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Preparing Graphics with Starry Night

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Welcome again to our monthly newsletter with features on exciting celestial and earth science events, product reviews, tips & tricks, and a monthly sky calendar. We hope you enjoy it!

   

Preparing Graphics with Starry Night

The screen display in Starry Night is primarily designed for viewing on a personal computer. However, many of you use Starry Night to prepare graphics for publication either in print or online, and the screen display is often not optimum for such purposes.

Text

In general the on-screen text in Starry Night is too small for legibility in a printed graphic. Under the Options menu there are controls for adjusting the text font, size, color, and style for each class of object. Starry Night uses different fonts for different classes of objects, but most books and magazines prefer a single font for consistency. For the most legible labels, a clean sans-serif font like Helvetica or Geneva is best. I find I need a font size of 20 or 24 points for legibility in a printed graphic. Bold and bold italic are the best styles. The default selection color (in the Preferences:General dialog), red, seems to get very muddy when printed, so I prefer a lighter color, white or yellow. The dark blue used for constellation labels needs to be lightened.

One of the questions I get asked frequently is, how do you change the size of the direction labels? This is hidden away in the Options pane under Local View:Local Horizon. The letters appear in smallish boxes, so that anything larger than about 16 points gets cut off.

Stars and Planets

For graphics, you need a wider range of star and planet sizes than the default. This can be changed under Preferences:Brightness/Contrast. Slide the right-hand min/max star size slider all the way over to the right. This wreaks havoc with printed output, but gives a nice range of star sizes onscreen. The latest version of Starry Night also lets you do the same for planets, further down in the dialog. Again slide it all the way over to the right.

Lines

The lines for constellation figures, orbits, etc. look fine onscreen but disappear in print. Move the sliders about half way across for starters. Constellation lines are under View:Constellations:Constellation Options.

Orbits and paths are under Options:Orbit/Path Options.

Accentuate the Positive

Things like the Milky Way are pretty subtle onscreen; you need to emphasize them in printed graphics. Options:Stars:Milky Way lets you choose from several different graphical representations of the Milky Way, and the slider lets you increase contrast. I like Wavelength: Visible – High Resolution, and I move the slider about a centimeter (a little less than half an inch) to the right.

Scale

Use File:Export As Image to save your graphic. There are a number of programs available to further manipulate graphics. I’m a cheapskate and use GraphicConverter which came with my Macintosh. This lets me scale the Starry Night images down to the size one editor likes (650 pixels wide for online formatting) and add text beyond what Starry Night offers.

File Format

Starry Night allows graphics to be exported in many different formats. The most detail is preserved in Windows BMP, but the files are large. The commonest format on the internet is JPEG. Programs like GraphicConverter let you easily convert between formats.

Credit

We’re happy to let amateur astronomers use Starry Night freely to produce graphics for club newsletters and web sites, but we do ask that any graphic prepared in Starry Night carry the credit: © Starry Night Software. No matter how creative you’ve been you are still using material on which we hold the copyright, so we insist on this. For commercial use of Starry Night graphics, please contact our office.

Geoff Gaherty
Geoff has been a life-long telescope addict, and is active in many areas of visual observation; he is a moderator of the Yahoo "Talking Telescopes" group.

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Educator's Corner: Asterisms and Constellations

On a recent warm and humid summer night, sky transparency was very poor. Only the brighter stars punched through the water-laden atmosphere but three stars were very prominent. They formed a triangular pattern aptly called the Summer Triangle.

The Summer Triangle is an example of an asterism: a group of stars that form a recognizable pattern or shape. The Big Dipper, the Little Dipper and the Great Square of Pegasus are other examples of asterisms.

Asterisms are often confused with constellations and indeed, in ancient times, constellations were mythological figures, animals or objects that were seen in groupings of stars.

Almost everyone in North America is familiar with the Big Dipper which is part of the figure of the Big Bear, or the constellation of Ursa Major.

The modern constellation of Ursa Major includes all stars within an area defined by the International Astronomical Union in 1930. So the star 24 Ursae Majoris "belongs" to the constellation Ursa Major even though it is not part of the figure of the bear.

Some asterisms such as the Big Dipper, the Sickle of Leo, the teapot of Sagittarius and the Great Square of Pegasus have been known for a long time. All are best appreciated when viewed without optical aid because of their large angular size.

But over the years, people using binoculars and telescopes have come across other striking asterisms and some of these have become well known to amateur astronomers.

Here are some examples.

The Diamond Ring

A tight group of 7th and 8th magnitude stars with Polaris as the "solitaire". Best seen with binoculars in a dark sky or a small telescope with a low power eyepiece showing about a 1° field.

 

 

 

The Coathanger
RA = 19h 25m, Dec = 20° 04'

A group of fifth and sixth magnitude stars in Vulpecula appearing like an upside down coathanger to northern hemisphere observers. Use binoculars for best views.

 

 

 

ET Cluster
RA = 1h 19 m, Dec = 58° 17.5'

This open cluster, also known as NGC 457, is located in Cassiopeia. With a bit of imagination you can make out the figure of ET. (Hint: the two bright stars are ET's eyes). Because of its small size, a telescope is needed to make out this asterism.

 

 

You can find many asterisms in Starry Night. From Options in the menu navigate to View>Constellations and check Labels and Asterisms.

Further Study
What are the two common asterisms found in the constellation Orion? You can observe these on a crisp August predawn sky using binoculars.

Answer to last month's questions
According to starry Night, the Earth reached aphelion on or about May 14, 2011 B.C.

Herb Koller

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Starry Night® File of the Month

Asterisms

Asterisms are groupings of stars within a constellation. See how many you can view from your location!

Pedro Braganca
Education & Content Director
Starry Night® Education

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Constellation in Focus: Hercules

Constellation Map: Hercules

The fifth largest constellation in the sky, Hercules is perhaps most famous because of the Great Hercules Cluster, M13, perhaps the most prominent of globulars visible to northern hemisphere observers.

At least 149 globular clusters in the Milky Way have been discovered, and more than 100 are in the NGC-IC catalog. Their distribution forms a spherical halo, centered on the core of our Milky Way. "Globs" are densely packed balls of stars. Up to two million stars can be found bound together with a radius of no more than 100 light years.

The Great Hercules Cluster is visible to the naked eye at dark sites. The glob is about 14 billion years old and contains more than a million suns.

Because of its proximity to M13, M92 is often overlooked even though it's one of the brighter clusters available to northern viewers. One of Johann Elert Bode's discoveries in 1777, it was rediscovered by Charles Messier in 1781 and has been clocked speeding toward us at 112 km/sec.

NGC 6229 is another globular cluster that's worth a look. Mistaken for a nebula by Herschel in 1787, it was revealed to be a "very crowded cluster" in the mid 1800s.

NGC 6210 is a planetary nebula, a sun not unlike our own in the final stages of its life. It has a very high surface brightness and is a good target for high magnification.

Sean O'Dwyer
Starry Night® Times Editor

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AUG 2011

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Irregular Spiral Galaxy

Irregular Spiral Galaxy done with particle drawing in Starry Night.
   

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Pedro Braganca
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Starry Night® Education

   

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Tips & Tricks
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Scroll Bars

You can configure Starry Night to display scroll bars along the edges of the window by selecting View->Show Scroll Bars from the menu. You can then use these scroll bars in place of the hand to adjust your viewing direction

Pedro Braganca
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Starry Night® Education
   

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Moon Phases

Sat., Aug. 6
7:08 a.m. EDT
First Quarter Moon

The First Quarter Moon rises around 3 p.m., and sets around midnight.

Sat., Aug. 13
2:57 p.m. EDT
Full Moon

The Full Moon of Aug. is known as the Grain Moon. In Algonquian it is known as Sturgeon Moon. Other names are Red Moon, Green Corn Moon, Lightning Moon, and Dog Moon. In Hindi it is known as Narali Poornima or Raksha Bandhan. Its Sinhala (Buddhist) name is Nikini Poya. The Full Moon rises around sunset and sets around sunrise, the only night in the month when the Moon is in the sky all night long. The rest of the month, the Moon spends at least some time in the daytime sky.

Sun., Aug. 21
5:54 p.m. EDT
Last Quarter Moon

The Last or Third Quarter Moon rises around 11 p.m. and sets around 2 p.m. It is most easily seen just after sunrise in the southern sky.

Sun., Aug. 28
11:04 p.m. EDT
New Moon

The Moon is not visible on the date of New Moon because it is too close to the Sun, but can be seen low in the east as a narrow crescent a morning or two before, just before sunrise. It is visible low in the west an evening or two after New Moon.

Observing Highlights

All Month
Evening twilight
Comet Elenin

Comet Elenin will be well placed in evening twilight for observation with binoculars and small telescopes all month. It will rise from 10th magnitude at the beginning of the month to 6th magnitude by the end of the month, moving from Leo into Virgo.
 

Mon., Aug. 1
Twilight

Mercury near the Moon Mercury will be just to the right of the slender crescent Moon at twilight.
 

Fri., Aug. 5
Vesta at opposition

Vesta, the brightest asteroid, reaches opposition in Capricornus on Aug. 5, but will be well placed all month. It will be between magnitudes 5 and 6 all month, making it just visible to the naked eye.
 

Sat., Aug. 6
Morning twilight
Mars visits Messier 35 Just before dawn, Mars and open cluster Messier 35 rise together in the northeast.
 

Sat., Aug. 13
2 a.m. EDT
Perseid meteor shower peaks
The best meteor shower of the year will be dimmed by a bright Moon this time around, but is always worth watching. Look for early shower meteors during the week leading up to the peak. Best viewed after midnight.
 

Mon., Aug. 22
Neptune at opposition

Neptune has just completed its first trip around the Sun since its discovery in 1846. It can be spotted in Aquarius with binoculars and small telescopes.

 

Planets

Mercury is too close to the Sun to be observed this month. Venus is too close to the Sun to be observed this month. Mars is in the eastern sky just before dawn. It moves into Gemini on the 3rd, where it remains the rest of the month. Jupiter rises well after midnight, and then dominates the western sky until dawn. It spends the whole month in the constellation Aries. Saturn is low the evening sky in the constellation Virgo. Uranus is in Pisces all month, visible before dawn. Neptune is in opposition in Aquarius on Aug. 22, visible in binoculars or a small telescope all night long.

Geoff Gaherty

Data for this calendar have been derived from a number of sources including the Observer's Handbook 2011 of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Starry Night® software, and others. Only events with a reasonable possibility for Northern Hemisphere observers, or those events with some other significance, are given. All times shown are U.S. Eastern Time.
   

 

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Written by teachers, for teachers, each unit includes interactive and hands-on activities that will spark your students' curiosity.

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