I don’t seem to be able to find the darn star.
A bug? Holes in the star charts? The wrong name?

Try 'HH And'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_248

Thanks, but Sinbad lookup actually finds something, V* HH And, which seems to
be nothing because there is no star there, why I believe something is wrong
either in Stellarium or in the star catalogs. Is it actually a bug or is there
something I’ve misunderstood?
I’ve downloaded all the star catalogs so it should certainly be complete.

Everything about Ross 248 in the SIMBAD database is on this page:
http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-
basic?Ident=HH+And&submit=SIMBAD+search
Apparently Ross 248 is not in the version of the USNO-catalog used by
Stellarium, although it has several designations in that catalog.

If you really want to see it on the screen of your computer, try http://www.a
strosurf.com/c2a/english/index.htm. Also download the GCVS-catalog (GSCV.ccc): http://www.astrosurf.com/c
2a/english/download.htm

I don't quite understand the problem. I checked the wiki on Ross 248 as above
and was directed to HH And. This star is in the stellarium catalogue as HH
And.

I slewed to it and of course by the time I had slewed far enough it had moved
off screen. I did a second search with the clock off and there is definitely a
star there that has the same j2000 coords and mag as listed in the wiki.
However the screen does not appear to be locked to the selected position
unless it is selected when it first becomes visible at a FOV < 1 degree

Barry

The problem is that Stellarium is not complete, OR it has a bug.
This is not too difficult to understand.
Simbad finds a star I know in fact exists but Stellarium doesn’t show it with
its name as it should.
But now I know why, the star catalog is incomplete.

It problem NOT in Stellarium, it problem with catalogues - different
catalogues contains different data and in Stellarium used are NOT all
existing catalogues.

Sorry we cannot display any more information about that star. The catalogues
used in Stellarium are the ones we are able to use under our licence. They are
not necessarily perfect and we accept that. If there is any problem it is with
the catalogue. It is certainly not a bug in Stellarium. If the information
required is not in the catalogue it cannot be displayed. Stellarium already
has over 1 gigabyte of stars in its catalogues but there are still hundreds of
gigabytes of star catalogues available that we don't have access to.

Barry

Do you know the reason for the restrictions? Commercial reasons perhaps?
The scientific attitude is normally complete openness.

GPL admits of commercial use

I went to SIMBAD Astronomical Database, searched for Ross 248 and it actually
finds V* HH And as it should.
There on the page am I greeted with lots of information about the star.
This made me think that this is a pretty obvious improvement on Stellarium.

If not in the downloaded star catalogs or those in the default package then
”simulate” it!
Use the SIMBAD information and plot the darn star, with the right color of
course.
The same idea works on other objects too, like galaxies.

Easy to do, if the developers are interested that is.

But Stellarium already use SIMBAD in search tool

Hi Mikaeliq

When I said Stellarium does not have access to I meant that no one has
converted them to run in stellarium. As I said there are hundreds of gigabytes
of star data in the various catalogues. May I suggest that you read the
instructions on how to prepare a catalogue and convert some of them to a form
that stellarium can read . We would be love to have better catalogues but no
one has volunteered yet to do the preparations.

Barry