[guide-user] Multiple apertures/colored stars/.BMPs/level 7 button

Paul Schlyter Dec 1, 2001

> Chris, you're right; it's a Good Idea to draw bright stars using
> Tycho data at all levels, dropping back to the lower-quality GSC only if
> necessary. Guide does exactly that, which ensures that the stars are
> shown with consistent magnitudes and positions at all levels. As you
> say, the consistent numbering scheme makes this reasonably simple to do.
>
> It would therefore also be simple to do as you suggest, and show
> a mix of colored stars from Tycho and "plain white" stars from GSC. I
> figured that such a mix would be more annoyance than help, and rigged
> Guide to show "all or nothing"... everything colored by spectral type
> (or B-V, if there's no spectral type available), or shown in plain
> white. Maybe I'll have to re-think that. Or at least provide an option
> for those who don't mind mixing spectrally-colored Tycho with colorless
> GSC stars.

When implementing this "mixed mode" display mode, perhaps you could
choose colors such that one does not confuse "no color info
available" with e.g. "white star" (presumably an A type star) ? One
way could be to allow the user to choose with which color "stars
without color info" should be plotted, and set a sensible default
value.