using stellarium to plan an observing session · selecting objects in stellarium in order to zoom...

Observation Planning

Using Stellarium to plan an observing session

Author: Sarah Roberts

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Stellarium Stellarium is free planetarium software which allows the night sky to be viewed from any location on Earth, on any date. The software can be downloaded from www.stellarium.org. A patch which sets up Stellarium so that its default location is at FTN, and an azimuthal grid is visible on the sky, is also available on the Faulkes Telescope website at:

http://www.faulkes-telescope.com/index.php?page=186

With such a patch, the opening screen of Stellarium looks like the image here.

The viewing direction is to the South (as noted by the S), the azimuthal grid is visible, and there are many deep sky objects which have been labelled. For users who have not downloaded the FT patch, the azimuthal grid and deep sky object names can be toggled on/off the sky by clicking on the grid and nebulae buttons shown here.

The boxes at the bottom of the Stellarium screen can be selected or de-selected, to, among other things, turn on the names of the deep sky objects, label the constellations and remove the horizon from the screen. It is worth playing with these buttons to familiarise yourself with the different features in Stellarium.

Observation Planning - Using Stellarium to plan an observing session

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http://www.stellarium

http://www.stellarium



Setting the location for your FT observing session An important button on the tool bar in Stellarium is the ‘Configuration Window’ button - this is the spanner icon . By clicking on this button, a window appears.

This window give the options for changing your date and time, and location, aswell as the landscape, video and rendering options.

If you are using the down-loaded FT configuration patch, your location will automatically be set as the position of FTN. This can be changed to any other location (e.g FTS) by either clicking on the map, or by entering the longitude and latitude of the location underneath the map.

Setting the date and time for your FT observing sessionFrom the configuration window menu, select ‘Date & Time’. The next window will give you options for changing the date and time, time zone and time speed in Stellarium.

Set the date and time to correspond to that of your FT observing session,

Click on the square in the top right hand corner of the configu-ration window to close it once you are happy with the set up of the viewing time and loca-tion.


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Looking around the sky in StellariumBy clicking on the question mark button, or typing ‘h’ in the Stellarium window, you can see which keyboard buttons correspond to commands in Stellarium. For example, to zoom in/out of the sky in Stellarium, you can either use the roller ball of your mouse (if you have one), or use the ‘Page Up/Down’ buttons on your keyboard. The sky can be scrolled around by left clicking on it, and dragging it with the mouse. Alternatively, you can use the arrow keys on your keyboard.

Setting up the best view to plan your FT observing session In order to use Stellarium to help you plan your FT observing session, the time, date and location should be set correctly through the configuration window.

Next, zoom right out of the Stellarium window and scroll the sky until the zenith (the point directly overhead) is at the centre of the screen.

The lowest altitude limit of the Faulkes Telescopes is 25 degrees. Thus, all objects which you choose for your observing session should be above 25 degrees from the horizon. Ideally, to minimize the amount of atmosphere the telescope looks through when observing, this limit should be anything above 30 degrees.

Thus, any object within the 30 degree circle in the Stellarium view can be observed with the Faulkes Telescopes. The best order of observing can be decided from the positions of ob-jects in the sky.


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Selecting objects in StellariumIn order to zoom in on images in Stellarium, click on the object with the left mouse button, and press the space bar to centre on it.

On the left we have centered upon NGC 7662. Now we wish to magnify the image. This is done by using the Page Up/Down keys on your keyboard, or your roller ball on your mouse. The zoomed in view of this object can be seen below.

At the top left hand corner, some information is given on the selected object.


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When zooming in further on the object, a credit for the image is displayed, as shown below. This particular image of NGC 7662 was taken by the FT Team. You can add your own im-ages into the Stellarium database, so that your images appear on the sky, as this one has done. More information on how to do this can be found in the Stellarium user guide which can be downloaded from the Stellarium website.


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using stellarium to plan an observing session · selecting objects in stellarium in order to zoom...

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