The Best Way to Display the Nearest Stars

[mjbanks]

I was wondering if there was some particular star catalog (either built into Celestia or as an add-on) which would allow me to display only the stars within, say, fifty light-years or so of Sol. My current method, since I like to be able to see *all* the nearby stars, is (for the sake of visual clarity, since I have to display star names) to turn the maximum draw distance down to around 150, turn off auto-magnitude, and turn the magnitude limit all the way up. The problem with this is that it makes it difficult to see the whole neighborhood at once.

Any help would be appreciated.

[turnebob]

I have something for you, but only within 17 light-years from the sun.
It's a list of stars you have to put in the data/asterisms.dat file.
Other way is to create an asterisms2.dat file with this list, and to change "AsterismsFile "asterisms.dat"" by "AsterismsFile "asterisms2.dat"" in the celestia.cfg file.

this list is the shortest tree linking all the stars less far than 17 ly from the sun :

"voisinage"
[
[ "Alpha Cen" "Proxima" "Sol" "Barnard's Star" "Ross 154" "Lacaille 8760" "Epsilon Ind" "Lacaille 9352" "Luyten 726-8" "Epsilon Eri" "Sirius" "Procyon" "Luyten's Star" "Ross 614" "Giclas 99-49" ]
[ "Ross 154" "Wolf 1061" "36 Oph A-B" "36 Oph C" ]
[ "Lacaille 8760" "Luyten 354-89" ]
[ "Epsilon Ind" "SCR 1845-6357" "Gliese 674" ]
[ "Lacaille 9352" "Luyten 789-6" ]
[ "Lacaille 9352" "Cordoba 32416" ]
[ "Luyten 726-8" "Tau Cet" "Luyten 725-32" "GJ 1002" "Van Maanen's Star" "Luyten 1159-16" "Teegarden's Star" "Groombridge 34" "Kruger 60" "61 Cyg" "GJ 1245" "Gliese 687" "Struve 2398" ]
[ "Epsilon Eri" "Luyten 372-58" ]
[ "Groombridge 34" "Ross 248"]
[ "Kruger 60" "EV Lac" ]
[ "Gliese 687" "Alsafi" "LP 44-113" ]
[ "Procyon" "DX Cnc" "Lalande 21185" "Wolf 359" "Ross 128" "Wolf 424" "Lalande 25372" ]
[ "Kapteyn's Star" "Luyten 372-58" "DENIS 0255-4700" ]
[ "Ross 128" "DENIS 1048-3956" "Luyten 143-23" "Luyten 145-141" ]
]

I hope you'll enjoy it.