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

[JOC]

I've now got it downloaded on the portable (Windows 7), my desktop (Windows 8.1) and on my Android 'Phone.  Apart from the pointer on SGL to ensure I had downloaded the needed add-on, over the three platforms I still maintain as mentioned earlier that my top recommendation has to be 'tinkering'.  Imagine what you think it ought to do and carry on clicking until you find it.  Also, done forget you can do pinch and pull zooming in and out on a touch screen phone which I find totally 'neat' esp. as it is totally seamless.

[oldstout]

Well now.....

 

Having made my first post after downloading this in broad daylight....

...I've discovered it's a different animal by nightfall 

 

It's a lot more obvious what's going on with a night sky on screen 

 

Anyone else remember being a newbie? 

[RayD]

12 minutes ago, oldstout said:

Anyone else remember being a newbie? 

Oh yes, and I don't think that feeling stops for a loooooooong time 

[Dave In Vermont]

You can set it to show the black night-sky at all times of day or night. And you can choose to show atmospheric items, like clouds, or turn-off the atmosphere. Darken or lighten the sky to show your local light-pollution effects - or no LP at all. This being the smallest tip of the proverbial iceberg. I've had it for years, and I'm still making new 'discoveries' of the possibilities of this amazing software-program.

I admit that I'm enjoying changing the colours of different line-features, such as the Meridian, Prime-Vertical, Ecliptic of Date, etc. etc. at present!

Have fun -

Dave

[JOC]

Yes, I very soon discovered that you can advance the clock to show night-time - I suppose its doing what its supposed to in the daytime.  Glad you've solved it - keep tinkering - I'm a new user too, so if your tinkering reveals something else surprising please feel free to share - by the sounds of it there are loads of us still learning what it can do.

[saac]

On 06/01/2017 at 17:13, Skipper Billy said:

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 ??!!!)

I'm with Skipper Billy on this; if I were to single out a piece of equipment (never mind software) that has helped me in astronomy then Stellarium would be it.  It's a truly remarkable contribution to the astro community and beyond.  To be honest, I find the interface very intuitive; anything I can't figure out  is readily answered by the wealth of information and guides available - my first port of call is always the user manual which I find clear and concise.  As Billy said, there are many other commercial applications that fall very short against Stellarium when comparing user experience and lack of written guides or community support. 

 

Jim   

[RayD]

On 06/01/2017 at 17:16, 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.

To be fair knowing how helpful Skipper Billy is, I think you've misinterpreted what he was saying.  I don't think he was referring to your questions specifically, but the general negativity relating to the Stellarium GUI, which does just take a little getting used to, and as this is a free programme put together by the good will of people within the astronomy community, that can sometimes mean just thumbing your own way through menus.

I don't think it's fair to link a simple comment like that to what you feel are dismissive comments seemingly "prevalent in the AP community", which is certainly not the case from my experience on these forums.

I hope you can get the answers you need, and that you can enjoy Stellarium, because as Skipper Billy said, it really is world class given that it's free 

[JOC]

I have to say that when I look at the amount of information on all the astronomical features that it contains, the way it all updates this information based on where everyone is, what time of day it is, what calendar day/night is - historical as well as in the future, the neat zooming in and out, the compass correctness of it all etc.  I am actually totally astounded at the fact it is free - do they have a 'send a contribution if you want to' place on the internet anywhere?  So you need the slight amount of confidence to do a bit of clicking, but it's certainly far from being rocket science to drive it IMO.

[alexwolf]

2 minutes ago, JOC said:

...information on all the astrological features that it contains...

An astrological?!?

[Dave Lloyd]

1 hour ago, RayD said:

 

dismissive comments seemingly "prevalent in the AP community"

Where are they then?

[RayD]

18 minutes ago, Dave Lloyd said:

Where are they then?

No idea, he said it you would have to ask him, I've not found that personally.

[RayD]

I've always found people in the AP community to be very helpful, and certainly not dismissive. 

[Thalestris24]

5 hours ago, JOC said:

Yes, I very soon discovered that you can advance the clock to show night-time - I suppose its doing what its supposed to in the daytime.  Glad you've solved it - keep tinkering - I'm a new user too, so if your tinkering reveals something else surprising please feel free to share - by the sounds of it there are loads of us still learning what it can do.

You can also click on the cloud symbol on the bottom of the screen to show what would be the night sky  

[Stub Mandrel]

Another useful tip, on the bar that appears down the bottom the picture of a scope switches between ALT-AZ and EQ mount, in EQ mode it tracks the target, but in ALT-AZ you have to 'stop the clock' to keep something in the centre of the frame.

I switch between both modes as ALT-AZ is handy for figuring out whether or not something really will be visible from our garden.

[Paul M]

I wasn't a fan of Stellarium when I first tried it but not only has improved constantly, I've also spent a lot of time playing with it and think it's rather good. 

For the price you really can't complain  But then I paid about £25 for SkySafari Pro and think that's great value too.

One thing we do have here is a community of avid users with the added bonus of at least one of the developers being a regular contributor!

 

 

 

[alexwolf]

Well, Stellarium may be better, much better. But we really need user contributions for it, because our development team is very small - 2 developers (Georg Zotti and me) has a more or less persistent contributions and 3 developers (Florian Schaukowitsch, Marcos Cardinot and Guillaume Chereau) has episodical contributions to the code of planetarium.

Of course you can say "I'm not a coder and I cannot help you", but... we need testers and translators also. And yes, some type of contributions - skycultures or landscapes for example - is not requires a coding skill.

We're received patches from users sometimes, but it's just sometimes.

P.S. Sorry for bad English

[RayD]

25 minutes ago, alexwolf said:

Well, Stellarium may be better, much better. But we really need user contributions for it, because our development team is very small - 2 developers (Georg Zotti and me) has a more or less persistent contributions and 3 developers (Florian Schaukowitsch, Marcos Cardinot and Guillaume Chereau) has episodical contributions to the code of planetarium.

Of course you can say "I'm not a coder and I cannot help you", but... we need testers and translators also. And yes, some type of contributions - skycultures or landscapes for example - is not requires a coding skill.

We're received patches from users sometimes, but it's just sometimes.

P.S. Sorry for bad English

Your English is fine Alex.  There may be several people on here who can help, I believe some of the newer members code in C++, so it may be worth just doing a quick bullet point list of where you really need help and some relevant details of extent of input i.e. if you need translators, from what languages to what languages etc.

I hope you can get some help as without people like you dedicating their time it would be dead in the water.

[alexwolf]

8 minutes ago, RayD said:

You're English is fine Alex.  There may be several people on here who can help, I believe some of the newer members code in C++, so it may be worth just doing a quick bullet point list of where you really need help and some relevant details of extent of input i.e. if you need translators, from what languages to what languages etc.

I hope you can get some help as without people like you dedicating their time it would be dead in the water.

Well, the very short answer here is...

1. Planned and proposed features (some features can be make as plugins)
2. List of languages - translation from English to... please choose one or more languages from over 130 languages
3. Bug fixing - welcome to the good hunting

 

[JOC]

alexwolf - so you and your team are responsible for Stellarium - bravo.  It is so clever and then to make it into an app. for my android mobile phone is just wonderful - I love the way the pinch and pull zooms the stars on the phone.  I take the mobile outside and it helps me find the right stars to line up on.  I'd just like to say thank-you for such a wonderful application.

[alexwolf]

3 hours ago, JOC said:

alexwolf - so you and your team are responsible for Stellarium - bravo.  It is so clever and then to make it into an app. for my android mobile phone is just wonderful - I love the way the pinch and pull zooms the stars on the phone.  I take the mobile outside and it helps me find the right stars to line up on.  I'd just like to say thank-you for such a wonderful application.

You're welcome

[SilverAstro]

15 minutes ago, alexwolf said:

You're welcome

Hi Alex, I dont wish  to make your workload any greater ( haha, lol, etc!   ) but :-

A case can be made for freezing a version of a prog.  at an early functioning stage, I mean at the basic functioning concept. And in this case calling it StellariumA, a planetarium / sky view/ prog.

I have watched Stellarium develop from very early days and have been amazed at its growing capability. However, with every bug fix there is a (natural) tendency to add extra nice features, suggestions, add-ons etc. until it becomes a very large complex download/installation/intellectual excersize for anyone who has not grown up with it.

StellariumA would ideally be a small, portable, no fancy installation, basic ( demo even ? although I dont like that descriptor especially) introduction and learning model for newcomers to the hobby etc

StellariumB would be the all-singing all-dancing flight of fancy of the cognoscenti and those running to catch up !

The very title of this topic suggests that it should be so, does it not ?

 

[Cornelius Varley]

10 hours ago, JOC said:

alexwolf - so you and your team are responsible for Stellarium - bravo.  It is so clever and then to make it into an app. for my android mobile phone is just wonderful - I love the way the pinch and pull zooms the stars on the phone.  I take the mobile outside and it helps me find the right stars to line up on.  I'd just like to say thank-you for such a wonderful application.

The paid mobile version (Stellarium Mobile) is a separate version created by the original authors of Stellarium, Fabian Chereau and his brother, and sold by Noctua Software. Stellarium do have plans to port the pc version over to android http://stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Android_port

[JOC]

Cornelius Varley Ah, I didn't realise that - it looked so similar I assumed it was the same thing.  However, for the record I didn't have to pay for the Mobile App.  It too was free on the Play Store just like the version of Stellarium was that I downloaded to my PC.

[alexwolf]

13 hours ago, SilverAstro said:

Hi Alex, I dont wish  to make your workload any greater ( haha, lol, etc!   ) but :-

A case can be made for freezing a version of a prog.  at an early functioning stage, I mean at the basic functioning concept. And in this case calling it StellariumA, a planetarium / sky view/ prog.

I have watched Stellarium develop from very early days and have been amazed at its growing capability. However, with every bug fix there is a (natural) tendency to add extra nice features, suggestions, add-ons etc. until it becomes a very large complex download/installation/intellectual excersize for anyone who has not grown up with it.

StellariumA would ideally be a small, portable, no fancy installation, basic ( demo even ? although I dont like that descriptor especially) introduction and learning model for newcomers to the hobby etc

StellariumB would be the all-singing all-dancing flight of fancy of the cognoscenti and those running to catch up !

The very title of this topic suggests that it should be so, does it not ?

 

Sorry, but your proposal equals to "make and support two different versions of planetarium instead one package". Plus very good sky renderer already exists - glunatic

[SilverAstro]

On 09/01/2017 at 15:56, alexwolf said:

Sorry, but your proposal equals to "make and support two different versions of planetarium instead one package". Plus very good sky renderer already exists - glunatic

Sorry, but I was proposing that oftentimes  the cognecenti get 'carried away' and develop programs above and beyond all human ** understanding !

I was simply proposing that a model be adopted that would serve as an introduction, without the need of a PhD in the subject !

glunatic misses the point   (of this OP's ** topic)   totally ! you surprise me.

Sorry I disturbed you /end