A Dwingeloo background for Stellarium

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.© CC-BY-4.0 Tammo Jan Dijkema

Stellarium is a great computer planetarium program, also for non-astromers. CAMRAS uses it in the Dwingeloo telescope to show where the telescope is pointing. Unfortunately, none of the default landscapes look anything like the surroundings in Dwingeloo. That's why I made a custom landscape.

I took the photos from the top of the telescope, using it as a 130 tonne rotating tripod (this is why the telescope itself is absent from the picture). The many photos were then stitched together by the open source panorama tool Hugin. I more or less followed this guide for the conversion to a real Stellarium landscape.

Incidentally, the screenshot also shows that the current favorite object of the telescope PSR B0329+54 is often right above the Astron building, highlighting the need for radio quiet at Astron.

Unfortunately, the day I shot the photos it was a bit foggy and there were machines on the road; I intend to make a better version some day. In the meantime, you can install this version 0.1 yourself.

To install the Dwingeloo landscape in your own Stellarium, download it, go to "Sky and viewing options [F4]", and under the tab "Landscapes" choose "Add/remove landscape".