I wanted to be able to get an idea of what I should see when looking through a physical telescope, and understand why one eyepiece may be better suited to a particular target. This way, I can pan around and quickly change between FOVs to simulate what the different optics I have will give me in framing. This plugin serves several purposes: the primary use is to see what the sky looks like through a particular combination of eyepiece and telescope. I've figured this out for all FL combos I use. Take note that the width/height ratio may be different between your Stellarium display and the Camera sensor image ratio, so you may find that you just need to get the height or width correct and be aware that there may be out-of-camera frame info displayed in the Stellarium view.įor example with my FL 500mm lens on my 35mm sensor, it shows the same framing as what 2.53 degrees FOV would show in Stellarium.>note pixel pitch is a defining factor.my sensor is 8.4 microns in pitch. Otherwise you can get precise and match up your camera/lens image with a screen shot of different FOV's of Stellarium in Photoshop with layers and opacity adjusts, and stretch to match tools.Remember, just make sure the Stellarium frame edge shares the same objects on the sides that the camera images has on the sides of its frame. It's pretty easy to eye-ball the Stellarium view with the live-view or comparing with a decent exposed image, You can adjust the custom hot-keys for zoom/wide to be specific FOV measurements. Instead I just 'calibrated' my camera with the different focal lengths to match the "FOV" setting that Stellarium shows. So yes, in summary, I found it a really useful tool, just have to bear in mind that the DSOs aren't quite accurate, but definitely a tool I'll be using a lot in future.I've never bothered with such a useful tool. being able to confirm that the three objects running in parallel to Jupiter were indeed three of it's moons and not three random stars that just happened to be vaguely aligned close by was really satisfying.Īnd switching the eyepieces as well did seem to give a pretty accurate indication of the different FOVs, which again was really useful, and I think will certainly help in the planning stages as well prior to an evening's (um, whole night's ) viewing. having the ocular view show the reversed image as well meant I didn't have to do an extra "translation" in my head to flip the image on the atlas.Īnd it was incredibly helpful when I finally got my first view of Jupiter at 2.30am this morning.
Where it was massively helpful though was in general star field viewing, being able to match up what I was seeing through the scope with the view in Stellarium, particularly compared to using a Star Atlas. I somehow suspected I wasn't going to see Hubble-like image quality from my 6SE! That's a shame though and hopefully something they will improve, I think one of the issues us newbies have is not really knowing what to expect viewing DSOs, particularly in the smaller scopes, so having more accuracy there would really help. though I already had a feeling that was the case looking at the whirlpool galaxy in all it's glory on my laptop. definitely can see that they're not so accurately displayed in the FOV. I actually like v11 so will stick with this version.ĭSOs. Alt+O then using the mouse to select the eyepiece does work though (but only when not in fullscreen.nothing seems to get it to work in fullscreen mode in V11), so that's good enough for me. You're right though, ctrl+[ no longer works in v11, even when not in fullscreen mode. works a treat ), and have to say I found the plugin really useful. Well I got to try it out properly last night with my newly dark-adapted laptop screen (read: red acetate stuck over the top and brightness turned down.