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Stellarium / stellarium

Stellarium is a free GPL software which renders realistic skies in real time with OpenGL. It is available for Linux/Unix, Windows and macOS. With Stellarium, you really see what you can see with your eyes, binoculars or a small telescope.
https://stellarium.org
GNU General Public License v2.0
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Why not make a plugin to measure straight-line distance between two celestial body？ #1591

Open forestbat opened 3 years ago

forestbat commented 3 years ago

As the topic，I want to measure straight distance between any two celestials，such as Sun and Sirius，however I haven't found any tool to complete this.

github-actions[bot] commented 3 years ago

Thanks for adding your first issue to Stellarium. If you have questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

gzotti commented 3 years ago

https://github.com/Stellarium/stellarium/wiki/FAQ#why-dont-you-implement

What do you want to measure? Distance to stars or planets is given in the info text. The distance difference between Sirius and Earth and Sirius to the Sun is negligible.

alex-w commented 3 years ago

Linear and angular distance between Solar system objects may be measured in AstroCalc/PC tool.

forestbat commented 3 years ago

https://github.com/Stellarium/stellarium/wiki/FAQ#why-dont-you-implement

What do you want to measure? Distance to stars or planets is given in the info text. The distance difference between Sirius and Earth and Sirius to the Sun is negligible.

”Sirius and Sun“ is only an example，it can be ”Rigel and Arcturus“ or ”Rigil Kent and Pollux“. An interesting question：If there are intelligent creatures on Gliese581c or Teegarden-B，what is the most clear star from them？（as Sun and Rigil Kent）So I hope this feature can appear in stellarium. @alex-w

gzotti commented 3 years ago

It will not magically appear. You can contribute it.

alex-w commented 3 years ago

Most celestial objects in Stellarium doesn't have parallax or distance info ;)

github-actions[bot] commented 3 years ago

Thanks to @forestbat for suggesting this.

axd1967 commented 3 years ago

it is a good idea. I had been thinking of adding this as an option to the angle measurement tool in following way:

IF the "measure 3D distance" option is not active, THEN no 3D distance is shown.

IF there are objects below start AND end point AND they have some kind of distance information, THEN the tool could show a third value: the true (3D) distance between them (maybe with included accuracy, if available).

IF only one object is selected, THEN the 3D distance can be calculated as the chord length between start and endpoint, for an arc containing the selected object.

the 3D distance COULD automatically select the most appropriate distance scale:

(also interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comoving_and_proper_distances)

alex-w commented 2 years ago

This is a good task for the community to participate in the contribution into Stellarium. Who wants to help us?