Messier's Open Clusters for Celestia

[selden]

One of the new features in Celestia v1.3 is the "Deep Space Catalog". You can create .DSC files listing galaxies, open clusters and nebulae. Add-on .DSC files can go in your own /extras/ directory. The names of the individual entries appear in Celestia's window if you enable rendering of "galaxy names". (I don't know if that will change.)

I've created messier_open.dsc. It lists all 27 of the open clusters cataloged by Messier plus a few closer ones. All but one of the entries has an "InfoURL" associated with it so you can learn more about these clusters of stars.

This catalog, along with a couple of larger ones, can be found at http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/catalogs.html

[Rassilon]

The thing is some of these need to be created...The globular clusters wont be a problem but what I want to know is where can I get info on open clusters specifically the dec and ra coordinates and distance of each star in the cluster so the stars themselves can be added...namely one Im looking for right now is the open cluster in the rosetta nebula...

http://www.seds.org/~spider/ngc/ngc.cgi?n2244

[selden]

Ras',

One place to start is the site I used for most of the open cluster InfoURLs:
http://obswww.unige.ch/webda/.

Specifically, http://obswww.unige.ch/webda/cgi-bin/ocl_page.cgi?cluster=ngc2244

Simbad has some relevant info, too. e.g.
http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/sim-id.pl?protocol=html&Ident=ngc2244

[julesstoop]

Won't it be a problem when certain stars of the open cluster are allready part of the standard database?

[chris]

I suspect that many of the open clusters stars are already part of the expanded stars catalog. The problem is that the parallaxes of many of them have so much uncertainty that the clusters will be stretched radially beyond recognition. The star catalog needs to be modified; the distances of stars that are known to be members of clusters should be constrained so that they appear close together when viewed from a vantage point outside the solar system.

--Chris

[Rassilon]

I agree chris...

I think I may have neglected to load the expanded database on this install...may be why I am not finding many stars in that area...I will probably solve my problem there...