100 nearest stars simulation

[Antibody]

I loaded the 100 nearest star simulation with the goal of finding Gliese 581, to see what other stars are near the path between that system and ours. But after at least half an hour of trying I just couldn't find it. The search function, if you can call it that, didn't appear to list all of the stars, so I had to hover over as many stars as I could individually and see if it any was what I was looking for. After checking for a number of the other designations listed on Wikipedia, and checking for a possible labeling error, I even got desperate enough to try to match up the stars with an online 3-D star map in which Gliese 581 is easy to find. But I just had no luck finding it.

If Gliese 581 really is in this particular simulation, I'd really, really appreciate it if someone told me what the designation is in it and posted a screenshot of it's position in the sky from the plane of our system and with a nearer star, such as Alpha Centauri, in the shot for reference.

[atomic7732]

I don't have access to Universe Sandbox right now, but, you could look for other stars in Libra, or use two or more stars with known right ascension coordinates in that simulation to estimate where it might be.

[Antibody]

Ah, finally found it. Turns out the 3d map I was using had the stars in slightly different places, specifically Alpha Centauri was on the same plane as the sun when in this simulation it's below it. But everything else was still similar enough that I could then find Gliese 581.

Oh, and I realized after posting that the simulation is actually of 300 stars, not 100. >.>

Guess I'll lock this topic, thanks for the help.

[Dan Dixon]

The search function is very basic right now and only looks for text in the "Name" field.

This site might be useful to you:
http://www.solstation.com/stars.htm