I teach a beginners astronomy class here in the Phoenix metro area with Bortle 8 skies and would like to be able to generate star charts that show stars down to magnitude 4 so they represent more what is visible in our city.
I was thinking Cartes du Ciel might work (I don't know much about using this software). I did a quick search to see if I set the magitude stars down to 4 and less but haven't been able to get this to work. There seem two paths, and they do help cut down a lot of stars, but I am still seeing stars on the chart as low as 4.75 magnitude. Here are the two settings I tried changing:
1. | Chart | Star Filter | Less Stars |
2. | Setup | Chart, coordinates | Object Filter | Star Filter | Naked eye reference = 3 |
Anyone out there know what I'm doing wrong, or have an idea of a different way I can generate a chart that I can freely distribute?
Thanks!
James