Observatory Stellarium Landscape

David Davies has photographed and constructed a panoramic landscape image that can be used in the Stellarium planetarium program. When loaded as the landscape it will show the area around our LX200R telescope in our observatory at Standalone Farm. Stellarium is a free program available for Windows and Mac OS X.

Instructions for Windows

  • You need three files for the Windows version of Stellarium. The files are compressed in a zip file so you will need a zip/unzip program (many free ones are available on the web). Click this link to download the zip file containing the three files required and unzip it.
  • On your C: drive go to ‘program files’ folder and find the ‘Stellarium’ folder. This should contain a folder called ‘landscapes’. Create a folder called ‘Standalone Farm’ in the ‘landscapes’ folder.
  • Copy the three files into the ‘../landscapes/Standalone Farm’ folder.
  • Start Stellarium and go to the ‘Sky and viewing options’ icon (left side of the screen).
  • In the ‘View’ dialogue box displayed click on landscapes. Select Standalone Farm and the image should load onto the screen.
  • If you like you can set Standalone Farm as the default for your Stellarium background by using ‘options’ in the ‘View’ dialogue box. You can change the default back to a different landscape in the same way any time you like.

Instructions for Mac OS X

  • Right click this link to download the zip file containing the three files required. Do not unzip it.
  • Start Stellarium and go to the ‘Sky and Viewing Options window’ icon (left side of the screen).
  • In the ‘View’ dialogue box displayed click on the ‘Landscape’ tab. Click on the ‘Add/Remove landscape…’ button. Click on the ‘Install a new landscape from a zip archive…’ button and select Standalone_farm.zip from the location you downloaded it to. The image should now load onto the screen.
  • The original Standalone_farm.zip file can now be deleted if you wish.
  • If you like you can set Standalone Farm as the default for your Stellarium background by ticking the ‘Use this landscape as default’ box. You can change the default back to a different landscape in the same way any time you like.

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