I hope that constellations can be grouped.

[sunshuwei]

I look forward to the ability to freely categorize constellations in the creation of sky culture. Each group can freely include certain constellations, and users can choose to display only a specific group of constellations or all constellations. For example, constellations in modern sky culture can be classified by origin into Greek constellations, Bayer constellations, Hevelius constellations, and Lacaille constellations, or by location into northern constellations, zodiacal constellations, and southern constellations.

For Chinese, Japanese, and Korean sky cultures, constellations can be grouped by origin into Gan De constellations, Shi Shen constellations, and Wuxian constellations (in ancient Chinese star maps, they were often distinguished by dots of three different colors). The twenty-eight main constellations of the "Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions" can be displayed as a separate group. Alternatively, constellations can be grouped according to the Four Symbols to show those belonging to a specific symbol, or according to the "Three Enclosures and Twenty-Eight Mansions" to show constellations within a enclosure or mansion.

For some ethnic groups, their constellations may vary by region or tribe. Thus, when creating constellations for a particular ethnic group or civilization, they can be grouped by different regions. Even the same constellation may have different names among different tribes or regions within the same ethnic group, and these names can be assigned separately according to tribe or region. As far as I know, the Yi ethnic group in China has at least two different constellations based on their living areas, and the constellations of the Mongolian and Tibetan ethnic groups also exhibit such regional variations. The sky culture of Siberia in Russia seems to be a collection of constellations from different ethnic groups or tribes, and it would be great if they could be distinguished by ethnicity or tribe.

Here are some examples of Korean and Chinese star maps from modern book

[gzotti]

We had no plans in our discussion of skycultures 2.0 to do that and even explicitly decided against color groups for stick figures, as it just gets too confusing for too little benefit, even though I also see applications for this. But to add an all-sky image (without any interaction), you could create, tonight, an all-sky image and present this as HiPS survey. This lies behind the stars but would cover the Milky Way. So, maybe start with an all-sky screenshot on date 2000/01/01 without atmosphere, stars and planets, one with stars, one with modern IAU borders, one with Chinese constellations/lunar mansions, one with plain equatorial grid, ..., combine in a layered image editor, then plot your content areas in a new layer, and switch off layers with stars, IAU borders and other lines before exporting. Then use the HiPS tools in this repo to convert to the right format, and configure local HiPS (chapter 9) or even, presumably, stellarium.org could also host these.

Another idea would be to add an optional all-sky texture to the skyculture, just like MilkyWay and Zodiacal Light. But this needs more coding.

[github-actions[bot]]

Hello @sunshuwei!

Thank you for this suggestion.

[sunshuwei]

We had no plans in our discussion of skycultures 2.0 to do that and even explicitly decided against color groups for stick figures, as it just gets too confusing for too little benefit, even though I also see applications for this. But to add an all-sky image (without any interaction), you could create, tonight, an all-sky image and present this as HiPS survey. This lies behind the stars but would cover the Milky Way. So, maybe start with an all-sky screenshot on date 2000/01/01 without atmosphere, stars and planets, one with stars, one with modern IAU borders, one with Chinese constellations/lunar mansions, one with plain equatorial grid, ..., combine in a layered image editor, then plot your content areas in a new layer, and switch off layers with stars, IAU borders and other lines before exporting. Then use the HiPS tools in this repo to convert to the right format, and configure local HiPS (chapter 9) or even, presumably, stellarium.org could also host these.

Another idea would be to add an optional all-sky texture to the skyculture, just like MilkyWay and Zodiacal Light. But this needs more coding.

You're right—lines and text in different colors can indeed look messy.