Tweaking Stellarium to find more targets.

[AstronomyUkraine]

Turn your default Stellarium, from this:

 

 

To this, in a few mouse clicks.

 

 

Open Stellarium, click F4 to bring up the Sky and Viewing options window. Click Surveys tab, scroll down until you see two options called DSS colored, put a check in both boxes. Next click the DSO tab, check the C, SH2 and LBN options (note these are not sticky and will need selecting every time you open Stellarium). Press D to annotate the deep sky objects, Ctrl-Alt-D, turns the enhanced colours and targets on and off. Stellarium will look a little funky when this tweak is applied, but once you zoom in on a target, the screen will refresh, leaving you will nice clear targets.

 

Brian

[TerryMcK]

Great tip Brian. I’ll try it out.

[AstronomyUkraine]

3 hours ago, TerryMcK said:

Great tip Brian. I’ll try it out.

Thanks Terry. My eyes lit up when I saw Cygnus, there is enough in that area alone to keep any astro imager busy for 12 months.

 

I since found out, you can save the settings in Stellarium by opening the configuration tab, and saving your current settings. So disregard the info about checking the options in the DSO tab not being sticky.

 

Brian

[TerryMcK]

I've just pinned this as I needed to rebuild my processing computer and forgot what needed to be done to display the extras within Stellarium. Others may find this useful.

[RaDec]

Yep - thanks Bryan, that's a super useful tip.

It's also about the only view we are likely to get at the moment - great to be ahead of the curve when a clear spell does come by!

[AstronomyUkraine]

On 3/7/2023 at 11:14 AM, TerryMcK said:

I've just pinned this as I needed to rebuild my processing computer and forgot what needed to be done to display the extras within Stellarium. Others may find this useful.

The process has changed ever so slightly now Terry. The latest version of Stellarium only has one DSS Colored box to check now, instead of the two in the previous version. Everything else is the same.

[TerryMcK]

Thanks Brian.

[Demon]

It's likely well used by others but I found downloading all the catalogues, then on the dso tab upping the label and hints sliders to max then ticking and using the size min max and magnitude limit values to select the most appropriate targets for my rig absolutely crucial, plus really interesting to see what's up that night. Note - Below is to just show dso tab but doesn't have them ticked or specifically set as just dragged off internet... The size is not ticked and min is set to 1, max set at 600 and magnitude not ticked and set to 8.5. Also sliders not ticked or all the way to right.

Edited June 2, 2023 by Demon

[Carastro]

Great tip but l bet you need the latest version to do this.  
 

btw some if the DSOs in stellarium are mine from some years ago.  
 

[Carastro]

Wow , I checked this out, really good, thanks for the tip Brian.