Mode for naked eye observation (Wishlist item)

[R Rieffel]

I was hoping for a simple toggle switch to allow only AND all stars with a certain magnitude or brighter to be shown. This would have Stellarium follow more closely with what we see with our naked eyes.

I understand one of Stellarium's goals is to help those with telescopes and binoculars identify the distant stars and planets. But, I can also see the usefulness of such an option for those without a telescope or even binoculars. Long story short, I spent 2 years in Africa teaching at a school. As a side project, I introduced them to astronomy, but we had no telescope or binoculars. The issue was that the slightest bit of zooming in and out within Stellarium added or subtracted the number of stars to the Stellarium sky, and caused it to differ from what we could see with our naked eye. It would have been much easier to compare the sky we saw above our heads to Stellarium if we had a "naked eye mode". Working with the absolute and relative scale settings helps a little bit to get the right amount of stars only at a certain zoom level. I also tried my best to see if there was a way I could manually limit the stars myself, but I failed. (If there is a way to do it, feel free to let me know.)

I know you all are busy, but just a thought.

[Alexander Wolf (alexwolf)]

Diff: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~stellarium/stellarium/trunk/revision/5867