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (stellarium.org)
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| there was an old software that i used back in early 2000-2005.
| Red shift 3. it was this massive plantery astronomy whatever
| magic that would do stars and eclipses and recordings or animated
| eclipses and what not. i wonder if anyone is similar to that in
| the FOSS software world. i tried stellarium i think its a star
| map, thats it.i could be wrong but i compare all these current
| softwares with red shift 3 in my mind and most if not all fall
| short.
|
| edit:http://archaic.maris.com/content/index520f.html
|
| this looks like the software i was talking about
|
| https://lowendmac.com/2001/astronomy-software-redshift-3-0-f...
|
| it says for MAC but i've used it on my windows 98/2000 back in
| the day
| bscphil wrote:
| Sounds sort of like Celestia, but I'm not 100% sure from your
| description what the program was like.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| http://archaic.maris.com/content/index520f.html
| the-dude wrote:
| 640x480 screenshots, wow.
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| I loved Celestia so much I've been working on rewriting it
| for the web for some years
|
| http://celestiary.github.io
| dotancohen wrote:
| Very nice. However, it seems to be showing a nearly-full
| moon for today (March 6), when in fact the moon is nearly-
| new.
|
| EDIT: Another issue, if you're interested. When speeding up
| time, it can be seen that the moon spins far too rapidly.
| It should be tidally locked to Earth (more or less).
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| wow, really slick, I'll have to check out your code, I've
| been wanting to try out generating sky maps.
|
| Only problem I ran into is rotating on touchscreen quickly
| got bent out of shape, not rotating the same way as I
| dragged the screen. Could it be a gimbal lock issue?
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Similar 'old' software, I really enjoy _and it runs as
| portable_ (on Windows): home planet
|
| https://www.fourmilab.ch/homeplanet/
|
| It's so old it talks about "downloading on dial-up
| connections", though the hiomepage is up to date (and full of
| gems)
| jasonincanada wrote:
| It's scriptable! I took far too many hours of staring and
| pondering to come up with a set of scripts for new astronomers to
| get a sense of the size and duration of the solar system's main
| planets and moon orbits:
|
| https://github.com/jasonincanada/stellarium-scripts
| pvg wrote:
| Some previouslies
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20901358 2019, 56 comments
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19513222 2019, 33 comments
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17906113 2018, 48 comment
|
| The last one is about the web port with some interesting comments
| from one of the developers about how they did a C rewrite in
| order to port it to the web.
| mshockwave wrote:
| Stellarium is a masterpiece, my childhood memory, and one of the
| most important softwares for astronomy education that doesn't
| charge you anything!
| blaeks wrote:
| Question: Is there a possibility in Stellarium to place thyself
| on for example Pluto/Jupiter, some comet, or some nearby star
| (inside Milky Way or outside) - and look at the Milky Way
| center/another random star/area of space + have trajectories
| drawn when I "pres play on time" engine?
|
| Using those perspectives - with all of the trajectories drawn,
| alongside with the preset universal/local/celestial coordinates,
| luminosity, maps... huge time-spans... is - informative for us
| who want/plan and work on slingshot maneuvers through space&time
| - it gives a spacial perspective for the game ^_^
|
| Anyone remember "Red Shift 3"?
|
| If (when) WW3 kicks into gear - I will most certainly spin-up a
| virtual win98 box and revive the 20 years old pleasure engraved
| in my teeth and synapses. Ah man - even the memory of those
| explorations and detailed reads on any particular object/area
| warms my broken heart.
| jasonincanada wrote:
| I wrote some scripts that let you tour the solar system on an
| hourly loop:
|
| https://github.com/jasonincanada/stellarium-scripts
| moonbug wrote:
| cool story bro
| dmead wrote:
| It kind of stinks using this over remote desktop because it
| relies so heavily on opengl.
| can16358p wrote:
| This is great. I am an amateur astrophotographer, just as a
| hobby.
|
| When I'm planning for shooting a specific celestial body I can
| easily fast forward to night and see when and how long is the
| most suitable way to plan a shot (shooting deep space objects
| take total of many hours of exposures, "locked" to the same point
| in space using a tracker). Also know when moon and sun will
| rise/set which is crucial as even a tiny amount of sunlight or
| moonlight ruins the already-super-faint data.
|
| Also has the mobile app, which is equally useful. Definitely
| recommended if you're getting into astrophotography, or just to
| see how time and Earth's rotation affects what is seen in the
| sky.
| krylon wrote:
| Where I live, light pollution is a huge obstacle for observing
| the skies, plus it is cloudy very often. Sometimes I feel like
| it's not even worth looking at the skies.
|
| Stellarium allows me a glimpse of what it would be like without
| light pollution or clouds. I don't use it very often, but I love
| it dearly.
|
| Also, _if_ you manage to get a good look at the sky and wonder
| what is that point of light over there, Stellarium is priceless.
| JNRowe wrote:
| The biggest improvement for my stellarium usage was creating my
| own landscape1, as having a quick way to see whether that early
| morning partial eclipse is behind _those_ trees is really useful.
| Also, kinda super fun to sit in your office chair spinning around
| your own garden.
|
| I actually created a bunch of landscapes for places that I have
| reasonable access to, so that I can choose an appropriate place
| for observations without having to resort to guesswork.
|
| I'll note that you can create usable versions with the panorama
| function on a cheap phone and gimp.
|
| 1 http://stellarium.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Customising...
| nullc wrote:
| It just took me 15 minutes to make a panorama for kstars (a
| very similar program, I assume the same image would work in
| both) using an android phone and the google 'street view' app.
|
| The street view app is intended for making panoramas for
| submission to google maps... but you can just not submit the
| images, and they get stored locally in the photos folder. After
| that you just load it in gimp to erase the sky and save the
| result as an image with an alpha channel.
|
| The hardest part was aligning the image to make north agree
| exactly -- but unless you're going to use the image to map out
| visibility for astrophotography you don't have to get it
| exactly right.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. I've been using stellarium pretty much
| exclusively and never heard of kstars.
|
| Will definitely give it a try.
| nullc wrote:
| Kstars has phenomenal astrophotography integration (as in,
| support for taking photographs, both can display
| photographs from network sourced databases), outside of
| that I think stellarium gives a more slick experience--
| closer to a planetarium show and a little less of a
| technical tool.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Thank you so much for this!
|
| On several occasions I planned my observations in stellarium
| and got excited about some object finally getting into view
| only to discover my dobsonian is actually too low or the tree
| at the back would obstruct the view at the worst possible time.
| gspr wrote:
| It is also incredibly useful when considering a property.
| Sketching out the nearby structures and trees as a Stellarium
| landscape is a great way to figure out what the lighting
| conditions are during other times of the year, especially at
| high latitudes where these things vary tremendously. I keep
| getting surprised by how off my hunch for June lighting
| conditions is in December, and Stellarium takes the guesswork
| out of it.
| ccooffee wrote:
| Woah, this sounds incredibly useful. Are there any blog posts
| / wiki pages / videos that you used as a reference when doing
| this? I'm hoping to put a garden in my backyard this month,
| but I'm not sure about the location.
| gspr wrote:
| I've been meaning to hack together some scripts to automate
| the whole process, with an accompanying writeup, but I've
| been lazy. Your comment made me want to get this done
| though, thanks :-)
|
| Short summary: I go see the property, take properly
| geolocated photos in several important parts of it, trying
| to keep the camera level and pointed in known directions
| (or verift that the compass is calibrated), and trying to
| keep easily visible landmarks and buildings in view. Then I
| go to my country's mapping authority website and find the
| property and the same landmarks and buildings, and simply
| re-create them as super-crude rectangles in a Stellarium
| landscape. I open the landscape, set the location, and then
| check out where the sun is in the sky at several times per
| year.
|
| What I wanna automate is importing a digital elevation
| model (many countries offer this under a liberal license),
| and perhaps stitching the aforementioned photos into the
| Stellarium landscape (although I bet this provides little
| actual value).
| greenSunglass wrote:
| I love using the android version, really smooth and beautiful.
| Kudos to the devs
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