The DOGULEAN Planetarium 3.5.0

Quick Reference

Click the button above to toggle between "Basic" and "Advanced".

"Basic" describes only the items on the Control Panel that are visible by default. "Advanced" includes the items that appear when you click the "+" buttons beside the section headings on the Control Panel.

The instructions below assume that you have a standard 3-button mouse (two buttons and a mouse wheel) or a touch screen. If that is not what you have, there is a table of equivalents below, under Pointers.

Accessing the Control Panel

The things you are likely to do most can be controlled by clicking or dragging on the screen – for those you will not need to use the control panel..

Control Panel
Show	Double right mouse click or Long touch (1 sec.), not touching any planet or moon or Left mouse click or touch on "Control" tab at middle left or Press Esc key.
Hide	"Hide" button on Control Panel or Double right mouse click or Long touch (1 sec.), not touching any planet or moon or Press Esc key.
Restore All Defaults	Reset all control settings to their original values, except for those under "Options".
Expand or shorten a section	Click on +/− button.
Scroll up or down	Left mouse or one-finger drag up or down on Control Panel.

Location

Your Location consists of:

A Home Planet.
Your Altitude (distance from Home Planet's surface), as a number of radii of the planet. Planets are not perfectly round, so this is an average radius.
The point on the planet below you, given by its longitude and latitude.

Location	Control Panel	Mouse or Touch	Comments
Home Planet or Moon	"Home" drop menu on control panel. Will contain all planets plus moons of current planet.		Sun will stay in the same position (on or off screen) and new Home Planet will be in same position (on or off screen) as the old Home Planet was. Use the mouse wheel or touch to scroll the menu.
Home Planet or Moon		Click or touch for 1.5 sec. on another planet or moon ("jaunting").	Jaunting will take you along the line to the planet or moon that you click on. Ideally you should end up at a point the same distance above the surface of new planet as you were above this surface of the old one, but may be modified so you do not end up too close to or far from the new planet. You will jaunt to the first planet or moon listed in the info bar, unless it is your home planet. By default, you will jaunting at a speed that depends on your planets or moons of origin and destination – so you can enjoy the trip without it taking too long. There is an advanced setting that gives you some control of your travel speed. To help avoid unintentional jaunting, a warning will appear 1 second before the jaunt starts. If you don't want to jaunt, lift your finger, release the mouse button, or move the mouse. A jaunt in progress will be canceled if you change planets on the control panel, start a new jaunt by clicking on another destination planet, or if you reload the planetarium web page. This will leave you where you were when you canceled the jaunt.
Floating or fixed position	"Floating"/"Fixed" toggle button.		"Fixed" means you stay over the same point on the planet as it turns. "Floating" means that you don't go around with the planet as it turns. You still go with it as it orbits the Sun. When "floating", your longitude will change continuously as time changes.
Longitude and latitude		Left mouse or one-finger drag on home planet. Set altitude to at least 0.1 first, or not much will happen.	Longitude and latitude are those of point below you on your home planet. They are shown (Long. and Lat.) beside the Location heading.
Altitude	Slider or number box. The number box has up and down arrows when selected.	Turn mouse wheel when info bar listing home planet appears.	Distance from Home Planet's center. Unit is Home Planet's radius.
Longitude and Latitude	Sliders and number boxes		More accurate for setting location on planet than dragging on the planet. Useful for stargazing if you want to view the sky from a specific place that is not where you are.
Location Decimals	Number box		Number of decimal places shown in the number boxes under Location.
Jaunt speed	Drop menu		Average speed during a jaunt. Jaunt speed will be slower near beginning and end, when there may be more to see. "Normal" means: Jaunt speed is usually 0.1c among moons of one mother planet (c = speed of light). We use a higher speed (up to 1.0c) for moons that are distant from their mother planet. 100c between inner planets. 1000c going to or from Uranus or Neptune. Otherwise, 500c going to or from Jupiter or Saturn. "Half", "Double", and "Triple" mean that multiple of normal speed. "Instant" means that jaunting is completed immediately, like ordinary planet change.
Restore Location Defaults	Button		Sets: Home = Earth, Position Mode = Fixed, Altitude = 3.0, Long. = 0.0, Lat. = 0.0, Location Decimals = 1, Jaunt Speed = Normal.
Set From GPS	Button (appears only when home planet is Earth)		Sets current longitude and latitude to that provided by the computer. User must grant permission for Planetarium to receive position information. By default, MS Edge does not set the correct location.

View

The View consists of:

The View Point (point at the center of the planetarium window), given by its Right Ascension (RA) and Declination (Dec. or just D.) – sky versions of longitude and latitude. (The RA and D of a point are relative to your Home Planet. See the Information section.)
Orientation (roll), an angle defining what direction is "up" on the Planetarium screen.
Zoom, the amount everything in the planetarium window is magnified. (The power of the telescope you are looking through.)
What, if anything you are Tracking. If you are tracking something, then as time goes by it stays at the same place on (or off) screen, with its north pole pointing in the same direction.

The trackball is the little grey ball at the upper left corner of the planetarium window.

The large blue dot shows the direction toward our home planet or moon, "down". The greyed out blue dot show the opposite direction, "up".
If you are close to the surface of your planet, turn the blue dot to the bottom of the trackball to find the horizon.
A black dot indicates the direction of the home planet's celestial north pole. A dark grey dot shows the direction of the celestial south pole. Note that if you are looking down at the planet's north pole, then you are looking in the general direction of the celestial south pole.
The small blue dots indicate the directions of our planet's moons, if it has any. If our home planet is the Sun, its "moons" are the planets that orbit it.
The large white dot indicates the direction of our home planet's parent planet. For planets other than the Sun, the parent is the Sun. The Sun has no parent. The light grey dot shows the direction away from the parent planet.
The small white dots show the directions of the parent planet's other moons, the siblings of our home planet.

View	Change on Control Panel	Change with Mouse or Touch	Comments
View Point (Point at center of planetarium window)		Left mouse or one-finger drag anywhere off of home planet and trackball. Left drag on trackball will change it faster. While dragging, a white cross will appear in the middle of it, in case you want to put something there.	Equatorial coordinates of view point are shown on "View" line. RA = "Right Ascension" = sky version of longitude D = Dec = Declination = sky version of latitude
Look At (a planet)	"Look At" drop menu.		Bring selected planet to center of Planetarium window, with its north pole pointing up. The planet you are looking at may be behind your home planet! Use the mouse wheel or touch to scroll the menu.
Track (the stars or a planet)	"Track" drop menu.		Tracking Stars keeps the same view point at the center of the screen as time passes. Tracking a moon or planet or Sun keeps that object at the same point on or off screen. If you change planets using the Planet drop menu on the Control Panel, the tracked planet, not the Sun, will stay in the same place on or off screen. Don‘t forget to set “Track” to “None” when done tracking!! Use the mouse wheel or touch to scroll the menu.
Zoom (Screen Magnification)	Slider and number box	Turn mouse wheel with mouse anywhere off of home planet	Increasing zoom increases screen refresh rate. That causes the Planetarium to use more your computer‘s power.
Roll	Slider and number box	Left-drag the mouse along the very bottom of the Planetarium window.	Roll is an angle defining the direction of "up".
RA, Dec	Sliders and number boxes		RA (Right Ascension) and Dec, or just D, (Declination) are the equatorial coordinates of the point in the sky you are looking at. They are planet specific – the same point will have different coordinates on different planets.
View Decimals	Number box		Number of decimal places shown in the number boxes under View.
Refresh Interval	Number box		Interval between screen refreshed, in milliseconds. This is a base value. Actual time rate is this value / (zoom * time rate).
Restore View Defaults	Button		Sets: Zoom = 1, Elevation = -89, Rotation = 0, Roll = 0, Tracking = None, View Decimals = 1, Can Roll = true. Equatorial coordinates will depend on your Home Planet and Location on that planet.
Can Roll/No Roll	Button		Appears only when you are on or near the surface of a planet. If you set No Roll, the direction “up” from the screen bottom will always point toward the zenith, the point directly overhead. The zenith can go no lower than the center of the screen. If you want to see the part of the sky that is beyond it, drag horizontally. Useful for stargazing.

Date and Time

Date and Time always gives Earth dates and times.

Date and Time	Comments
Time settings	Planetarium Date and Time. It should be obvious how to set most of these. The arrows to the right and left of the months drop menu box will move forward or back through the months.
Use Real Time	Set planetarium date and time from computer's date and time. Does not change the timezone.
Toggle UTC	Switch between timezone as set on computer (local) and UTC/GMT.
Time Rate	Number of seconds of planetarium time that pass for each second of real time
UTC Offset (UTC +)	In case you weant a timezone other than UTC or Local. "Use Real Time" does not change this. If this value is non-zero, "Toggle UTC" will set UTC time.
Clock Running/Stopped	Stopping the clock is useful if you have some setup that must be done at or near a particular time. "Use Real Time" will restart the clock.

Planet Max Magnification

This section mainly covers how much larger planets will appear than they should, in different situations.

There are two reasons why we need to magnify planets so we can see them well.

A planet on a computer screen is nowhere near as bright as a planet in the sky.
At zoom 1, we are cramming a very big piece of sky into the planetarium screen. Zoom 20 would give something more like real size, but then we would not see enough of the sky to make out the constellations.

By default, the magnification settings apply when a planet or moon is far away and there is no zoom. As we approach an object or zoom increases, its magnification is reduced until it reaches 1.0. A negative side effect of changing magnification this way is to reduce the difference in size between nearby and distant objects. If you don't want that, there is a setting under Options that sets magnification to be the value shown. adjusted only for zoom.

If you put the mouse on a planet or moon, the last item in the info bar, such as "(4.3x)", shows how much it is being magnified now, not counting zoom.

Planet Max Magnification	Comments
Planets	All proper planets. Not the Sun or any moons.
Sun/Moon (and sometimes Earth)	This is the maximum magnification for Sun. Earth (Moon) should be magnified this much when it is viewed from the Moon (Earth) without any Zoom. From farther away, Earth magnification will increase to that for planets, if that is bigger.
Other Moons	All moons except Earth's moon.
Sun Bright(ness)	Affects how bright the planets look, not how bright the Sun looks.
Restore Planet Defaults	Set Planet Magnification to 40, Other Moons to 5, Sun/Moon/Earth magnification to 5, Sun Brightness to 2.

Stars

There are settings for star brightness and color intensity. You probably won't want to use them very often, so they are "advanced".

On the surface of the Earth, star colors should be as they appear from Earth. In space stars appear bluer. The Earth's atmosphere absorbs about half of their blue light.

Stars	Comment
Brightness	Increasing this value makes dim stars brighter and bright stars bigger.
Color Level	Intensity of star colors. Try turning it up to 10 to see the most garish colors. At Color Level 1, stars are all white.
Restore Star Defaults	Sets Brightness to 60 and Color Level to 5.

Information

How to get information about what you are seeing.

Points above the planet's equator will have D > 0°. Its north pole will have D = 90°.
The gold line with RA = 0° is the one that contains the point where Earth‘s ecliptic crossed its equator from south to north at about 12 noon UTC on Jan. 1, 2000.

Information	Control Panel	Mouse or Touch	Comments
Lines	Lines button		Planet's ecliptic (plane of its orbit around the Sun) is purple. Equator and lines of RA = 0° and RA = 180° are gold. Other lines of Right Ascension (RA, "sky longitude") and Declination (D or Dec., "sky latitude") are grey Lines of D are spaced by 10°. Lines of RA are spaced by 15° (the angle that the Earth turns in one hour).
Star, Planet, and Constellation Labels	No Labels/All Labels/Planet Labels button.	Double-click cycles through label states.	Star labels are color-coded by constellation. More labels will appear with increasing zoom. Planet labels are green. Moon labels are smaller and greenish. Planet and moon labels decrease in size with distance and increase in size with zoom, but less than proportionally. Planet and moon labels are meant to appear when they are needed. Planet labels should appear when you are too far away to recognize the planet. Moon labels should disappear when the moon can no longer be seen as separate from its planet.
Annotations	Button		Annotations are messages that appear at lower left. There are three levels. NONE – no annotations. WARN – only annotations needed for the user to understand what is happening. For example, there are annotations to tell you when a jaunt has really started and when it ends. ALL ‐ also annotations that tell about mouse events and touches. These useful let let some one watching a video understand what is happening in the planetarium.
Trackball On/Off	Button		Toggles the Trackball at upper left of the planetarium window.
Info Bars	Button		Stars: name or number, constellation, brightness: a) as magnitude – smaller is brighter; negative is possible; b) as intensity – bigger is brighter, adding intensities of several stars gives their total brightness. Planets: name, distance from viewer to planet's surface, in AU (Astronomical Units) or km, how much the planet is magnified compared to distances between planets and moons. 1 AU = average distance of Earth from Sun, about 150 million km or 93 million miles.
Crosshairs	Button		Whether the crosshairs appear in the center of the screen when we drag on it.
Controls Tab	Button		Whether the "Controls" tab is visible in the middle of the left side of the screen. Even if the Controls tab is not visible, it is still there and you can click on it.
Restore Information Defaults	Button		Set Lines, No Labels, Annotations Warn, Trackball ON, Info Bars All, Crosshairs ON, Controls Tab ON.

Options

Options are permanent configuration settings that are not reset by pressing the "All Defaults" button. They are all "advanced" since I think you will not want to change them often.

Options	Comment
Onscreen Controls (Yes/No/Maybe)	"Yes" means the onscreen controls are always visible; "No", never visible; "Maybe" means that they are visible when the Control Panel is hidden.
Label Colors (Equi-spaced/Alternate)	Different color schemes for star and contellation labels. Use the one you prefer.
Jaunt alt. factor	Altitude will not change by more than this factor when you jaunt. That is so your new planet will not be inconveniently small, nor will you be so low that you have to back off a lot to get a good look at it. If this factor is 0, you will stay in the same place when you jaunt – you will just change home planet.
Mag Style	If the style is Gradual, planet magnification will be as described above under Planet Max Magnification, increasing to the designated value with distance from the relevant planet. If the style is Exact, each planet will be magnified as follows when zoom is 1. The Home Planet will never be magnified (magnification 1). Otherwise: The Sun will be magnified by the amount on the Sun or Sun/Moon or Sun/Earth line. If the Home Planet is Earth (Moon), then the Moon (Earth) will be magnified by the amount on that row. (That means that, from the Earth's surface, the Moon looks to be the same size as the Sun.) All other planets, including Earth if neither it nor the Moon is Home Planet, will be magnified by the amount on the Planets line. All moons, except Earth's Moon, will be magnified by the amount on the Other Moons line. The amount by which any of these objects is magnified will be decreased as zoom increases, until the magnification is reduced to 1.
Coord. Style	Home Planet (default): Lines onscreen and coordinates (RA, Decl) as given under View are those relative to the home planet. ICRF: Lines and coordinates are those given by the ICRF standard, i.e. those relative to Earth on at 1200 TDT, Jan. 1, 2000.
Alt. Base	Whether altitude 0 is the Surface (default) or the Center of the Home Planet.
Restore Option Defaults	Set Label Colors to Equi-spaced, Onscreen Controls to Maybe, Jaunt Alt. Factor to 100.0, Mag. Style to Gradual, Coord. Style to Home Planet, Alt. Base to Surface.

Onscreen Controls

When the control panel is closed, onscreen controls may appear at the upper right of the planetarium screen (depending on the Options setting for this). The onscreen controls show the current home planet, buttons for Real Time (same as Use Real Time) and for Fixed or Floating position mode, and date-time components with arrows to adjust those components. These controls work about the same as the equivalent ones on the Control Panel.

The idea of the Offscreen Controls is that they should be just enough to support a beatific meditative state when you close the control panel and go jaunting around the Solar System. Let me know if they are not enough, and say what else you really need.

If you would rather offscreen controls appear always or never, there is a setting for that under Options.

Pointers

Summary of how to use other pointer devices to get the same results as with a three-button mouse.

Three-button mouse	Touch	Buttonless Mouse	Standard Touchpad	Result Produced
Press left button	One-finger touch	Touch left side of mouse	Press down with one finger	To left-drag, move mouse or finger while doing this. With a touchpad, you can press with one finger and drag with another.
Press right button	Long touch (1 sec.) not on a planet or moon	Touch right side of mouse	Press down with two fingers	Open or close Control Panel
Turn mouse wheel	Pinch or spread two fingers	Move a finger along middle of mouse	Glide two fingers toward you or away	Change Altitude or Zoom
Double click	Double touch	Double click	Double click	Cycle star and planet labels
Mouseover star or planet	(Brief!) One-finger touch	Mouseover	Mouseover	Display info bar
Long click on planet (1.5 sec.)	Long one-finger touch (1.5 sec.)	Long click	Long click	Jaunt

Using the Keyboard

Most things can be controlled using the keyboard, as follows.

Open or Close Control Panel	Press Escape key.
Buttons Number Boxes Select Menus	Press Tab until button is highlighted, then press Enter (buttons) or Up and Down Arrows (number input boxes and select menus).
Altitude	Press Tab until main Planetarium window is focused, then press Page Up or Page Down.
View Direction	Press Tab until main Planetarium window is focused, then use arrow keys.
Star, Planet, and Constellation Labels	Focus any element that doesn't take text input and press L.
Change Star Label Color Scheme	Focus any element that doesn't take text input and press C.

The Greek Alphabet

Learn! Astound your friends!

The brighter stars in a constellation have usually been given Greek letters. (These were mostly assigned by Johann Bayer in 1603 and by later astronomers for southern constellations. Not by the ancient Greeks!)

Stars in a given constellation will have letters roughly in order of their brightness.

Α α	Β β	Γ γ	Δ δ	Ε ε	Ζ ζ	Η η	Θ θ	Ι ι	Κ κ	Λ λ
alpha	beta	gamma	delta	epsilon	zeta	eta	theta	iota	kappa	lambda

Μ μ	Ν ν	Ξ ξ	Ο ο	Π π	Ρ ρ	Σ σ	Τ τ	Υ υ	Φ φ	Χ χ	Ψ ψ	Ω ω
mu	nu	xi	omicron	pi	rho	sigma	tau	upsilon	phi	chi	psi	omega

ΔΟΓΟΥΛΗΣ