Related: I found this draft email I had (to be sent to the Stellarium developer mailing list) from 2015 (I have no idea why I never sent it, the draft looks pretty complete). It's about including planets (solar system bodies) too in Stellarium "sky culture", rather than only stars. This feature may already exist in Stellarium by now, just including the draft email below in case it's of any help/interest and someone wants to pursue both. (I haven't looked into Stellarium again recently to see whether it's still relevant.)
Hi,
Firstly, Stellarium is wonderful, so thanks to the developers and everyone who's worked on it.
I have a question/request: the sky culture feature is nice, and it helps to see the names of the sky objects in another culture. I guess that in any old culture, even if there aren't many names for individual stars, there are likely to be names for constellations, and even more likely, for *planets* (and sun and moon), because they are the most distinctive objects in the sky, over a period of time. So it would be nice if Stellarium allowed the "sky culture" data to include names of planets as well, in addition to (as it currently does) star names and constellation names.
Just as a proof-of-concept, here are the names of some major "planets" (those the days of the week are named after) in a few cultures. The Indian ones are available from many sources, and the other three are from
http://nineplanets.org/days.html There were also a few "Maori" names in skycultures/maori/references.txt in the Stellarium directory, so I included that as well.
(Formatted for fixed-width font.)
+-------+-----+--------+-------------+------------+---------+----------+----------------+----------+------------+
|Western| |Sun |Moon |Mars |Mercury |Jupiter |Venus |Saturn |Earth |
+-------+-----+--------+-------------+------------+---------+----------+----------------+----------+------------+
|Indian | |Sūrya |Soma/Chandra |Mangala |Budha |Guru |Shukra |Shani |Bhūmi |
+-------+-----+--------+-------------+------------+---------+----------+----------------+----------+------------+
|Korean | |Taeyang |Dal |Hwasung |Soosung |Moksung |Kumsung |Tosung |Jeegoo |
+-------+-----+--------+-------------+------------+---------+----------+----------------+----------+------------+
|Chinese| |Taiyang |Yueqiu |Huoxing |Shuixing |Muxing |Jinxing |Tuxing |Diqiu |
+-------+-----+--------+-------------+------------+---------+----------+----------------+----------+------------+
|Maori | |Rā |Marama |Tūmatauenga |Apārangi |Pareārau |Meretūahiahi |Rongo |Papatuānuku |
+-------+-----+--------+-------------+------------+---------+----------+----------------+----------+------------+
|Maori | |Te Ra |Te Marama |Rangiwhenua |Takero |Perearau1 |Tawera/Meremere |Perearau2 |Papa |
+-------+-----+--------+-------------+------------+---------+----------+----------------+----------+------------+
And here's the IRC conversation from 23rd January. :-)
[20:36] svat: hi, is it possible to include the planets (and sun and moon) in the sky cultures? Different cultures/starlores are likely to have different names for these...
[20:45] daggerstab: svat: Solar System bodies are already included in translations. Adding them to sky cultures would be tricky. Can you point to a concrete example where that would be necessary?
[20:46] daggerstab: Oh, and the information on sky cultures in Stellarium is not terribly well verified.
[20:46] svat: daggerstab: well, someone may be comfortable with English as the language of the application, but just want to see the names in another culture...
[20:46] svat: daggerstab: yes, the latter I know :)
[20:49] svat: daggerstab: for instance, if I want to see the Maori name for the Moon, there isn't really a language I can pick. It seems that names of solar system bodies belong with the sky cultures rather than translation language, IMHO.
[21:06] svat: daggerstab: or, for a more concrete example: India has about two dozen major languages, the names of the planets are (more or less) the same in each, translations in most of these languages barely exist at best, and adding the names to a sky culture would take care of all of them. :-)
[21:19] alexwolf: svat: in current implementation of code for big solar system bodies add support of misc names not simple
[21:21] svat: alexwolf: hmm, ok, thanks. (But in principle the idea is an acceptable one, right? Even if it's hard to do in practice.)
[21:21] alexwolf: it nice idea :)
[21:23] alexwolf: svat: do you can write names of big solar system bodies from different cultures?
[21:24] svat: alexwolf: well, I hope the information exists on the net and I can find it :) It shouldn't be _too_ hard, speaking optimistically.
[21:26] alexwolf: svat: if you find names for 5 different cultures, then we trying add it ;)
[21:26] svat: alexwolf: deal! :)