Wizard wrote:... is a book written by H.A.Rey. Within it are some of the clearest and best representations of star patterns I have seen. Many of you are probably familiar with them. (Gemini in Celestia is a Rey pattern).
....
It might be wise to backup the original asterisms.dat file first. Anyone who is involved with education might find these constellation patterns particularly helpful.
A long time ago (early in 2002), when I made the asterisms of the Celestia distribution we had of course a broad discussion about other alternative constellation figures. Here is some of what I wrote about that matter as a remainder:
===========historical===============
The "global" expert on these figures seems to be Chris Marriott ( SkyMap Pro8),
http://skymap.com/. The constellation figures in XEphem are also by him. On
http://skymap.com/constellations.htm, there are various configuration files for
free download that were submitted by SkyMap users and contain the stick-figures
corresponding to well known atlases, like:
1) Based on the popular Nature Company Guide books
; "Skywatching by D. Levy",
; "Advanced Skywatching by R.Burnham, A.Dyer, R.Garfinkle, M.George, J.Kanipe,
D.Levy"
These figures are /complete/(88/89) and associated with a quite experienced
astro-popularizer: D. Levy. They have some appealing simplicity in
favour. Yet a number of constellations seemed /too/ simplistic;-). My
new design for Celestia is substantially based on that set and, of
course, on a large amount of hand-editing. Also, my 12 year
association with XEphem cannot be denied...
2) On the other end of the spectrum is an amazingly fancy set, but
it may well be too fancy, I think (involving too weak stars, etc):
; Constellation figures based on H. A. Rey's "The Stars", published
; by Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston
;
; Adapted by Tracy Williams (
tcw@iname.com), January 1999, with
; assistance from Robert Wade's Sky Map Pro 4 figures, where applicable.
3) "The Observer's Sky Atlas" by E. Karkoschka.
2) From the constellation maps from Anton?n R?kl from "Souhvezd?", published
by Artia, Prague in 1971 and from second book with unknown original
title (spanish translated title is "Estrellas y Planetas") published 1988
by Artia, Prague in 1988
As a basis for my designs, I have coded a Perl script (asterism.pl)
that 'elegantly' converts any desired set from
http://skymap.com/constellations.htm into Celestia format.
Anyone who is interested to play with different|further sets including
the above, may get it from me by email. Or, if preferred, I also have
of course the already converted asterism*.dat files: asterisms-hareyv5.dat,
asterisms-skywatch.dat, asterisms-rukl.dat, asterisms-karkoschka.dat, ...
( note that asterisms-hareyv5.dat sometimes refers to 'unnamed' stars;-), but
this is not too bad)
Of course, my final design in the CVS tree may also be obtained by email.
If a larger number of people turn out to be interested, we can also
put the new asterism.dat file to Bruckner's.
The basic strategy I applied was to try and find a good compromise
between a /conspicuously mnemnonic/ drawing (e.g. Gemini, Orion, Taurus,
Canis minor, Scorpius, Perseus, Hercules, Libra, ...), /popularity/ of
the figures (Ursa major/minor, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Lyra, Virgo,...)
and /simplicity/, i.e. the restriction to sufficiently bright stars.
Any feedback is greatly appreciated...
Bye Fridger
================================
I have generated many different constellation files by means of my Perl script. The one above by Wizard probaly has also been generated by my 'asterism.pl' script, since the Gemini format/pattern is absolutely identical...I have about four or five others. Let me know if there is renewed interest.
It is always good style/fair to cite the 'maker' of such things...
Bye Fridger
