[APBeta] Star Magnitudes

[Paul Rodman]

On Jan 13, 2009, at 01:06 PM, Anthony Tripodi wrote:

> How was London? I used to go there a couple of times a month with  
> the great Pan Am. We would lay over in the Mayfair. It is one of the  
> greatest cites in the world, and I loved being there.

Spent a week in Bloomsbury, checking out various museums, art  
galleries, etc. It does appear to be the epicentre of the known  
universe (and my home town), but my accommodations where a few feet  
away from a pub, and the windows were single-glazed, so it meant  
wearing earplugs to sleep, esp. on Friday and Saturday nights. Plus a  
fairly high proportion of people smoke, which is unpleasant.

> Well, to business. I have installed 2.0b15 on my Mac Intel Core Duo  
> running OS X.5.6, and am still having problems with the FOV star  
> magnitudes. I have defined two telescopes in the resource pane: one  
> my default 'scope (Tak TOA 130) and the other I use as a finder  
> (StellarVue F-50). All of that data has been checked many times and  
> is correct. Finder 'scope is limited to the 9th mag and my default  
> 'scope is limited to the 12th mag. AP uses the data correctly in  
> that it lists both 'scopes in the various drop down menus and has  
> the correct eyepiece fields when matched to the default 'scope and  
> viewfinder FOV.
>
> Here's what happens when I request a FOV for a particular object.  
> If, for example, I have the Tycho catalog as my star source for the  
> field, all the stars down to the dimmest magnitude are displayed in  
> the field, even though the correct field size is displayed. Thus,  
> even though my finder is limited to the 9th mag, stars to the 13th  
> mag are displayed when I select "finder" in the eyepiece drop down  
> menu. If I limit the magnitude using the slide selector in the FOV  
> pane, all stars dimmer than the 9th mag are pinpoints while stars  
> brighter than the 9th mag are displayed in their correct relative  
> sizes. If I move the slide all the way to the left, all the stars  
> become pinpoints. If I move the slide to the right extreme, all the  
> stars become abnormally large. In either case, all the stars in the  
> Tycho catalog are displayed no matter what their magnitude is.
>
> In preferences > other > star magnitude scale, I have selected and  
> deselected the various radio buttons to no avail. The selections  
> change the FOV display, but do not limit the number of stars  
> displayed.
>
> Perhaps I have set up something wrong?

No. It's a bug.

Paul R.