Stellarium- finding stars

[CarlosPindle]

The program, Stellarium, I've found to be helpful in figuring out the doubtful position of navigational stars.  Similar to the problem of, "I just shot a certain star but am not sure what its name is". So, Stellarium can be used to help identify a celestial body.

You can get it here;  Stellarium

2102-D is good too and so is the USNO's Navigation star chart

Carlos

[c_davidson]

Got it. Excellent program.

Clendon

[P.Rutherford]

Stellarium has been a real help in figuring out stars that aren't too familiar. In Linux it's free but don't know if there's a cost for other OS.

Stellarium does cost when purchased for Android.

Love it.

[BigBill]

I use it for that purpose as well. There is a lot of light pollution and many trees around my house, so even when I can see a star I don't always know what it is. Great program for learning the positions and names of celestial bodies and their relationship to each other. If you can download it, do so. In my opinion it's much better than charts.
Old thread but I'm new here, lol.

[Fred_B]

Have you seen the the plugin for the navigational stars?

http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php...ars_plugin

Fred

[BigBill]

The link isn't working for me, I get an error message and No, I don't have that plug in. It sounds helpful.

[c_davidson]

BigBill,

I'm getting the same error-

"Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties".

Looks like all of the plugin pages are having trouble.

It's a good plugin but sometimes when I click on the tiny sextant icon to activate it- Stellarium crashes.

Starting up Stellarium again and then clicking the sextant icon usually doesn't cause any trouble.

Clen

[BigBill]

Aha, I found the plug-in already in my copy of the program. It was in a configuration menu on the left side of my screen. I just had to enable the plug-in at start up. It then adds an icon in the menu at the bottom.
Sweet. Saves me the misery of having to find the stars myself. :)

[CarlosPindle]

BigBill,

Stellarium is very helpful and once you learn the names and the positions of the stars then it's easy to find them again.

The Rude (stupid name) 2102D star finder is easy to use.  Have you ever tried it?
The USNO's Navigational Star Chart-  https://thenauticalalmanac.com/Navigatio...0Chart.pdf

........is very helpful too IF....you start from the right hand bottom edge of the chart and mark the LHA* ascending numerically from 0° to 360° which is just the reverse order of the SHA marked on the chart. Often I have to remind myself that the bright stars are the ones to use.

Stellarium helps in many ways- especially if you're in doubt about "which star did I really shoot?"

It's fun.

Are you running Linux or Windows?

* In Western Longitudes LHA= GHA ♈ (Aries) - (minus) your whole degree of Longitude.

[BigBill]

Windows on my pc.
So far it's helped me identify a number of uncertain stars but the real treat was Venus, Mars and Jupiter which I had been struggling to identify. Once I know the identity, I'm able to pick them out pretty well even as they move through the sky over a number of weeks.

[P.Rutherford]

Windows on my pc.
So far it's helped me identify a number of uncertain stars but the real treat was Venus, Mars and Jupiter which I had been struggling to identify. Once I know the identity, I'm able to pick them out pretty well even as they move through the sky over a number of weeks.

The planets are pretty easy to find but like all of this sort of thing it does take some experience.

In Northern latitudes in 2017

Venus- this time of year Venus is seen at night and is to the right of Mars if you face South. It's the brightest object in the sky, except for the moon and the sun.

Mars- sets after Venus and has reddish color to it.

Jupiter is visible beginning about 1 to 2 hours GMT

Saturn is visible later at night and certainly before sunrise

An easier way is to use The Nautical Almanac for the date you'd like to know the positions for the above mentioned planets.  If the GHA of any of the planets shows that it's close to your Longitude then you know it's visible.

Paul

Example-  Date- March 18, 2017
                GMT-  02:00:00
                My Ap Longitude-  W 094°

Question- is Jupiter visible at that hour where I am?

Look up Jupiter's GHA in The Nautical Almanac and find 6° 01.8'

Jupiter is probably not visible.  I say probably, though I know it isn't, because a rule I use is if a planet's GHA is close to 90° less or 90° more than my Ap Longitude I assume it's not visible.

This might be helpful also-

PHENOMENA, 2017- VISIBILITY OF PLANETS pages 7-11

[BigBill]

Thanks. Good to have info.