User`s guide
Appearance of the Sky 43
Additional Star Options: The main Star
Options dialog box lets you control how
many stars are displayed and how they are
labeled.
It also has a “3D Positions” slider that lets
you determine how many stars are drawn
in the correct position in 3-dimensional
space. This feature is only useful when
your viewing location is outside the solar
system, in such a manner that you can see
the 3-dimensional arrangement of the stars
in our solar neighbourhood. See
“Changing Your Viewing Location
” on
page 104 to learn how to change your
viewing location. “Only show 3D stars
when outside Solar System” hides those
stars for which we do not have accurate 3-
dimensional positions, making it easier to
see the 3-dimensional structure of our
solar neighbourhood.
Example: Isolating the Hyades
Cluster
This example will show you how to use
star display options in Starry Night Pro
and Pro Plus to separate stars in the
Hyades cluster from other stars.
1 Turn off daylight and hide the horizon
by checking the appropriate boxes in the
Options pane (“Local View” layer).
2 Ensure that the star database (in the
“Stars” layer of the
Options pane) is
turned on, and the “Bright NGC Objects”
database (in the “Deep Space” layer) is
turned off. We need to do this because the
Hyades is an object in the “Bright NGC
Objects”
database - and that would be too easy!
3Open the
Find pane and type in
“Epsilon Tauri”. This is a bright star in the
Hyades cluster. Double-click on this star’s
name to centre on the Hyades cluster.
4 Use the zoom buttons in the toolbar to
zoom in to a field of view of about 15°.
5 Turn on proper motion vectors for stars,
using the checkbox in the
Options pane
(“Stars” layer). Increase the length of
proper motion vectors to maximum, by
pulling the “Vector scaling” slider in the
“Proper Motion Vectors Options” dialog box
all the way to the right. You should see
that many of the stars have vectors
pointing in the same direction, indicating
that they are moving together through
space and are part of the same cluster.
However, many other stars, such as the
bright star Aldebaran, are moving in very
different directions.