Just downloaded Stellarium.....oh dear!?

[StuartJPP]

Having never read a (paper) star chart in my life, Stellarium is/was the best thing since sliced bread. It may be eye candy but it works.

As long as you set your location you are good to go...What you see is what you get...It can't be more simple. What's that bright object in the eastern sky? Fire up Stellarium rotate to the east and see what it is...so, so simple.

There is obviously a learning curve but to me it was straight forward....As mentioned...click buttons and see what happens.

I probably would have never got into astro if I had to have started with CdC...In fact I still prefer Stellarium to CdC but then again I am not a hardcore astronomer.

CdC is obviously better at what it does. 

[Dave In Vermont]

After you set your location, and any other settings you want: Do Remember to Click-On 'Save Settings' before you log-off (Ctrl.Q - among other ways).

Dave - non-geek

[SonnyE]

And remember:

If at first you don't succeed...

Sky diving may not be for you.

[Demonperformer]

All this is very nice, but, having just downloaded, installed and attempted to run it, it just gives me one of those annoying 'this program has encountered a problem and is going to close' boxes every time ... you know, the ones that are about as much use in helping to troubleshoot as a chocolate teapot.

Promptly uninstalled.

[Cornelius Varley]

7 hours ago, Demonperformer said:

All this is very nice, but, having just downloaded, installed and attempted to run it, it just gives me one of those annoying 'this program has encountered a problem and is going to close' boxes every time ... you know, the ones that are about as much use in helping to troubleshoot as a chocolate teapot.

Promptly uninstalled.

Trying running Stellarium in ANGLE mode.

[Demonperformer]

Thanks for the suggestion, Peter. Hopefully it will be of benefit to someone else, but I very quickly get fed-up with progrms that won't run from the desktop shortcut they themselves have installed, and so I uninstalled the entire thing to free-up the space/resources.

Thanks.

[Cornelius Varley]

3 hours ago, Demonperformer said:

Thanks for the suggestion, Peter. Hopefully it will be of benefit to someone else, but I very quickly get fed-up with progrms that won't run from the desktop shortcut they themselves have installed, and so I uninstalled the entire thing to free-up the space/resources.

Thanks.

The desktop icon loads the opengl version of Stellarium. The computer crashing could be because it doesn't support the latest version of opengl. The Stellarium start menu provides various options if you experience problems with the main programme.

[alexwolf]

48 minutes ago, Cornelius Varley said:

The desktop icon loads the opengl version of Stellarium. The computer crashing could be because it doesn't support the latest version of opengl. The Stellarium start menu provides various options if you experience problems with the main programme.

It could be crash when drivers are not installed or not installed graphics card also.

[Sp4rkR4t]

I've been using the mobile version of stellarium to id things I can see in the sky and that's been great but someone pointed out that the PC version can show you what you could see through your camera before you head out via the oculars plugin so I grabbed that only to find that it requires all the tech specs of the camera sensor and lens I'm using, is there not a library of these tools I can add to the plugin to fill this info in or failing that does anyone know all the required info for a canon 100d and a EF 50mm 1.4 USM lens?

[Marci]

The power of google when fed "canon 100d sensor spec" produced a link to http://www.digicamdb.com/specs/canon_eos-100d/ on the first page.

For the lens, add it as a telescope... focal length is obviously 50mm. Focal diameter is length divided by focal ratio, so 50/1.4 = 35.7mm

 

[Sp4rkR4t]

Thanks Marci. 

[Stub Mandrel]

On 29/12/2016 at 17:23, Mr Spock said:

I prefer Cartes du Ciel. It's much more like a proper star chart rather than eye candy.

That's why I prefer Stellarium

[Sp4rkR4t]

Ok I inputted all the  info I needed for my camera and it was working well, then I shut it down and loaded it up again later to show my daughter only to find it hadn't saved and of the lens, telescope or sensor info I had added.

[Marci]

Input all your details, then go to the Configuration Window (hover bottom left, Spanner from the vertical menu) and click "Save Settings"

[Sp4rkR4t]

2 minutes ago, Marci said:

Input all your details, then go to the Configuration Window (hover bottom left, Spanner from the vertical menu) and click "Save Settings"

I did that, it didn't launch with them again. Going to delete everything and re-install.

[alexwolf]

25 minutes ago, Sp4rkR4t said:

Ok I inputted all the  info I needed for my camera and it was working well, then I shut it down and loaded it up again later to show my daughter only to find it hadn't saved and of the lens, telescope or sensor info I had added.

It should be autosaved at the finish of editing (I meant Oculars plugin)

[oldstout]

On 1/3/2017 at 07:14, alexwolf said:

Oh no! Stellarium's GUI is... to difficult for understand. Really?!

This...

Is not the kind of input I was after.

One day I hope to be a genius like your good self, in the meantime I'll bow to your obvious superiority. Keep up the good work.

[Skipper Billy]

1 hour ago, alexwolf said:

It should be autosaved at the finish of editing (I meant Oculars plugin)

Doesnt autosave for me - if I forget to manually save the data it vanishes.???

As a general comment - this is a world class piece of software and its free !!!! What more do you want ???  

If anyone cant be bothered figuring out a few simple menus then man you are in for a shock when you come to some other pieces of astro software - some of which are very expensive (M*x*m DL ??!!!)

[Sp4rkR4t]

4 minutes ago, Skipper Billy said:

If anyone cant be bothered figuring out a few simple menus then man you are in for a shock when you come to some other pieces of astro software - some of which are very expensive (M*x*m DL ??!!!)

It's comments like these that seem really prevalent in the astro-photography community that will push people away, there is never a need to be dismissive of people asking simple questions, unless it's already been answered in the thread.

[oldstout]

25 minutes ago, Sp4rkR4t said:

It's comments like these that seem really prevalent in the astro-photography community that will push people away, there is never a need to be dismissive of people asking simple questions, unless it's already been answered in the thread.

+1

Suggest some folks refer back to the code of conduct on here before posting....

[M106]

3 hours ago, Sp4rkR4t said:

Ok I inputted all the  info I needed for my camera and it was working well, then I shut it down and loaded it up again later to show my daughter only to find it hadn't saved and of the lens, telescope or sensor info I had added.

I backup my settings, because sometimes if something goes wrong the program resets them

When you have added your scopes/lenses/etc, and BEFORE exiting Stellarium..

Goto...

C:\USers\(username)\appdata\roaming\stellarium\modules\oculars (you may have to tick the Hidden Items check box under the View tab at the top of Explorer (win7-10)

And then copy the ocular.ini file to somewhere like My Documents

 

Now if the settings vanish, you can just copy that file back to the same folder  (you can do the same for all the ini files, but its ocular plugin that i find is the main problem)

[Sp4rkR4t]

Thanks for that handy tip.

[Stub Mandrel]

I've been programming computers since 1981, and I found a few aspects of Stellarium less than intuitive.

[M106]

35 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

I've been programming computers since 1981, and I found a few aspects of Stellarium less than intuitive.

Probably because you started programming computers in 1981?  only teasing  wrote my first about 10 years later, user interaction has changed significantly for both of us; but apart from having to figure out where the menu is (once) and what the buttons do (couple of times per button), i've never really had to think about how to use stellarium myself ....but i did allot of work with Maya and Max years ago, so it felt comfortable in terms of interacting with the actual maps/planitariu

 

[Stub Mandrel]

I think the issue with Stellarium is the same as with many collaborative projects - the way it behaves across different modules is inconsistent, see how some plugins automatically save changes and other changes to settings don't save. I also think the way its dockers behave and some other elements (like if you miss a camera frame rotation by a pixel the whole scene moves to the star in the background you clicked on - why do only some clickables behave like that?)

I'm not knocking stellarium, its brilliant, but every open-source designed by democracy project will have issues like this.