Alt az of comets

[Ron Macnaughton]

I'm a newbie to this group.

I've been working on resources for school astronomy clubs.  They can stimulate many young people who are fascinated by the cosmos.  I some cases,  membership has inspired young people to aspire for a STEM career.

The website has hundreds of ideas for secondary and also for elementary school clubs. It is close to being ready.  Some is already online at astroschoolclub.ca.  I'd be grateful if people could spend a minute to try it and improve the SEO rating. 

I had made a webpage with brief instructions for  Stellarium with suggestions that a club meeting could be about your program showing students how to use your program.    Students could download it in advance.     After showing them how to navigate,  then the students answer a series of questions such as "in which direction do you look for Saturn at 11 pm tonight".  

I made that before the Stellarium format changes and have to redo it.  I notice each star has the RA & dec as well as the altitude and azimuth.  For some reason for solar system objects the alt/az is not given.

There was another webpage on the schoolclubs website of finding comets which are typically against the glow of dusk or dawn.  My suggested way to find one is the get the alt and az and use a compass to find the area of sky to look at with binoculars.  

To me, any smart phone could easily calculate that.  Was it left off as a feature for paid versions?  That prevents students without well off parents to get that critical information.  

If anyone managing the program is reading this,  could you please explain perhaps an easy way to get the most important information about an object for budding astronomers?  Or could that feature be added?  

Thank  you.

Ron Macnaughton

[Georg Zotti]

Hi! Unfortunately it is not clear which of the 3 programs named "Stellarium" you are complaining about, and which format change affects you. I can only write for Stellarium Desktop which is the only version we can discuss extensively here.

 Every object, when selected, will reveal RA/dec (J2000.0 and "of date"), ecliptical, azimuthal, galactic and supergalactic coordinates, hour angle, and most other data users may be interested in.  

New comets must be added with the Solar System Editor plugin. But from your mentioning of smart phones you may be writing about the smart phone version. This has its own support channel and forum noted in its "about" menu. 

GZ