Constellations

[OmegaRed]

I was just playing with the new version of Universe Sandbox, specifically the constellations file.  I found it fun to fly to other stars, such as Epsilon Erandi and Tau Ceti, to see what their view of the cosmos would look like.

I was wondering if anyone knew of a program capable of creating star charts of possible skies of distant stars.

Any info would be great!  Thanks.

[Dan Dixon]

What do you mean by star charts?  Are you asking about a full sky, printable view?

This might help (a random hidden keyboard shortcut):
Use shift-F7 & shift-F8 to change the camera's field of view (FOV). The default is 60.

[HallowedError]

Stellarium is a good sky viewer. As far as I know you can only see from the various planets, but maybe you find a way to do it from stars. 'Course, the stars might not have depth but I'm not sure.

[Dan Dixon]

I'm not aware of any program that will generate star charts from other stars, although it's an interesting idea.

You can fly to another star and look around in Universe Sandbox, but this would only show the stars that are loaded in the current simulation/system. I would imagine that a program like Celestia (which has a database of 100,000+ stars) would work much better for this purpose:
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

[atomic7732]

Is there anyway to press a button and make the constellations relative to it. Like if you "fly" to another star all the constellations seem to point to it. Can you make something so the constellation stars are still conected but if you "fly" back to the sun, it seems to point to that star.

[HallowedError]

Oh wow, I never rendered the constellations on Celestia and moved around. If you zoom all the way out it looks like an explosion.

[Dan Dixon]

Oh wow, I never rendered the constellations on Celestia and moved around. If you zoom all the way out it looks like an explosion.

I'm sure you've found that it looks nearly the same in Universe Sandbox, right?

Is there anyway to press a button and make the constellations relative to it. Like if you "fly" to another star all the constellations seem to point to it. Can you make something so the constellation stars are still conected but if you "fly" back to the sun, it seems to point to that star.

NeutronStar, I'm not sure what you mean by fly back to the sun and have something point to that star. Like just an arrow that points at where you were?

[atomic7732]

all the lines seem to point away and to that star, because stars have different distances, tomarrow I will post a screenshot.