Star Names

[RanTen]

Heloo all...

How do I get celestia to display the arabic names of all stars in a constellation?

For example pressing the keyboard shortcut B, dosent show all the names of all the stars.

Does this require some other AddOn???

Please do let me know

RanTen

[HB]

The stars in Celestia which have a relation with a constellation have Bayer-Flamstead names, often followed by other names including the arabic ones if exist. From a total of more then 112000 stars there are about 3300 constellation-stars in 88 constellations.
Of coarse there are many more stars in each constellation but are only known with a HIP-name.
A selection of stars and other objects sorted by constellation is not possible right now.

[selden]

The current versions of Celestia display only the names of those stars which are listed near the end of celestia.cfg

This may change in the next major release of Celestia.

[chris]

The current versions of Celestia display only the names of those stars which are listed near the end of celestia.cfg

This may change in the next major release of Celestia.

It will change. On my dev system, I've already eliminated the labeled star list and implemented automatic star labeling based on apparent magnitude.

--Chris

[t00fri]

The current versions of Celestia display only the names of those stars which are listed near the end of celestia.cfg

This may change in the next major release of Celestia.

It will change. On my dev system, I've already eliminated the labeled star list and implemented automatic star labeling based on apparent magnitude.

--Chris

Like it is done already for galaxies?

Bye Fridger

[chris]

The current versions of Celestia display only the names of those stars which are listed near the end of celestia.cfg

This may change in the next major release of Celestia.

It will change. On my dev system, I've already eliminated the labeled star list and implemented automatic star labeling based on apparent magnitude.

--Chris

Like it is done already for galaxies?

Bye Fridger

Somewhat like that, though there are additional efficiency considerations that I had to address when implementing labeling for stars.

--Chris

[Boux]

Automatic labelling is fine.
But you should let the users decide about which star names should be displayed.
I have my own list of favorite stars that I do not want to be drowned into an ocean of arbitrary labels.
This list is not based on apparent magnitude consideration but on personal interest.
Could the old an the new functionality coexist?

[ajtribick]

Another point is whether the primary catalogue can be selected (this also applies to Star Browser) - it would be nice to be able to specify, for example, HD numbers in preference to HIP numbers.

[chris]

Automatic labelling is fine.
But you should let the users decide about which star names should be displayed.
I have my own list of favorite stars that I do not want to be drowned into an ocean of arbitrary labels.
This list is not based on apparent magnitude consideration but on personal interest.
Could the old an the new functionality coexist?

The labeled star list is going away. Perhaps labeled markers would give you what you want. They'd have the advantage of being much more flexible than the star list, since you could use them for galaxies as well.

--Chris

[chris]

Another point is whether the primary catalogue can be selected (this also applies to Star Browser) - it would be nice to be able to specify, for example, HD numbers in preference to HIP numbers.

Currently, it just displays the HIP numbers, but I could change it to optionally show HD numbers instead.

There's also a slight problem with the star names file: it's full of obscure proper names for stars that are much more commonly referred to by Bayer or Flamsteed designations. starnames.dat should probably be fixed so that the most frequently used name--whether it's a proper name or a Bayer/Flamsteed designation--is listed first.

--Chris

[Boux]

The labeled star list is going away. Perhaps labeled markers would give you what you want. They'd have the advantage of being much more flexible than the star list, since you could use them for galaxies as well.

--Chris

Ah, I see. Thanks.

[HB]

With labeling stars I'm convinced that if you will please everyone in how to do this, it takes a while, then there is some magic needed and at last it becomes allmost an utopie.

Anyway I'll not stay behind in this discussion and give some suggestions for it.
From the start of my interest in Celestia, I'm collecting data of all the objects outside the SolarSystem: stars, nebulea, galaxies etc. and have it in a database.
With the collected data I come to a conclusion that only 3% from the Celestia star database have a name, often with a meaning and are certainly candidates for Labeling. I'll give you some data based on stars.dat v1.24 to think about labeling names.
There are 112519 stars in this database. All off them with a HIP number.Only 3351 of them have a name: BF designation,proper names or others(incl a HDname). What's left are 109168 stars from which 92333 have a HD number as well. The rest are 16835 stars with no other name, only a HIP number.

In starnames.dat are 3361/0 stars with a name, means 10/9 of them doesn't have any relation with stars.dat. It concerns the following HIP-numbers:

One empty line
26224
35488
53020
55203
78727
86961
87706
96295
101120

Most of the, in Celestia, used stars with a name are based on discoveries in the past seen from earth.
As tribuut to those ancient discoverers it will be nice to use as much as possible those names for the stars.

For labeling stars it need some functionallity and not just only a name of a star in the sky among dozens of look a likes. One must be able to distinguish the labeled star properly e.g.larger, more bright etc. then the sorounding ones. I miss this a little bit by the galaxies.

I like the suggestion that as soon as label rendering is active only the named stars will be labeled depending on magnitude(just like with the galaxies) and with a slider to adjust mag limit. This kind of labeling named stars only as long as you stay within the solarsystem or within a certain distance from the sun.
Another feature, with the above suggestion, can be to label HIPnames as soon as rendering of constellation borders and constellation names has been on and have the starnames labeled when rendering of constellation borders and names has been switched off. Of coarse to make this feature selectable in one way to another is preferable.
The more you go outside the solarsystem the less use there is of the constellation structure an its borders. In that case it doesn't matter so much if a star has a proper name or BF designated name or whatever. You're loosing you orientation.
As soon as you are way out there, stars with only HIP or HD names are the most common beside the very bright ones. In this case you can label them all(dependent of mag) or only those with a speciallity such as planets, double stars, brown dwarfs etc..

Another suggestion is to label the stars with only a HIP/HD number sligtly different: instead of "HIP" the constellation abbreviation from where the stars are been seen from earth within the particular constellation borders. (e.g. instead of HIP 36505 a name like this: CMi 36505).At least you have some direction in this way.
For more or less educational use of Celestia I've for every object, used in Celestia and not belonging to the Solarsystem, the constellations for it as an easy way to find the objects back.

What can be done as well with the above is that if I have constellation borders and constellation labels rendered and as soon as I click with the mouse in a constellation area, then the starbrowser will show all the stars within the choosen border as been seen from earth.

Since the FT version of Celestia we have 10610 galaxies. Maybe it's about time to select those in the same manner as browsing stars from a list.(I'm talking about the windows version)

[fsgregs]

Chris, with respect to star names in the future, if a user created a new fictional star via an stc file, and wanted its name to appear when the star label toggle key was pressed, we used to be able to simply add that name to the starnames.dat file, or to the celestia.cfg file list.

Will we still be able to edit the starnames.dat file? If not, how would the name of a new fictional star be displayed in the upcoming version of Celestia??

Frank

[chris]

Chris, with respect to star names in the future, if a user created a new fictional star via an stc file, and wanted its name to appear when the star label toggle key was pressed, we used to be able to simply add that name to the starnames.dat file, or to the celestia.cfg file list.

Will we still be able to edit the starnames.dat file? If not, how would the name of a new fictional star be displayed in the upcoming version of Celestia??

Frank

You can still edit starnames.dat, but the preferred way of adding names for new stars is to place them in the .stc file. There's nothing that you can do with starnames.dat that you can't do directly in the .stc. The list of labeled stars in celestia.cfg is going away. The name of a star (or catalog number if it is unnamed) will be displayed automatically when it's apparent brightness is above a certain threshold (determined by the faintest visible and the field of view.)

--Chris

[Malenfant]

Of course, there are some stars that are neither referred to by a HIP or HD number nor have a real "proper name" - I'm referring to the Gliese stars, like Gliese 229 or Gliese 436. Many of these Gliese stars have planets around them too.

Could the Gliese number be used as a "proper name"? Or could there be an option to show those preferentially instead of HD or HIP numbers?

[chris]

Of course, there are some stars that are neither referred to by a HIP or HD number nor have a real "proper name" - I'm referring to the Gliese stars, like Gliese 229 or Gliese 436. Many of these Gliese stars have planets around them too.

Could the Gliese number be used as a "proper name"? Or could there be an option to show those preferentially instead of HD or HIP numbers?

As far as Celestia is concerned, a Gliese number is a proper name. There's no special support for Gliese numbers the way that there is for HD and SAO catalog numbers. The first name listed for a star in the colon separated list (from either starnames.dat or an .stc file) is the one that will be displayed.

Also, in my current implementation, the HD and SAO catalog numbers are ignored. I could change things so that they are used when available, with the HIP or TYC catalog number being the final fallback.

--Chris

[Chuft-Captain]

The question:
When I press enter in Celestia and then type in "HD", only one star (HD178911B) appears in the list at the bottom of the screen. When I check in the Star Browser (via the menu) I found that this star just happens to be the only HD star in the list (when the maximum stars displayed in the list is set to 100). However, if I pull the slider all the way to the right, I get a great many more "HD" stars to chose from. However, if I then go back to the "ENTER" method, I still only get the one star.
Is this a bug, or intended behaviour. If so, what's the rationale?

The Request:
This is regarding the way the "ENTER" functionality discussed above works. It would be good when using the "ENTER" method, if it was possible to select a star as soon as it's only one in the list. ie. As soon as I've entered enough of the object's ID to eliminate all others from the list, I should be able to just press ENTER to select it without further data-entry. Currently, you have to enter the whole thing, even when it is the only one in the list. In the example above, currently I have to type "HD 178911B" exactly, and press ENTER to select it, yet it's uniquely identified as soon as I've entered "HD".
This functionality could be applied to any browser (ie. Solar System)
eg. "ea" <ENTER> for Earth, "eu" <ENTER> for Europa, and "enc" <ENTER> for Enceladus would save a lot of typing over the current situation.

It seems pointless and frustrating to have to enter the rest of a long object name exactly, when it's been identified after the first few characters. I would think this would be fairly simple to incorporate.

[selden]

Celestia doesn't show stars' HD, HIP or SAO IDs when they're only in its binary databases because there are so many: ~100,000 in each. It only lists objects that are in the textual catalogs. Typing IDs that are in the binary catalogs does work, though.

The <return> selection can be made by typing a <tab> to "autocomplete" and/or step through the names that match what's been typed so far. I don't see any easy way to do that for the binary catalog entries, though