Stellarium missing overlays

[whzzz28]

Hi all,

I've been using Stellarium for a while and noticed that there are a few objects that it does not display on its general star view.
Example, NGC6334 (Cat's Paw). There is no nebula overlay (not picture but just a clickable object) for this object. If i do a search and either search NGC6334 or cat's paw, it finds it fine but selects a blank piece of space. If i didn't know it existed, i wouldn't know that it was there, according to stellarium that point of space has nothing in it, just stars.

This isn't the only nebula that i have found "missing".

Few things i tried/checked:
All catalogues have been downloaded.
Zoomed in to the area in case it was not displaying the icon. Nothing.
Moved the Nebula slider all the way up to 100%, which seems to only up the limit of magnitudes for objects to show. Still nothing.

Is this a limitation of Stellarium, or is there a good reason why some nebula's have no overlay on the star map?

To be honest, i don't know what is up there at any particular point in time so i use Stellarium to give me a list of whats available, and where it is in the sky; but if it is missing some items... who knows what i am missing!

Finally, is it worth looking at TheSky or Starry Night to replace Stellarium? Again i don't use a huge bunch of features of Stellarium, but if the paid software will give me a good overlay of objects then ill look into them, but they would have to be good to warrant the price.
Would be nice to have some software as well that doesn't classify Globular's as "nebula's" as well. One of my biggest annoyances in Stellarium

[Barrykgerdes]

Stellarium displays photos of a few of the well known objects and most of the Messiers. These are photos added by a few people who took the time to prepare them.

Photos of any objects can be added. It requires a good square photo 64 x 64, 128 x 128, 256 x 256, 512 x 512 or 1024 x 1024 pixels and a bit of time to locate its corner coords (plate solve) and add this info to the json file.

Displaying photos this way is memory intensive and can slow the computer down with more than 100 or so photos added.

There will however be a feature some day to display the DSS objects of the whole sky. In fact the code is already there but it has not been activated yet for administative requirements.

To see what it will be like you can download the Virgo version from ESO. This is a much earlier version of Stellarium but does have the DSS feature activated.

Barry

[whzzz28]

Hi Barry,
I'm not after pictures of individual objects, more so the clickable point that indicates the object is here.
That is, there is no NGC6334 text in the star map to show where it is (or that it is on screen).
I'll take a screenshot of what i mean when i get home.

[whzzz28]

Attached a picture of what i mean.
NGC6334 is selected, but the NGC text and icon for nebula are not there.

[Barrykgerdes]

OK I see what you mean

It appears to be a bug. There is an entry in the config.ini under
[astro]
flag_nebula_display_no_texture = false

Changing this to true should display a dim circle but it does not. It worked on the earlier versions but no longer works

Please report it as a bug

Barry

[mithrandir]

You could always switch to CdC. :) No flashy graphics, but you can overlay DSS images of any part of the sky, or any FITS image with the correct coordinate data in the header. NGC6334 doesn't have a magnitude in the SAC so CdC is a bit argumentative about letting you lock the screen to it.

[whzzz28]

Thanks Barry.
Submitting a bug report then.

[Barrykgerdes]

My research shows that it has not worked since release 0.9.1

Stellarium can display the DSS information from the info in the DSS headers like CDC. However the feature is not turned on because there was some problem with permissions. Fabien has a version that he calls the stellarium-toast which worked for a while but the location of the files was changed and the program no longer works. It is also used in the virgo version (0.10.2)

Major work is unfinished in Stellarium since funding by ESO ended and The principle devolopers had to get paying jobs and not had time to do a lot of work

Barry

[whzzz28]

:sadeyes:
I really do like stellarium. It isn't a complete system but it works well and navigation is really easy.

Thanks for confirming the problem Barry, will see how the bug report goes.

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi All

A temporary work around has been made pending a re-introduction of the original feature. download this version. Wait 1hr till I get it up loaded

http://barry.sarcasmogerdes.com/stellarium/uploads/stellarium-5449-win32.exe

Barry

[alistairsam]

Hi Barry
Are issues with telescope sync related to stellarium or stellarium scope
I use two laptops, one connected to scope and running stellarium scope, the other running stellarium configured with the IP of the other.
Scope control works great but sync doesn't , nothing happens
Thanks

[Barrykgerdes]

Stellarium telescope control only reads position, sends position and a goto command.

StellariumScope is a third party program that works with ASCOM (another third party program). It directly controls many more telescope features. Check out their website.

Barry

[whzzz28]

Thanks Barry.
Will check it tonight when i get a chance.