01Lab_Intro-to-Stellarium_2023_red

M ONTGOMERY C OLLEGE – R OCKVILLE A STRONOMY 101 ASTR101 Laboratory 1 - Introduction to Stellarium 1 Name: Aditya Rana The purpose of this exercise is to gain familiarity with the Stellarium 2 program and its many capabilities and features. Stellarium is a visually beautiful and powerful program that accurately displays the sky as seen from any place on Earth (or from any other planet!) at any time. It's easy to use, but also full of accurate astronomical information. If you have patience and follow the guidance in this and future assignments, by the end of the semester you will be experts at using this amazing program. You will want to keep and use Stellarium for years to come, as your personal planetarium and observatory. And the best thing about the program? It's free! If you’re not doing the laboratory on campus, or if you simply want to have Stellarium at home, you can download the program at www.stellarium.org . PART A Now let’s start the program. Double-click on the Stellarium icon (it shows a small crescent Moon and some stars above a horizon) that should now be on your computer’s desktop or in one of its menus. You are looking at the sky and the Southern horizon, as they appear right now, in a field outside Paris, France (the author of the program is French). Your location information is always listed in the Information Bar at the bottom of the screen. Our first task is to set our home location – this is the viewing location that the program will automatically use to display the sky every time it starts. For us, obviously, this will be Rockville . When you move your cursor to the lower left-hand corner of the screen, two menu bars appear - a horizontal one on the bottom of the screen and a vertical one on the left side of the screen. Each of these menu bars display some icons. When you click on any of these icons, a corresponding window opens up to control a particular part of the program. On the left-hand side vertical menu bar, click on the Location Window icon (it looks like a compass symbol). This will open the Location window. You can also simply press F6 to open the Location window if you have a Windows PC. 1 Last edit Spring 2022 (MC). 2 This lab is based on version 0.21.3 of Stellarium . If you are using and older or newer version, the GUIs may be slightly different. Please ask if you have questions. 1

ASTR101 L ABORATORY 1 In the Location window you will see a map of the Earth on the left and a list of locations on the right, below which is a search box (where the magnifying glass icon is) to enter a location. Type Rockville into the search box. Click on Rockville, United States when it appears in the list above. Once you've clicked on Rockville, your location is instantly switched to Rockville! Alternatively, you can enter the Latitude and Longitude of Rockville directly into the program, with the controls below the map. The Latitude of Rockville is 39° North , and the Longitude is 77° West . If you’re using your own computer, you can save this as the default location so that every time you start the program you will be observing the sky from Rockville. To do this, click on the Use current location as default box in the lower left-hand corner of the Location window to put a check mark in it, and then close the Location window by clicking on the X in the upper right-hand corner of the Location window. Stellarium can accurately show you exactly which stars, planets, nebulae, galaxies, asteroids and comets are in the sky at any time, give you information about them, and show you how they all change positions as time passes. It's a very exciting program, but it takes a bit of getting used to. If you ever need help within the program, click on the Question Mark button in the lower left edge (or press the F1 key), to open the Help window. You’re now ready to start exploring Stellarium ! First let’s look around the screen. You are looking at a view of the sky, with the ground below it. You are facing South (see the red “ S ” on the ground at the center? – that means “South”), and you should be located in Rockville, indicated by “ Earth , Rockville ” in the Information Ba r at the bottom of the screen. The time and date listed to the right in the Information Bar should match the local time (as long as your computer itself has the correct time!). If you’re doing this assignment during the day, the sky looks blue, as you would expect. If you’re doing it at night, the sky looks dark, and there are stars (and perhaps planets and the Moon) visible, again, as you would expect. Let’s start navigating around the program. The buttons on the two menu bars have icons that represent various functions of the program, and each opens a window that allows you to change various parameters of the program. The most important button is the Sky and viewing options window button, which has star and planet symbols on it. This button opens the View window, which has five sub-menus. Press the Sky and viewing options button to open the View menu. You can also open this menu by simply pressing the F4 key on a Windows PC. List five of the sub-menus accessible from the View Window. (There are more than five.) 2

ASTR101 L ABORATORY 1 ** Please use RED font for ALL answers. Failure to follow this instruction will result in 0.5 pt deduction. Answer Sky SSO DSO Markings Landscape You can click on any of these sub-menus at the top, and a different window will open up. Now let's look at some of these sub-menus. List four of the Landscapes available in Stellarium . Garching Geneva Grossmugl Guereins List four of Sky Cultures listed in the Star Lore sub-menu. (List is on the left.) Anutan Aztec Egyptian Boorong Feel free to try out different Star Lore options, but when you are done, select “Western”. The Sky sub-menu of the View Window is probably the most important sub-menu in the whole program. This sub-menu controls what is displayed on screen in Stellarium . Let's look at it. There are sections here for Sky and Stars . In each section, the items have boxes or sliders next to them that can be moved or checked or unchecked with “√”s. What is the “Shooting stars” rate set to? 10 What is the “Limit Magnitude” for stars set to? Off Select the Starlore submenu. What happens when you check and uncheck Constellations labels showed on the screen. 3