Far Less Clickable Visible Stars in 13.0?

Asked by Jon Seamans

First I want to congratulate you all for the improvements in user interface and utility of 13.0. Where I once used scripts, 13.0 has now has better built in functionality, e.g. user preset zooms and direct cursor coordinate readout. I use Stellarium heavily for many specialized astronomical and ephemeris problems where visual representations greatly aid the process. For example, identifying unlabeled photographic star fields, times, magnitude limits, views from other bodies, etc. The list goes on.

Compared to 12.4, my very first observation using 13.0 was unfortunately disappointing. I found that a small fraction of the visible stars was clickable for the star details. I found I could zoom in and the stars I could "click" did get fainter, however there were still a large fraction of stars I couldn't click. This is very frustrating. 12.4 permitted me to click virtually all stars that are visible, even stars that weren't visible if I recall.

I evaluated the fraction of stars "clickable" at 20° FoV and 60° FoV (my default). These fields were centered at the zenith, and the light pollution =2. I used the Tycho 1 & 2 star catalog to evaluate the clickable fractions. This analysis is 0th order, but revealing none the less.

60° Faintest Mag Visible ≈ 6.8 Faintest Mag Clickable ≈4.7 Fraction of Stars Clickable ≈ 10%
20° Faintest Mag Visible ≈ 9.1 Faintest Mag Clickable ≈7.1 Fraction of Stars Clickable ≈ 10%

Is there a way to change this "clickable" sensitivity to magnitude?

I think that for a given reasonable FoV, the inability to access data for 90% of the stars is not right. Zooming in to some unknown setting for many stars I'm interested in is an unnecessary pain. Stars that are visible within any FoV should be clickable for data.

If not adjustable, the 13.0 algorithm that determines star magnitude for "clicking" should be changed to include most, if not all, stars visibly displayed within any FoV.

Thanks!
Jon Seamans

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Solved
For:
Stellarium Edit question
Assignee:
No assignee Edit question
Solved by:
gzotti
Solved:
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
Best gzotti (georg-zotti) said :
#1

Oops, indeed!

I agree with you, visible stars should be also clickable. Currently they must be 2mag brighter than limiting magnitude, which is far too much.
This code has been changed some time ago, I will see what we can do here.

Revision history for this message
Jon Seamans (silvy5) said :
#2

Thank you very much for the prompt follow-up and upgrading my question to a bug status.

Jon