Stellarium
Enhance Custom Markers
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Custom markers are inconvenient to use, as they currently only support a fixed style and cannot be renamed.
Describe the solution you'd like This was implemented by @Kuanzin0562. Can the official Stellarium enhance the custom marker feature to achieve a similar effect?
Describe alternatives you've considered A clear and concise description of any alternative solutions or features you've considered.
Additional context Add any other context or screenshots about the feature request here.
This rather looks like "show user object catalog", a long-time wish... If this should mark a set of existing catalog stars at current coordinates, try defining as NavigationalStars. If it comes with own coordinates, currently a script could be developed that might show named markers.
If @Kuanzin0562 is willing to share his code, we always welcome pull requests (documentation and code comments must be English, though)
I will later commit my modified code to my forked repository (URL: Kuanzin0562/stellarium). Since I'm just a university student with limited coding skills, I used AI large language models to assist with the programming, so the code definitely doesn't meet your standards. Also, as you mentioned, some comments are in Chinese. I will review these and keep both the translated English comments and the original Chinese comments (since this repository link is also being shared in Chinese online communities).
I will add a detailed README to my repository later to explain my modifications.
The main feature I added is the ability to read external JSON coordinate data files and visualize them in Stellarium, primarily utilizing the F3 coordinate search function. All label styles, sizes, colors, and other properties need to be defined in the JSON files.
My main purpose for creating this feature is to research ancient Chinese stellar observation data. However, China has a unique equatorial coordinate system that isn't available in Stellarium, so I added coordinate conversion functions specifically for transforming Chinese coordinates to modern coordinate systems. In the starcatalog folder of my repository, you'll find JSON data files that can be used for visualization, which you can refer to.
Additionally, the repository contains some stycultures that I created or modified. Most of these are currently works in progress. I should mention that many of these were made for research purposes or even just for fun. Only the following ones I consider valuable and believe should potentially be added to Stellarium in the future: chinese_yi, chinese_xianglin, chinese_lingtai, japanese_tenmon_seizou, korean_cheonsang, and manchu. I will continue to refine and translate these. #4409.
Interesting! If this visualizes custom object lists with configurable colors and markers, it may be what other users have also wanted for a long time. Maybe we can take at least a few parts (acknowledged, of course) or at least ideas.
General question: Should custom catalogs become optional components of skycultures?
I have pushed the changes related to custom object modifications to my repository. The functionality you might be interested in is in SearchDialog.cpp, which reads and processes coordinate data, along with modifications to the CustomObject class. Currently, I've only committed the code I consider necessary to the repository. I haven't run tests yet, and the modifications might be incomplete or non-functional—I will conduct test runs later. (For example, some newly added identifier icons need to be uploaded, but I haven't updated them yet, which may cause visualization failures.)
For the format of the JSON files being read, please refer to SearchDialog.cpp and the data in the starcatalog folder in my repository. I may not have time to write a comprehensive README explanation file at the moment. Although the JSON filenames and star names are in Chinese, you should be able to understand the file structure. Among them, "灵台仪象志星表数据(黄道座标修正版)1672.json" and "灵台仪象志星表数据(星名简化版)1673.json" use the modern ecliptic coordinate system, while the others use an ancient Chinese equatorial coordinate system.
Regarding the relationship between historical star catalogs and sky cultures, I don't think it's necessary to link them at this stage. To my knowledge, the civilizations that conducted extensive stellar observations in history were likely limited to the West, the Arab world, and East Asia, and these three exchanged data through cultural interactions. If sky cultures based on specific star catalogs are created in the future, this aspect could be considered then.
Interesting! If this visualizes custom object lists with configurable colors and markers, it may be what other users have also wanted for a long time. Maybe we can take at least a few parts (acknowledged, of course) or at least ideas.
General question: Should custom catalogs become optional components of skycultures?
Many of these points are not on stars but in blank areas. Due to the lack of precision in ancient observations, coordinate errors inevitably caused them to fall in the empty regions near the target stars.
Yes, now it's clear that here own coordinates should be displayed. This is what user object lists should do. Now the question is, should such user lists become part of skycultures or remain separate? Remaining separate would of course allow using several lists with one SC, which may be better.