Map of Milky Way objects

Post #1by **selden** » 11.12.2006, 00:43

This Addon shows an overview of the locations of some 8000 Milky Way objects: molecular (CO) clouds, HII regions, open clusters and individual stars. Originally collected by Kevin Jardine for his Web site at http://galaxymap.org/ he gave permission for it to be adapted for use with Celestia.

http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celest ... xy_map.zip (700KB)

Kevin does not find this data to be a convincing argument for spiral structure, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well it matches the model of the Milky Way provided in Celestia v1.5.0 pre1.

[edit]The Addon has been updated to include scripts to mark the objects. See below.[/edit]

Cham · Post #2by **Cham** » 11.12.2006, 01:56

Selden,

this is interesting. I have several comments :

In the "galaxy_map.html", you say something about some yellow objetcs. Well, there are none. They are actually blue.

Why the stars ? I don't think they add much info to the galactic distribution.

Also, with my usual billboard nebulae, your addon is extremelly slow. Here are a couple of suggestions that should improve the frame rate alot, and also the display :

1- remove all the stars.
2- Use the "circle" marker instead of the cmod sphere, and make a CEL script to mark all the objects with their colors.

eburacum45 · Post #3by **eburacum45** » 11.12.2006, 10:47

8000 objects, eh? After laboriously converted a couple of hundred RAs and Decs by hand for my OA Locations add-on I wonder of you have some sort of converter available.

Post #4by **t00fri** » 11.12.2006, 11:50

eburacum45 wrote:8000 objects, eh? After laboriously converted a couple of hundred RAs and Decs by hand for my OA Locations add-on I wonder of you have some sort of converter available.

You guys should really learn PERL! It's /easy/ to learn, exists for all OS's and is VERY powerful, including math calculations.

Bye Fridger

Post #5by **selden** » 11.12.2006, 11:57

eburacum45,

It's called a program written in Fortran

I'm not proficient in perl: I use the tools I know. The program and a csv version of the spreadsheet are included. They're in a subdirectory named source.

Cham,

Thanks for the comments.
I changed the color of the clusters to match the color used on the original website and forgot to update the docs. I'll fix that.

You can easily disable the DSC catalog pf stars if you want. The ones included go out to much larger distances than Celestia draws Star objects, including some Wolf Rayet stars at the galactic center. Unfortunately, the spreadsheet did not have adequate resolution to draw them at separate locations

For some reason, scripts didn't even occur to me! My goal was to make a version of the Website that was more convenient to manipulate in realtime, strangely enough.

eburacum45 · Post #6by **eburacum45** » 11.12.2006, 13:34

The program and a csv version of the spreadsheet are included. They're in a subdirectory named source.

Thank you very much.

Post #7by **selden** » 11.12.2006, 16:18

The zip file has been updated to v2, but with the same filename and location.

http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celest ... xy_map.zip (700KB)

It now includes STC catalogs and scripts to mark the locations of the objects. Note, however, that the objects cannot be selected easily unless you enable the DSC catalogs, which also are included.

Cham · Post #8by **Cham** » 11.12.2006, 16:50

Selden,

why change to STC ? It was working perfectly with DSC and the scripts. I simply removed the models from the definitions, and mark everything to see the nebulae.

Post #9by **selden** » 11.12.2006, 17:19

This is intended to be an Addon usable by anyone. It's easier for a novice to rename a few files than to edit them.

A way to select catalogs individually (in a menu?) would certainly be a great help in Celestia....

Cham · Post #10by **Cham** » 11.12.2006, 17:25

selden wrote:A way to select catalogs individually (in a menu?) would certainly be a great help in Celestia....

I already asked for a script menu before. This is urgent, we need a favorite scripts folder in the base CelestiaRessources folder (recognised by Celestia), and a script menu like the favorite menu. And the Demo cel script should be in that menu.