Astronomy Programs?

[Dave1]

Just a thought? Has Sky Safari and Stellarium Et Al not thought to have a feature where by you can put in the aperture of a telescope and it adjust the program to what is visible in a specific aperture? It could be I'm not aware, but to me that seems like a good idea, and would help a lot of astronomer? I can't be the only one to think this?

[Stu]

15 minutes ago, Dave1 said:

Just a thought? Has Sky Safari and Stellarium Et Al not thought to have a feature where by you can put in the aperture of a telescope and it adjust the program to what is visible in a specific aperture? It could be I'm not aware, but to me that seems like a good idea, and would help a lot of astronomer? I can't be the only one to think this?

You can do that, but not in an automatic sense because limiting magnitude will be determined by local conditions, observer skill etc.

I have all my kit setup in SkySafari and can select any combination and display a field of view circle which shows how much sky is being displayed. Then you just need to choose orientation and adjust the dimmest star being displayed to match what you are seeing, and you have a replica of what is in the eyepiece. It makes star hopping really easy.

I was doing just this last night during my failed attempt to see the asteroid passing at the moment. First image is the 5 degrees field in my Genesis with a limiting magnitude of 7.5, next one is a 24mm Panoptic in the Vixen with it set to mag 9.0, although that was pushing it. At higher power still there were no visible stars around which made it tricky. Didn’t actually matter though because the asteroid was not visible in my scopes last night anyway, but by putting that zigzag of stars in the same place in the field of view of the Genesis, I knew the asteroid was centred.

[Dave1]

@Stu thanks for the explanation, it would be good if they did somewhat make it a bit more automated. But the way you describe it makes sense. I have yet to get Sky Safari to give me a telescope or eyepiece view. Even though I have put in the details of my Takahashi FS78 and Carl Zeiss Jena 10mm. I guess either I am not pressing something somewhere or running Sky Safari on my PC isn't a good idea.

[Dave1]

Finally figured it out.