It has been a while since I mentioned Virtual Sky. Development hasn't stopped. In fact, since my last post about it in April last year, it has gone from version 0.3.4 to 0.3.17. Over that time I've added new features and tweaked the code to speed it up. Amongst more recent features are:
- Constellation boundaries can be shown. The boundaries were defined by the IAU in the B1875.0 coordinate system (FK1). By default this is turned off. You can specify this in the URL with
constellationboundaries=true - Star 'sizes' can be scaled. Each star is shown by a circle with a size relating to the magnitude (with some attenuation for the atmosphere if it is turned on). This new setting allows you to scale up the sizes of all the circles. You can specify this in the URL with
scalestars=3 - Meteor shower can be shown. The radiants (the apparent origin) of meteor showers will be shown at the appropriate times of year. This is turned off by default. You can specify this in the URL with
meteorshowers=true - Spanish language. If your browser is set up to prefer web pages in Spanish, the interface will be in Spanish. You can also specify this in the URL with
lang=es. - Galactic coordinates grid lines. You can specify this in the URL with
gridlines_gal=true.
If you are using the embeddable version of Virtual Sky then all these updates are already available to you. If you're using a local copy of the code make sure you keep up to date by getting the latest version from Github.