Sunday, March 26, 2017

Celestial map update

I have updated the d3-celestial sky map with quite a few new options. See here:

As they are:

Star designations and proper names are now handled separately, so both can be displayed at once for those stars that have proper names, preferably at different locations relative to the stellar disk, which is settable in the configuration

It is now possible to display grid values at each line (so far only in the configuration), with the options to display them around the outline, in the center, or with an array of degree-values indicating the location where the line of values is crossing the respective other direction. So latitude-lines for longitude and vice-versa. And it works in quite a lot of cases. too.

Finally, the constellations are now ranked by prominence, with the possibility to assign a different font to each of the ranks, e.g. to display the names with different sizes. The ranks are assigned by the following criteria:
1. Rank: Large constellations with lots of bright stars. E.g. Orion, Ursa Major
2. Rank: Large constellations *or* with one or more really bright star(s). E.g. Monoceros, Crux 3. Rank: The rest, Circinus, Sagitta, the like.

And the reason for this? Well, to improve my giant wall map with all the features I'd like it to have. You can download the original by clicking on the image below, but be aware it is quite large, 3.7MB. As you can see, it also includes the log-scale universe I made last month.

Finally, I have made more parameters available interactively via the integrated form, the size formulae for stars and DSOs, as well as the Milky Way color and opacity. Next up are more style settings.

See some more d3-celestial examples here, play with it here or check out the documentation and/or fork/download the source from the GitHub repository.

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