Constellation names vs boundaries

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ajtribick
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Constellation names vs boundaries

Post #1by ajtribick » 19.05.2004, 21:07

Celestia v1.3.2pre7 (I think that's what it is), some of the constellation labels appear to be completely outside the constellation borders for that constellation, and occasionally a constellation diagram is drawn across a constellation border.

I'm not sure if either of these counts as a true "bug", but it does look slightly odd.

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selden
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Post #2by selden » 19.05.2004, 21:35

Can you provide some specific examples?

While finding such things as a contest can sometimes be amuzing, I think it's inappropriate to report something as a bug and then ask the developers to find it.

Constellation borders are defined by the International Astronomical Union.
Constellation figures are "traditional" and are not standardized. Some of them do include stars that are outside the standardized borders. e.g. Zubeneschamali is the northern claw of Scorpio, but is in the modern Libra.
Selden

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Post #3by Guest » 19.05.2004, 21:49

Ooops... sorry, e.g. the label of Serpens Cauda appears to be connected to a point outside the Serpens Cauda boundary, in Ophiuchus, or the label for Hercules, which is so close to the boundary that at some orientations (from a viewpoint within Sol system) it appears outside the Hercules constellation boundary.

I appreciate that the issue would be hard to fix for small constellations with long names, though.

And I posted the original message when I was looking at the Ophiuchus area at what may have been the worst possible orientation for the labels, so that the most names appeared outside their constellations on the screen at the same time, which made the problem seem more severe than it actually is.

Matt McIrvin
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Post #4by Matt McIrvin » 24.05.2004, 00:50

Ophiuchus/Serpens is a weird case, too, being a large tableau broken up in an unusual way.

The alternate constellation diagram file that I made (it may still be on Bruckner's extras site) cheated in this way even more than the one that ships with Celestia. For instance, I've always thought of Alnath (Beta Tauri) as being shared between Taurus and Auriga, and I wanted to indicate the Great Square of Pegasus even though Alpheratz is really in Andromeda. Some objected to those details.


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