Stellarium For Beginners – How to add Your Gear
When first using Stellarium, it comes with quite a few telescope, eyepiece, and camera options. However, it’s impossible to include every variation out there. In this guide, we will go over how to add your gear to Stellarium.
Preparation
Before adding your gear, go to the manufacturer’s website to look for the specifications. Tip! There is a small number of manufacturers of telescope components worldwide. If you can’t find your brand, look for another that looks exactly like it. For example, the below Zhumell 30mm is actually a GSO eyepiece with Zhumell branding. If you look at the GSO 30mm on Agena Astro, it has all of the specs that you would need! This isn’t always the case, but can help find the correct specs we need to have ready.
The Specs You’ll Need
Eyepieces:
- Apparent Field of View (aFOV)
- Focal Length
Telescopes
- Diameter
- Focal length
If you are using a DSLR lens, you’ll add it under telescopes using those same specs.
Cameras
- Resolution (x/y) in pixels
- Chip width and height in mm
Into Stellarium
Click on the Oculars button in the upper right, we’ll do all additions in this window. Let’s go in order of the tabs, so we can make this easy.
Eyepieces
- Click on Eyepiece Tab
- Click Add
- Name the eyepiece
- Add in the values (remember, aFOV and Focal Length)
- Hit enter after typing the number to save
For Telescopes & DSLR Lenses
- Click telescopes tab
- Click Add
- Name the telescope
- Add in the values (diameter and focal length)
- Hit enter after typing each number to save.
- If it’s a reflector, make sure you check the flips boxes, so it looks appropriate when using visual observing previews.
- Check Equatorial mount if that’s what your scope is on.
That’s it! Note The lens tab is for Barlow lenses and focal reducers.
Cameras
- Go to Sensors tab
- Click Add
- Name the camera
- Add in the values (resolution and chip width)
- Hit enter after typing the number to save.
Note: Pixel width and height in microns (weird µm measurement) is NO LONGER NEEDED. If you see this measurement in Stellarium, update it. Stellarium now does the math to figure this out. For some cameras, it’s hard to find.
That’s it! You have just added your gear to Stellarium!
If you prefer a video version to follow along with, you can check out my guide on Youtube: