The Night Sky at Absolute Magnitude
compiled by Phillip Dukes
Download the Night Sky at Absolute Magnitude with Partiview and related data filesAstronomers define absolute magnitude as the visible magnitude of a star as viewed from a distance of 10 parsecs. This application for Partiview and the Digital Universe distributed by the American Museum of Natural History/Hayden Planetarium shows how all the 100,660 catalogued stars in the Digital Universe would look at absolute magnitude. It is helpful to illustrate the distribution of stars in the Milky Way as well as demonstrating the varying brightness of stars.
PC Instructions: Click on Absolute_Magnitude.bat to start the program on a regular single screen, or on Absolute_Magnitude_geowall.bat to start the program on a GeoWall system. You can control which objects turn on at startup by editing the .cf files; at present all objects are turned on.
Linux Instructions: make sure the CSH files are executable ("chmod +x blah.csh") then type "./blah.csh" from the Linux prompt where the Windows instructions say "click on blah.bat".
Navigation Instructions
The trick to navigation is to press a mouse button down, move the mouse, and release the mouse button. Navigation is inertia-based, so whatever you were doing when the mouse button is released continue to happens.- Rotation : left click & hold.
- Zooming: Right click (and hold!) the mouse and move up and down. (If you have a Mac with a one-button mouse, press the option key as you click that button.)
- Stopping motion: click once with the mouse. Don't move the mouse while the mouse button is down.
- Quit: press escape.