Software: stars from Earth and filter only nearby stars...

[PDN777]

Hi,

Does anyone know of software (Mac OS X or Windows 10, preferably free or low-cost) which

1) allows the user to view the starry sky from Earth; and

2) allows the user to filter so that only near-by stars are shown (let's say < 100 LY from earth).

FYI Stellarium does not do this.

Thanks!

--PDN

[The Happy Parrot]

Seems like most apps let you filter stars by magnitude but not by distance? At least not Calsky and Starry Nights Basic. Starry Nights Pro lets you filter stars by distance but it's not free. Have you looked at the latest version of Cartes du Ciel v4.2?

[Ruud]

Celestia is free. Your question has been asked in the Celestia Forum. Maybe there's an answer there:

https://celestia.space/forum/viewtopic. ... mxXggd_wvw

Or google for celestia filter by distance

[scrufy]

Also if you have an iPad, iPhone, or android tab or phone Celestrons skyportal is free and you can set magnitude.

[TCampbell]

Starry Night "Pro" and "Pro Plus" do this (Starry Night "Enthusiast" edition does not). I use Starry Night Pro Plus 8. It's one of the ways you can determine which stars are members of an open cluster (e.g. find one star, check it's distance, then filter for stars within say... ±10 light years. Also you can turn on the "proper motion vectors" ... these are little vector (sticks) that show the direction the star is moving over time and the longer the vector, the faster it is moving. Stars at roughly the same distance and having the same vector are likely members of the same cluster.

Pro and Pro Plus editions aren't free. Pro is about $75. Pro Plus is about $125. (A lot less than I paid for it) But it's fantastic software.

In addition to working like desktop planetarium software (e.g. like Stellarium), Starry Night is a "simulation engine" and it lets you do some pretty amazing things that most other programs can't do.