My website, M45, NGC6992, NGC7000 and more

[Duck]

If you have some time to spend, have a look at my new Celestia website.
http://digilander.libero.it/paulduck/celestia/index.htm
I host my works in the download section.
Have fun with Celestia
Following screenshots...

[Duck]

My first work is a model that shows the bright nebulas around Alcyone, Maia, Electra and Merope. As the four stars are at slightly different distances from us, the four nebulas are also on four planes: at 359, 360, 367 and 370 ly. The model required a lot of time, many lost in errors. Please note: all the stars you see in the snapshot are true stars; the textures only covers the blue nebulas.

[Duck]

NGC 7000, North America nebula, bright version
When I was 8 or 9 years old, a family friend gave me as a present a 300+ pages book covering all the astronomy matters, from parallax to HR diagrams, from planetes to Keplerian laws. It has been a big crush for me, well written (an italian Mondadori edition) and quite interesting at all ages. The first full-page picture in this book was a red spot very similar to the north american continent shape. I called it North America before reading the explanation: what a lack of fantasy.

My second work has been quite hard. In all the photos, the nebula is full covered of stars, giving the texture an unsightly look. It take hours to clean it from big stars and smooth the littlest. After that it was TOO red and TOO bright. The nebula is very big. It covers something like 4 squared degrees in the sky, something like TEN FULL MOONS INSIDE!!!!!!!!

It means that the texture right here, in Celestia is too striking. The nebula is very faint in reality, it needs a big telescope to see it. So far.....

[Duck]

NGC 7000, North America nebula, faint version
.....I use a faint version of it, in everyday usage. I use the brightest one only for screenshots. Use whatever you want. Try to download both

Note: like above, all the stars you see here are true stars, not texturized ones. Sure, you need the big 50MB Hipparcos database compiled by Pascal Hartmann to see them.

[Duck]

NGC 6992, (east) Veil nebula
Like above, it needed an hard cleaning. No stars on texture, here

[Psykotik]

I'm very enthusiastic about your work, but I can't display your nebulas...

It could be induced by the lack of a stc file, but I'm not skilled enough to make one myself and identify the problem.

[Duck]

I'm happy you like it . You don't need a .stc file, just the .dsc in the archive.
You have extract the files and copy the whole thing in your extras directory. Of course I don't know if older version of Celestia are suitable for it.

I mean, for example:

-\extras\ngc7000\ngc7000.dsc
-\extras\ngc7000\models\ngc7000.3ds
-\extras\ngc7000\textures\medres\ngc7000.png

With an older version of Celestia I think you must copy all like this:
-\extras\ngc7000.dsc
-\extras\models\ngc7000.3ds
-\extras\textures\medres\ngc7000.png

If not, put the dsc in extras, the 3ds in \celestia\models, the png in \celestia\textures\medres

What now

[alphap1us]

Hello Duck and thank your for making these new add-ons.
I will include them in the next revision of my catalog.

If I might make a small request, could you post more info about the changes to add-ons you have modified from other peoples staring work? it is always nice to keep track of what has changed becasue there are a lot of 'mystery" files floating around out there. Also maybe you could indicate that you haven't changed anything and are just "mirroring " someone else's add-on by adding something like [Mirror] to the listing. This should prevent everyone from instaling duplicate add-ons and aloow people to keeep improving add-ons as much as possible. Cheers,

Joe

[Psykotik]

Hi Duck,

Thanks for the tip, but I'm quite used to Celestia But only as user

*I think* the problem is "NGC 7000" (i.e.) is not defined in the main "starnames.dat". And for what I understand, it needs to be defined by a "stc" file. Maybe the star has been defined in another file you own ?(a Selden's one ?)

Alpha, did you get it work ?

[selden]

Psykotik,

Unfortunately, I am having no problems whatsoever in displaying Duck's nebulas, so I can only guess what might be causing your problems. I just dragged the folder "ngc7000" out of the Zip file into the \extras\ folder.

The Nebula's name is "NGC 7000" (note the space)

Make sure you've enabled Galaxy viewing.
Too often I forget that myself and spend several minutes trying to figure out why I can't see a Nebula.

The instructions below are basic Celestia commands, so presumably you know them already, but I'll include them just to be complete.

If you have no other NGC Addons installed, then after you start Celestia, you can type
<return>NGC<tab><return>c
Where
<return> is the big key at the right side of the keyboard, sometimes labelled Enter
<tab> is the "Tab" key at the left side of the keyboard.
This will cause "NGC 7000" to be selected, and
c
will center the nebula, which is very large and easy to see.

I hope this helps a little.

[Psykotik]

Make sure you've enabled Galaxy viewing.
Too often I forget that myself and spend several minutes trying to figure out why I can't see a Nebula.

...dammit... how one can be so dumb ? Could a use the "it's late, I'm too tired" joker ? Your intuition was right. I thought to have checked that damn option, but I was wrong.

Thank you Selden, you've been very helpful.

And I can congratulate you again, Duck

[maxim]

That's something that also happens to me regularily.

maxim

[Duck]

Hello Duck and thank your for making these new add-ons.
I will include them in the next revision of my catalog.

If I might make a small request, could you post more info about the changes to add-ons you have modified from other peoples staring work? it is always nice to keep track of what has changed becasue there are a lot of 'mystery" files floating around out there. Also maybe you could indicate that you haven't changed anything and are just "mirroring " someone else's add-on by adding something like [Mirror] to the listing. This should prevent everyone from instaling duplicate add-ons and aloow people to keeep improving add-ons as much as possible. Cheers,

Joe

My "minor" download section has 2 types of files listed.
1) not linked to my webspace (in white). Original 3rd part works, not mirrored (I have no mirrored files in my download page!), just external links to other websites. I will add something like [link to author site].
2) my files, directly linked to my webspace.

Keeping a complete trace of the changes is almost impossible. It's a too big and hard work. I spent a lot of time deleting double entries (from downloaded addons, I mean) and debugging. Original data sources are heavy changed, and changing. I'm just able to give some info, and credits for my sources (I also deleted all zip archives of original data).
I'll extend these infos; if you need it, probably many other users want it

Now, what about my "mystery" files?
I'll try to add more info, ok.
Check my site in a few minutes

A small request. Could you (eventually the authors) help me to complete the necessary credits for some works?
Also, do you think I have to remove something?

Thanks for all.

[Duck]

I updated my site with a disclaimer, more info, and some instructions for using my and other description files.

I'd like you check it and report faults or other problems, especially for credits (my ever present thought) or if more infos are needed.
Have someone had a look on these "infamous" files, after all? Please...feedback....

By the way do you prefer bright nebulas or more discrete ones?
I think that very large objects, like ngc 7000 are more suitable for a faint version. I will release both versions of future works, if needed, and only a bright version for little nebulas, like ngc 6992 and planetarias, avoiding false colours if possible.

Have a nice day

[maxim]

I LIKE your addons!
It's a hard bit of work to get those DSCs cleaned from all the (unneccesary) stars, and most other addons available are only rectangular pics of some telescope photographs. I'm going to see forward for more of them

One small critics only:
Some of your work seems to look color reduced for some kind of reason. So you might consider doing the cleanup on a 4x oversized in a broader colorspace and then applying some smoothing filters before reducing it again to original size. That might help to gain even more quality.

Nevertheless, thanks for sharing your work.

maxim

[Duck]

I LIKE your addons!
It's a hard bit of work to get those DSCs cleaned from all the (unneccesary) stars, and most other addons available are only rectangular pics of some telescope photographs. I'm going to see forward for more of them

One small critics only:
Some of your work seems to look color reduced for some kind of reason. So you might consider doing the cleanup on a 4x oversized in a broader colorspace and then applying some smoothing filters before reducing it again to original size. That might help to gain even more quality.

Nevertheless, thanks for sharing your work.

maxim

I'm very happy you appreciate it.

Now, the technical request. I think that Celestia is first a visual experience. Many beautiful shots I've seen are long pose photos, and sure, objects like emission nebulas are outstanding in these photos. But, as said, I believe in Celestia primarly as a visual experience, rather than a photografic session. For this reason I have done two ngc 7000 objects. One is VERY color reduced (as I think it can be seen in a very good telescope), the other only a bit. M45, of course, hasn't color reduced, and Veil nebula is too slim to be "a rock in the eye".
Maybe, I can make "bright" versions of my future objects colorized as my source photos, and apply color reduction only to the "faint" version.
M45 is definitivly a final version, and also think (east) veil nebula. Do you think their visual impact are correct in Celestia?
I think I will redo, after releasing other objects, the N.America nebula, with a much detailed source photo.

My next work? I don't know, the choice is very hard
I'm now working a bit on ngc catalog, to add new, unreleased at this time, galaxies and stellar clusters.

About sharing, I'm waiting for a friend with a fast modem to download thes beautiful alternative paleo-earth texture. Thanks to you, too!

[maxim]

M45, of course, hasn't color reduced, and Veil nebula is too slim to be "a rock in the eye".

Veil looks a bit blocky - but that might be due to the original photograph.

Do you think their visual impact are correct in Celestia?

Difficult to answer without a telescope view comparision. They don't look wrong to me. But maybe one of the telescope owners in this forum may answer that more precisely.

maxim

[Duck]

M45, of course, hasn't color reduced, and Veil nebula is too slim to be "a rock in the eye".

Veil looks a bit blocky - but that might be due to the original photograph.

Do you think their visual impact are correct in Celestia?

Difficult to answer without a telescope view comparision. They don't look wrong to me. But maybe one of the telescope owners in this forum may answer that more precisely.

maxim

...yes, a bit blocky...maybe it need a lpf to a better visual impact. The problem isn't the source image, but the fact it was FULL of stars. I will try to fix it when releasing the west Veil nebula.

[Duck]

OFF TOPIC:
I added on my website some photos of the Venus transit of june 8th.

If anyone is interested, I'm also updating it at least twice a week.

So long.

[maxim]

Duck,

if your effords would lead to a common applyable process for removing stars out of DSOs while retaining visual correctness and quality, that would be a great thing to share with the community.

maxim