The Sun, the Moon and the Stars

LINUX USER KTools KStars The Sun, the Moon and the Stars No need for a trip into hyperspace, when the KDE planetarium brings the stars to your living room.Take your computer on a trip through the night skies of the indian summer with KStars! BY STEFANIE TEUFEL winkle, twinkle little star… Of shows the current time and date on the from the list, you can always add the course everyone knows this left, the coordinates in the middle and coordinates in the lower area of the Tlullaby, but do you know the exact the current geographic location on the coordinate window. All the fields in positions of Mars, Saturn, or Jupiter? right. KStars uses the status bar at the this window, except State/Province, are No? In that case, you are either a bottom of the screen to display mandatory, and must be filled in before candidate for your neighborhood additionally the name of the object you you can click on Add to List. observatory, or you might like to try have just selected, and the coordinates of KStars, KDE’s desktop planetarium. the current mouse cursor position. Late for an important date? KStars is included in the kdeedu When you launch the program, it package. To launch the program, just Where am I? synchronizes its internal clock with click on Educational / KStars (the The standard home position is Greenwich your system clock in order to display Desktop Planetarium) in the K menu of in England, the site of the Royal your chosen constellation in realtime. KDE 3. You will be rewarded with a top Observatory, which is well-known as the However, you can select Stop Clock notch astronomy program that identifies prime meridian. If you want to look at the under the Time item to stop the program over 40,000 stars and 13,000 other night sky above your home town, select clock or make it run more quickly or objects, and is capable of displaying the Location / Geographic… in the menu to slowly. You can use Time / Set Time… or night sky as visible at any point on the open a configuration window just like the click on the timer in the toolbar to globe. This may take a while to load, but one in Figure 2. change the date and time. KStars does at least let you know what The developers provide a list with the progress it is making. longitude and latitude of over 2000 Wandering Stars The program design and content are towns in the top right corner. If your So, who needs Star Trek to explore the quite intuitive. Figure 1 shows the night home town happens not be on the list, final frontiers, when you can boldly sky in the Cassiopeia constellation. you can always try a city close by. Every click, or press the arrow keys? If you also KStars displays the stars in realistic city is represented colors and with their true relative by a dot on the luminosity. The developers have also world map, and labeled the brightest stars. Deep sky immediately objects (that is, objects more distant marked by a red than the nearest stars, such as galaxies, crosshair when nebulae and star clusters) are indicated you select a list by colored symbols. entry. The info-bar at the top of the screen Instead of spen- ding time scrolling KTOOLS through the list, In this column we present tools,month by you can type the month,which have proven to be especially first letter of your useful when working under KDE,solve a home town in problem which otherwise is deliberately the filter box, re- ducing the search ignored,or are just some of the nicer things scope. in life,which – once discovered – you If your home wouldn’t want to do without. site is missing Figure 1: Visiting Cassiopeia 72 November 2002 www.linux-magazine.com KTools LINUX USER Figure 2:The Night Sky above Cologne Figure 3: Somewhere Beyond the Horizon hold down the [Shift] key, you can then appears (Figure 4) to query the and myinfo_url.dat files in the double your warp…, oops, your scrolling object type, and download a razor sharp ~/.kde/share/apps/kstars directory. speed. Should you happen to stumble image of the object from the celestial If you become tired of just aimlessly across an interesting bit of the heavens, atlas, The Digitized Sky Survey, by roaming around the virtual heavens, you you can use the plus and minus keys to clicking on Show 1st/2nd Gen DSS can use the Location / Find Object… zoom in or out. As an alternative, you Image. You can see an image of the star, menu item to search for a specific object. can also click on the “Zoom In” and Ras Alhague of the constellation Alpha The “Find Object” window (Figure 5) “Zoom Out” buttons in the View menu. Ophiuchus, in the opener. includes a list of all the named objects in You can use [-] to zoom out until you You can use the Add Link… option to the KStars database. Many of them are see a green arc like the one shown in add websites with more information or listed by their catalog entry only, such as Figure 3. This represents your local insert additional images. KStars even NGC 3077, but you will also find some earth horizon. allows you to verify links by clicking on well-known names, such as Cassiopeia. The curved white line in Figure 3 the Check URL button. The program represents the celestial equator, an automatically loads your additions when On Board Information imaginary line that divides the skies into launched, saving in the myimage_url.dat Sources the northern and southern hemispheres. Of course, not everybody is a natural The brown line, which is almost born astronomer. So do not panic, if the invisible in Figure 4, represents the terms used in this article are a mystery to ecliptic, that is, the path the sun appears you. The makers of KStars have also to follow in the course of the year. given this issue some thought. “The KStars shows you the whole spectrum AstroInfo Project”, a useful feature of the of celestial objects – stars, planets, KStars manual, provides you with a planetary nebulae, and galaxies. You can series of short articles that explain the click on a specific object to identify it – most important concepts and terms in the name immediately appears in the the field of astronomy. Some articles status bar. If you then right click with even include exercises that can be your mouse, you can use the menu that completed using KStars. The developers are keen on expanding this section and actively encourage interested users to contribute to the scientific database. ■ INFO [1] KStars: http://kstars.sourceforge.net [2] Fixed Stars: http://www.winshop.com.au/annew [3] AstroInfo Project: http://astroinfo.sourceforge.net Figure 4: Identifying Celestial Objects Figure 5: Seek and You Will Find www.linux-magazine.com November 2002 73.

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