Planisphere

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Planisphere (ver. 23.06)

Planisphere is a simple program with a graphical interface with the aim of showing, for a given location and time, all the naked-eye visible sky with the stars, Sun, Moon, and planets brighter than a given magnitude. The program uses the Dislin graphic library (https://www.dislin.de) for the graphical interface and plot.

Requisites

• Linux system,

• Dislin plotting library (https://www.dislin.de),

• Fortran 90 compiler (gfortran is assumed).

Distribution file

The distribution file planisphere.tgz contains the following files:

• README.txt            (installation and usage)

• planisphere.f90       (source file)

•  planis.conf           (configuration file)

•  planis.conf.save      (backup of the configuration file)

•  observer.dat          (observer's latitude and longitude)

•  bright_stars.dat      (Bright Stars Catalog) 

•  milkyway_pieces.dat   (Milky Way background emission data) 

•  diffuse.dat           (diffuse objects catalog)

•  asterisms.dat         (constellation asterisms data)

•  consbound_20.dat      (constellation boundaries data)

• planis_help.txt       (planisphere help file)

• planis_eng.txt        (planisphere English language file)

• planis_cat.txt        (planisphere Catalan language file)

• planis_esp.txt        (planisphere Spanish language file)

• planis_fr.txt         (planisphere French language file)

• planis_changes.txt    (planisphere log of versions and changes)

• dislin.mod            (dislin graphic module)

• make_distribution     (macro to create the distribution file)

Installation

Download the distribution file planisphere.tgz  in the installation directory you like (for example $HOME/planis), untar the file and compile the source file:

$ tar -xzvf planisphere.tgz

$ gfortran planisphere.f90 -o planisphere -l dislin

Edit the file observer.dat and put the observer's latitude and longitude [degrees].

Additionally, if you want to be able to run planisphere from any location in your computer, you have to define the environment variable  PLANIS_DIR  pointing to your installation directory. This can be done by adding to your  .bashrc  file the lines

#planisphere

export PLANIS_DIR=$HOME/planis

and making a symbolic link to planisphere from a directory in your path (for example $HOME/bin)

$ cd $HOME/bin

$ ln -s $HOME/planis/planisphere .

Usage

  $ planisphere [-h|-o <obs_file>|-l <lang>]

Options

-h:   Shows a message showing usage and options, and quits.

-o <obs_file>:  Selection of an alternative observer location file instead of observer.dat.

-l <lang>:   Selection of language. <lang> can be one of eng, cat, esp, fr.

The keywords and labels used by planisphere are stored in text files planis_eng.txt, planis_cat.txt, . . . etc. Any new language <lang> can be easily added by copying planis_eng.txt  to a new file   planis_<lang>.txt and translating its content line by line.

Running

The command opens a window displaying the current date and time, plot options, and an empty plot window (see below). 

To begin, press the "REDRAW" button at the bottom of the 2nd column.

• The two "Reset" buttons update the current epoch or reset the location to that given in the file observer.dat.

• The stars shown are those of the Bright Stars Catalog (J2000 coordinates) (http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/cat/V/50)  down to the limiting magnitude selected. The Sun, the Moon and its phase, and the planets brighter than the limiting magnitude are shown.

• Optionally, the plot can show (see figure below):

  • Milky Way background emission (default),

  • Identification of the planets and the anti-solar position,

  • Grid of RA-Dec coordinates  (the equator and prime meridian are shown as a solid line),

  • Grid of altazimuth coordinates,

  • Plane of the ecliptic and the Aries point,

  • Milky Way plane and the galactic-center position,

  • Constellation asterisms,

  • Constellation boundaries (J2000 coordinates) and names   (Davenhall, A. C.; Leggett, S. K. 1997, A Catalogue of Constellation Boundary Data (https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=VI/49).

• To identify a celestial object, press the button "Identify sky object" and left-click on the object. To quit the identify mode, click the mouse right button or left-click outside the sky circle (below the horizon).

• You can fine-tune the initial plotting options, colors, and line styles by editing the configuration file planis.conf. You can undo any changes and return to the default configuration by overwriting planis.conf with the backup file planis.conf.save.