Stellarium

[Dennistutt]

Just a quick question, how does Stellarium differ from Sky Walk or Sky Safari. If i use the latter 2 is it worthwhile to persevere with Stellarium. BTW I do not have a goto so controlling it is not a concern at the moment. If it is worthwhile are there any good tutorials ?

thanks

[Dennistutt]

Or even Star Walk

[bingevader]

If you use one/two already that you are happy with, stick with them.

I switched to Stellarium from a very old version of Starry Night, because the upgrade was to expensive and Stellarium was free and very easy to use.

Dunno about the other two though!

Cheers

[brantuk]

You could also try Cartes du Ciel which is very good - similar to Stellarium but less glossy and more technical is my way of describing it.

[Dennistutt]

Thanks both but I am wondering how Stellarium and Cartes du Ciel differ to what I currently use (Star Walk and Sky Safari).

[badgerchap]

Stellarium is more functional and less data-heavy than SkySafari. I tend to use the latter in the field and for times, co-ordinated etc, but I use Stellarium for planning. I also use CdC but only for scope control - if this isn't required I'd stick to the smoother graphics and easier interface of Stellarium.

Posted via Tapatalk on an ageing iPhone so please excuse any erroneous spellings or accidental profanities!

[brantuk]

I've never used Star Walk and Sky Safari unfortunately - but Cdc and Stellarium are free to download so you can compare them against the others.

[badgerchap]

That is a considerable advantage - especially seeing as Sky Safari Pro is around the £20 mark!

Posted via Tapatalk on an ageing iPhone so please excuse any erroneous spellings or accidental profanities!

[Hobbes]

I'm guessing that you ar using an ipad or other mobile device.

Stellarium on a PC or Laptop is the most wonderful application and I use it a lot for planning sessions and for presentations at outreach and society events but the mobile version is not as fully-featured.

I have tried several apps for the ipad and find that SkySafari Plus or Pro is the best fit for me although Luminos came in a close second.

I particularly like the feature that both have that allows you to keep a list and make notes as you are observing to record your session's achievements.

The SkySafari App allows me to email the list in text or propriatory format - no more slightly damp notebooks needed to record my nights journey around the sky.

I cannot find a way to export the list out of the Luminos App.

[Hobbes]

I'm guessing that you ar using an ipad or other mobile device.

Stellarium on a PC or Laptop is the most wonderful application and I use it a lot for planning sessions for presentations at outreach and society events but the mobile version is not as fully-featured.

I have tried several apps for the ipad and find that SkySafari Plus or Pro is the best fit for me although Luminos came in a close second.

I particularly like the feature that both have that allows you to keep a list and make notes as you are observing to record your session's achievements.

The SkySafari App allows me to email the list in text or propriatory format - no more slightly damp notebooks needed to record my nights journey around the sky.

I cannot find a way to export the list out of the Luminos App.

[Dennistutt]

Thanks all. I think the consensus is Stellarium for planning and the others for use outside. (I have a windows laptop but I prefer the ipad so this will work well).

i do not have the pro version of Safari but will have a look at it.

What is the best way to learn Stellarium? - I have set my coordinates.

[Schorhr]

Stellarium has a nice wiki, but other then the panels at the bottom you just need alt+o and ctrl+o so set up a virtual telescope and eyepieces (or refer to http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page#index.php/Oculars_plugin ).

[Dennistutt]

Thanks Schorhr

[OneEyedSam]

On an iPad you could look at Luminos. It has some great features, and the developer is always adding more cool features. Can't recommend it highly enough !

[Dennistutt]

Thanks i have not head of that one but will so

[tjr]

It isn't free, but when I'm observing I tend to refer to Skymap Pro on my iPhone. I just find it the best fit for me.

[Oz Ramos]

I've never heard of Skymap Pro, but I looked at some reviews and it looks pretty solid! I've been using Star Walk, it has a handy red/night feature and shows you what you're pointing at. The social sharing feature seems kind of neat.

I think the Ocular plugin for Stellarium is definitely one of its best draws, especially when an object is particularly difficult to find as you get a pretty good approximation of what you're going to be looking at.

[OneEyedSam]

Another shameless plug for luminos, it also has night mode, occular mode and has some features for putting observing lists and note taking built in. It's like star walk on steroids, more of an astronomers tool than a viewing-the-stars tool. It is a seriously well put together app.

The developer is also active himself, and is always improving things.

[tjr]

Another shameless plug for luminos, it also has night mode, occular mode and has some features for putting observing lists and note taking built in. It's like star walk on steroids, more of an astronomers tool than a viewing-the-stars tool. It is a seriously well put together app.

The developer is also active himself, and is always improving things.

Looks like a pretty god app. I may have to get hold of that and try it out myself.

[AlexB67]

Another item to consider perhaps, at least thought it worthy a mention is how resource hungry some of these applications are. I can only go by two of them, and of those two, I only played with Stellarium a bit so far, but I also had a brief look at Cartes du Ciel. The former is a full 3D graphics driven application.

If you are out in the field and running anything on a battery or rechargeable device such as a small laptop, I'd imagine Stellarium would eat them up rather quickly. I have Stellarium installed on a fast i7 PC with a decent AMD graphics card, and it is not as if the frame rates rocket on that at times. On laptops that are not cut out for 3D it will run sluggishly, possibly overheat the laptop, cause crashes, instabilities, though out on a cold winter night should help a lot with that Cartes du Ciel, while it looks less flashy is a 2D app and it will be a lot lighter on graphics load.

I do not know about the other applications but it is always something worth considering, what and where you run it and on what device, how flashy resource hungry versus how functional and light such an application will be.

[damnut]

Stellarium is actually reasonably resource friendly, used to drive 10"Lx200 from Pentium III Dell laptop with XP on it. Run 12.1 on Netbook with w7 and atom dual core with no issues on frame rate.

Both Stellarium & Carte du Ciel are free downloads, try them both. IMHO Stellarium is easier to use, I also have Starry Night pro, HNSKY....

[AlexB67]

Stellarium is actually reasonably resource friendly, used to drive 10"Lx200 from Pentium III Dell laptop with XP on it. Run 12.1 on Netbook with w7 and atom dual core with no issues on frame rate.

Both Stellarium & Carte du Ciel are free downloads, try them both. IMHO Stellarium is easier to use, I also have Starry Night pro, HNSKY....

okay thanks for the info, Perhaps I am over estimating it, but when I installed on my partners old AMD laptop, a 1.6 GHz single core, 1Gb RAM running XP it ran very hot indeed, and slowed at times, eventually it crashes, so I ruled that out to bring with me, instead my 20 kilo tower PC case is not an option .

In the case of my partners laptop it could however be older OpenGL drivers, or some other issues causing that, I'll look into it because it would still be nice to have that option of using the old laptop out on a trip, though I doubt the battery would last long, it is old one indeed

[damnut]

The DELL had 512mb Ram and ran PIII at 850Mhz. Even the AMD running at 1.6GHz Stellarium should fly (!).

If it is slow, check the system tray to see what else is running. Also worth check taskmanager to see what other applications or processes may be slowing it up, and check the performance of the processor and ram usage.

[AlexB67]

The DELL had 512mb Ram and ran PIII at 850Mhz. Even the AMD running at 1.6GHz Stellarium should fly (!).

If it is slow, check the system tray to see what else is running. Also worth check taskmanager to see what other applications or processes may be slowing it up, and check the performance of the processor and ram usage.

Made some progress, it was running in software mode (the OpenGL driver that is ) is on the laptop with an ancient old graphics driver. I Installed the AMD drivers so OpenGL support works properly now. Now it runs much better/faster on the laptop with the AMD drivers, though it eats up the battery quickly if I run it not using the mains and still runs the laptop very hot, but then it just about does that with anything that uses up CPU/GPU resources. not a Stellarium fault.

[OneEyedSam]

One reason I switched from stellarium to luminos on the ipad was power. The iPad can be slung over the neck in a waterproof map bag and the touch screen still works. I was struggling to keep a laptop going for more than 2-3 hours off a battery pack, the ipad has no wires and will go for 10 hours. Luminos wil also drive certain mounts, but I've never investigated that.