Lab 1- Introduction to Stellarium _

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Physics

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Dec 6, 2023

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CHARLESTON SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY PHYSICS 115 ASTRONOMY-STARS AND GALAXIES Student Name: Jewel Ash Date: 10/22/2023 Student ID: 204386 LAB 1: INTRODUCTION TO STELLARIUM Objectives  Become familiar with the Stellarium program and its user interface  Define and distinguish between systems of astronomical coordinates Introduction: In this activity, you will become familiar with the basic workings of the Stellarium program and you will be introduced to many of the procedures you will be asked to follow for other lab assignments in the course. Be sure to answer all of the questions. Installing the program: To run the program at home, you will need to install the program to your hard drive. Please access the website https://stellarium.org/ to obtain the free software. Stellarium also has a user guide available. Install the appropriate version for your operating system. When you click the version to install, the download should begin automatically after the next page loads. Windows users: Newer computers have 64-bit processors, but you can check using instructions found online. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/32-bit-and-64-bit-windows#1TC=windows-7 . To take the software out of full-screen mode, click the button shown to the right or click F11. (You may have to hold Fn.) 1

Fig 1. Start up the program. Once the main window pops up, you should be acquainted with the layout of the main interface. At the bottom is the status bar. On the far left, your location and altitude above sea level will be listed; the default setting is "Earth, Paris, and 38m." Next, it tells you the "FOV," i.e. your field of view from top to bottom. The default is 60˚. The following item displays the refresh rate for the animation in frames per second, or FPS. This will vary depending on the active memory being used by your computer. Finally, the date and time are displayed in the format "YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS" in 24-hour time. For example, 2022 January 19 at 4:00 PM would be 2022 01-19 16:00:00. Daylight Saving Time is automatically run based on your location. Since this software is displaying what your local time would be, it is very important that you calibrate this. For the purposes of this assignment, make sure your computer's time zone is set to Eastern Time (UTC -04:00 during DST, UTC -05:00 in the winter months). There are dock menus, which pop out from the left side and the bottom. The left menu controls the broader settings, while the bottom menu controls your viewing settings. Place your mouse cursor over each of the buttons to get a description of what each button does. A keyboard shortcut will also be listed in brackets. Change your location from the default location in Paris. Access the Location window using either the shortcut key "F6" (you may have to hold the Function ["Fn"] key at the same time) or by clicking the top button on the left menu shaped like a compass. The search bar is to the right of the magnifying glass symbol, where you may type in the name of any town currently listed. Please find "North Charleston, SC, United States" in the list of cities and click on the name in the list. Make sure the coordinates match the following: 2

Latitude: N 32 o 51’ 16.56” Longitude: W 79 o 58” 29.28” Altitude 0m. Check the box on the lower left labeled "Use as default." Close the Location window by clicking the " ☓ " in the upper right-hand corner. You can change your view of the sky by dragging it with your mouse. Click and hold the mouse button on any point, which will allow you to change your view. You may also use the arrows on your keyboard to alter your viewable sky. When you select an object in Stellarium, the information for the object appears in the upper left corner of the screen, but the default setting displays more information than you may need. Either open the Configuration window using the shortcut key "F2" or by clicking the fifth button on the left menu shaped like a wrench. Select the Information tab. Uncheck the boxes for the following "Displayed fields:" Right ascension/Declination (J2000), Galactic coordinates, Hour angle/Declination, Ecliptic coordinates, and Additional Information. Select the Main tab, then click "Save settings," and close the Configuration window. The date and time can be adjusted either by accessing the “Date and Time” window using the shortcut key "F5" or by clicking the second button on the left menu shaped like a clock. You may change any entry by using the up and down arrow keys. If an entry is highlighted, you may also type in a new value. Practice changing the date and time to get comfortable using this feature. Change the date and time to 2020-10-08 at 12:00:00 (noon). If you don't see the Sun due South-East, i.e. directly above the “SE” in the sky, the clock on your operating system (Windows, Mac OS X) is not set to the Eastern Time Zone. When you are in the main window in Stellarium, typing the number "8" is a useful keyboard shortcut for setting the time. Set the date to 2020-01-01 at midnight, then type "8" in the main window. 1. How does typing "8" change the date and time? 3

Typing “8” changed the date and time back to what it was previously. Set the time to 21:00 (9:00 PM) before you move on to the next step. When viewing the sky, you will notice the ground and the sky, as well as the letter "S" at the horizon representing one of the cardinal directions, south. Keep an eye on the stars as the time changes. When using Stellarium, the sky normally moves in real time, but you can control this rate of motion. You have four buttons on the right side of the bottom menu, which control the rate of motion: Reverse, Play, Now, and Forward. Clicking the Reverse or Forward buttons multiple times allows you to speed up the time flow in either direction, and they can slow down the time flow when they oppose the motion. The Play button resets the time flow to real time and acts as a Pause button when the sky is changing in real time. Finally, the Now button changes the time flow to real time AND changes the date and time to the present. The Reverse, Play, and Forward buttons all have easy keyboard shortcuts as well: "J", "K", and "L". 2. From the real-time or Play setting, increase the Forward rate three times. Watch the southern sky for about 30 seconds and describe what you see. Which direction are the stars moving? After increasing the speed forward rate three times the stars began moving to the right or clockwise. After watching the southern sky for 30 seconds, the turned from night to day, the sun set and rose again. All of which was moving clockwise. Instead of altering the rate of time flow, you can move in discrete time steps. Pause the time flow and reset the time to 21:00 (9 PM). Pay attention to the time and date as you click the "-" and "=" keys. You can also change the time at different rates by holding down the "Ctrl" key at the same time. Mac users: For the keyboard shortcuts listed below, use Command ( ⌘ ) instead of Control ("Ctrl"). 4

3. Record how the date and time changes when using each of the following keyboard shortcuts: a) – when you press this key – the moon moves to the right and the time stays the same, but the date jumps backwards a day. b) = when you press this key, the moon jumps left and the time stays the same, but the dates jumps forward a day. c) [ when you press this key, the time stays the same, but the date jumps backwards a week or 7 days. d) ] when you press this key, the time stays the same, but the date jumps forward a week or 7 days. e) Ctrl – when you press this key the time jumps backwards an hour. f) Ctrl = when you press this key the time jumps forward an hour. While looking at the sky as you would see it from North Charleston, you can select any of the points of light in your field of view to see some information about the object. Choose a bright, unlabeled point of light in the sky and click the mouse button to select it. 4. Write down the name of the object (only the first part listed), its magnitude (only the first number listed), and its distance from Earth rounded to one decimal place. Do not forget the distance units. Magnitude: 1.00 (reduced to 1.32 by 2.44 Airmasses) Distance: 533.75 ly Something that you will have noticed is that it is often hard to keep track of the stars because the Sun comes up. Fortunately, Stellarium allows you to remove the effects of daylight hitting the atmosphere. On the bottom menu, one of the highlighted icons looks like a cloud obscuring light. Clicking this button or typing the shortcut, "A", removes the atmosphere and allows you to see the stars hidden by scattered sunlight. 5

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