Starplot - New Version 🎉
Starplot v0.16 🎉
GitHub / PyPi / starplot.dev
Adds support for gradient backgrounds - HUGE thanks to Elanor (@Niphredil123) 🙌 ⭐
Refactors projections, allowing you to change central RA/DEC
Adds equidistant and oblique Mercator projections
Introduces an Observer model to encapsulate a time and place
Makes zenith plots a separate plot type
Adds a function for plotting a star magnitude scale (experimental, feedback wanted!)
Adds more location options for legends and allows separate X/Y padding
Adds a settings class for managing global settings
Adds a global setting for how text is rendered in SVG exports
Adds more options for plotting gridlines on horizon plots (you can now label altitude)
Adds a
common_namesfield to deep sky objectsAdds more public properties to plots (including
magnitude_rangeandalt/azfor optic plots)Adds a
BLUE_NIGHTstyle extension, which is a great alternative to the dark grayscale theme if you want colored markers
🚨 This version includes multiple breaking changes, so I created a short migration guide that’ll help you see what’s changed.
🚀 Coming Soon
In the next version of Starplot, v0.17, we plan to add support for:
Custom star catalogs
Custom sky cultures (constellations, star names)
🙋 Help Wanted
Want to help make Starplot better? Here are a few things we need help with right now:
Sources for various sky cultures (ideally constellation lines defined by the HIP id of the stars)
How to calculate BV color index from Gaia EDR3 data
Read more about contributing here ↗️
✨ Showcase
Starplot was recently used to create a few star charts at a star party in China (thanks to @hongming for sharing!):
Thunkii is working on plots that show the paths of various comets and posting them on Wikipedia. Here’s one of 3I/ATLAS:
Have you created something using Starplot?
If you've used Starplot for a research paper, book, public outreach, or anything really (e.g. an app), we'd love to hear about it and share it in our next newsletter. Please reply to this email or chat with us on Discord to tell us more about your project.
💙 Show your support for Starplot
All Sky Map - made with Starplot!
Thanks for reading, and happy starplotting!
Steve Berardi