Stellarium improves

I've been using the newest version (0.10.5) of Stellarium for about a week now and, in general, I'm happy.

When the preceding versions (0.10.3 and 0.10.4) were released, I immediately noted a flurry of messages from users and the developers. It seemed some were having extreme problems with the astronomy planetarium application. I briefly tested the program and encountered issues myself. The big one was frame rates. I rolled back to 0.10.2 which was, for me, quite stable and quick. I cautioned others...

Happily, it looks like a lot of the kinks have been worked out with this latest release. The web site reports, in fact, that 0.10.5 resolved over 30 bugs! That's commendable work by the development team.

All that said, one must remember, we're still in beta stage... There be dragons.

While I'm irked by the font display problems, I am excited by some of the new and improved capabilities and features in the software.

I think my favourite so far must be the ability to shut off the interface! Pressing the (Windows) keyboard short Ctrl+t causes the little information bar at the bottom and object information text at the top-left to disappear. And suddenly you're looking at a view that is eerily real. Stellarium already receives accolades for realistic sky presentation. This just kicks it up a notch.

It's not a new feature in the application that you could show planet paths. I used this in the past, with the early 0.9.x version, for demos and lectures. Very handy for checking where a wanderer will be over the next few days, weeks, or months. Now, it's quick and easy to use: press Shift+t to toggle on or off. Then, you start moving forward or backward in time. Of course, for the more profound effect, you'll want to move by sidereal time...

Speaking of time, you'll want to keep in mind the handy new keyboard shortcut to stop it. Stop time. Yep. Press the 7 key. Done. Frozen. Don't you wish you could do that in the real world?! This addition simplifies the process; in the past, you had to set the time rate to normal (k) and then hit the decrease time (j) once. Less fiddling is good.

The planet orbits display appears to be improved as well. This may have changed in 0.10.4, I'm not sure, I didn't play long enough. Presently, if you activate the orbit feature, a red path will appear on the display for the selected planet. Tip: If you click the Sun, all the orbits appear. Nicely done.

Another pleasing little change is the ability to toggle the meridian line, all by itself. I.e. without the entire azimuthal grid. It's a strange keyboard shortcut, is all: semicolon (;). Useful when timing when to view objects at their maximum elevation. Or when tracking down daytime planets.

Miss the horizon line though.

Still lovin' the other improvements from before, like the angle measure and oculars plug-ins, the compass marks, etc. Tip: with the ocular plug-in installed and activated on boot, you can use Ctrl+b to display Telrad circles. Very nice. Super handy for gauge size and distance.

A final observation. I don't know how they're doing it but the start-up and shutdown times are amazing. And a fringe benefit to the lightning start-up is no more annoying bright busy distracting garage graphical gobbledygook as this amazing piece of software launches.