DIY Astronomy
How to personalise your view of the night sky in this free planetarium software
Stellarium is a fantastic piece of planetarium software and it’s invaluable for helping to plan observing sessions. The program is freely available to download from
https://stellarium.org and shows you what you can see in the sky on any particular date and time from any location.
The view it gives of the night sky is flexible, with the ability to control displays of stars, planets, labelling and
more. As well as the view above you can also alter the
view it shows of the horizon, which we’ll look at here.
With careful tweaking of all the settings it can almost look like the real sky, so much so that some
planetarium operators use it to project a view of the night sky across their dome.
It’s useful for seeing what's around on those nights
when clouds are hiding the sky, and another great
feature is that it enables you to view the sky from other
bodies in our Solar System. For example, the Moon.
Changes of scene
So what about the horizon view? When Stellarium runs it automatically places a default graphic of a landscape around the edges of the horizon. The program comes with a number of landscapes pre
installed and available to choose from, which can be useful if you want to experience what other locations
have as their horizon. If you use the program to visit the
Moon’s surface, for example, it makes sense to replace
the Earth-like landscape with something a little more
suitable. To change it, press F4 and then select the
Landscape tab. Within the landscapes available there should be a lunar landscape that you can choose.
If any of the supplied landscapes aren’t suitable,
there are a number of others that can be downloaded from https://stellarium.org/en_GB/landscapes.html.
Copy the extracted folders into the same landscape
folder of your system and they will be available to use from the Landscape selection menu.
It’s all very well having these pre-made landscapes, and they look impressive, but wouldn’t it be great to be able to show your own landscape, as a true reflection of
your own location? The good news is that this feature is available and is easy to do. You just need some basic
computer file and image manipulation skills, along with
your own selection of images covering a 360° view of your horizon. You can do the latter with a DSLR or a smartphone. Having your own landscape helps you to
plan your observations, as you know what parts of the
sky are accessible or are blocked by trees or buildings.
Once your new landscape has been set up, you can add as many as you like, such as famous landmarks or
places you’ve visited. By using Stellarium’s Landscape
selection tool you’ll be able to switch landscapes,
whether you wish to see the view from your own
location, or if you just feel like a change of scene.