Re: Drawing constellations?

From: fisher3950 (fisherka_at_csolutions.net)
Date: 06/18/04 

Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 23:44:21 -0600

"Wolfram Sang" <wolfram@iswi.org> asked in message news:cajtpr$lo7$1@piggy.rz.tu-ilmenau.de...
> For a small university project, I am working on a VRML-representation of
> the starry sky. So, I converted the Bright Star Catalog to a PointSet
> with different intensities. Now I'd like to draw lines to show
> constellations.

As others have noted, other astronomical software packages have done this. The best freeware 3-D VRML type program is Celestia.

If you decide to proceed on your own, You might want to check to see if Celestia includes an editable datafile for the constellation
stick figures. As to the constellation stick figures, I do not know of any publically distributed files.

As to the constellation boundaries, the International Astronomical Union ( www.iau.org ) establishes those. The Simbad server
distributes the data files:

Constellation boundary data

http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/Cat?VI/49

http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/Cat?VI/42

- fisher3950