Star Catalog Processor and Image Generator
By Tom Lechner, tomlechner.com
2013


This will process the Tycho 2 Star Catalog, and also the Principal
Galaxy Catalog to create an equirectangular image of the things therein.


You will need to download the catalogs yourself, as Tycho, for instance,
is about 500 megabytes.

For Tycho, you might try:
   http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/Cat?target=http&cat=I%2F259&
For the PGC, you might try:
   http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/Cat?VII/119



------------------------- Procstars-gui ---------------------------

Procstars-gui currently uses the Laxkit for gui elements. You will have to 
download the Laxkit seperately.

To do so, you need to do a couple of things.
First, make sure build dependencies are present:
  sudo apt-get install g++ pkg-config libgraphicsmagick++1-dev libpng12-dev libx11-dev libxi-dev libxft-dev libcups2-dev libimlib2-dev libfontconfig-dev libfreetype6-dev libssl-dev xutils-dev

Next, from this directory:
  svn co svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/laxkit/code/laxkit/trunk laxkit
  cd laxkit
  ./configure
  make depends
  make hidegarbage
  make
  cd ..

Now you should be able to simply do:
  make procstars-gui

...and run!


------------------ (older) Procstars, command line version ------------------------

Usage:
  ./procstars -S 6 -m 12 -s 12 -w 32768
  ./procstars -S 6 -m 12 -s 6 -w 16384
  ./procstars -c Tycho.cat -o stars.tif
  ./procstars --help



It is written in plain old C++, and is contained all in procstars.cc.
You will need GraphicsMagick development files available. That will
be something like:
  sudo apt-get install libgraphicsmagick++1-dev

Compiling is supposed to be easy, but you might have to modify where some 
header files are in the Makefile.

When you are ready:
  make depends
  make procstars
...and run!




--------------------------- TODO ----------------------------------
Apparently, there is a newer galaxy catalog, but haven't coded for it yet:
  http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/Cat?VII/237
What the heck are those giant red splotches in the sky?? need to approximate
Fake big things like LMC and SMC?
This should be a gimp plugin