Hi Larry, thanks for watching. It was fun playing around with TOPCAT and the Gaia data, on various objects. On the same night I was observing the globular clusters. I had a look at M11, one of my favourite clusters, set in a rich star field of the Milky Way. I believe, I managed to pull out its member stars by using TOPCAT to plot the proper motion (RA and Dec). A subset of stars clustered together on the graph. I want to go back and combine that data with StarHorse2 distance data, to get a 3D perspective on the cluster. Absolutely a waste of time, but it is just fun to explore the local universe with these amazing tools and datasets. Many thanks. Pete
@@Xio2011 M11 is a beauty, and one of my favorites too. Overall I think the globulars and open clusters are too easily dismissed by modern amateurs. I'm just getting back into the hobby after 40 years (sigh) away from it. Those clusters were my favorites as I could see them; I wasn't taking photos. Having the data available and doing some personal science with it is pretty cool.
Hi James, sorry about that. 😊 Those big catalogues do take up a lot of space. Gaia DR3 for TheSky and SkyChart, UCAC4 for AstroPlanner and the DSS images for Stellarium takes up 220GB of disk space! Aladin, helps, by downloading on demand.
Hi Larry, I'm on a boat right now. Which I suppose is no surprise, as I live on an Island! 😄 I'm intrigued. Does NINA have 3D maps of globular clusters, or does it support Gaia? I'm not that familiar with NINA, as I have always used SharpCap for EAA. Have fun. Pete
I use the "Offline Sky Map" and imported some background maps which gives the display something half resembling what Stellarium does. You can select "Slew and center" to point at your object (with plate solving to get it just right) and the "Determine rotation from camera" to show you how it will be framed. It makes life so easy :-)
@larryfine4719 Hi Larry, that sounds good. Thank you for the information. There are some amazing software tools available for our hobby. Have fun. Pete
