Use to control the display of stars and the Earth atmosphere in the 3D Graphics window.
Earth Atmosphere
The Earth's atmosphere, including fog on terrain, is displayed by default in the 3D Graphics window. You can control the visibility of the atmosphere and the fog density using the following options.
Show Atmosphere. To stop displaying the atmosphere in the 3D Graphics window, clear this checkbox.
Fog Density. Use the slider to control the density of the fog. Move the slider to the left to decrease the density, and to the right to increase it. To stop displaying the fog, move the slider all the way to the left.
Stars
STK Celestial Imagery is a photographic backdrop of the night sky for use with STK. It enhances the visual impact of space and improves realism when making movies and snapshots. The STK Celestial Imagery data set is on the STK Data Disc.
You can also download the STK Celestial Imagery data set by following these steps:
- Go to support.agi.com.
- Click Supporting STK data.
- Log in or register a new account.
- Scroll down to the AGI Celestial Imagery and click the download button.
Show. Displays stars.
Show as Points. Displays stars as points at an infinite distance.
Collection Name. Specify the star collection to be used as the source of star information for the 3D graphics display. The default of Use Scenario Setting indicates that the collection specified on the Scenario->Basic->Database properties page (set Database Type to Star) is used. Use of this setting is a simple way to ensure consistency across multiple 3D Graphics windows. If none of the existing star collections meet the display requirements, click Create… to create a new star collection or to view/modify the configuration of existing star collections.
Selecting an extremely large star collection (> 1 million stars) for display purposes can lead to STK running out of memory and crashing.
Point Display Options
If Show as Points is selected, the Point Display Options are used to determine the relationship between the visual magnitude of the stars and the size and translucency of the points used to represent them. Control of the star graphics is achieved by specifying the desired settings for typical bright, medium and dim stars.
Magnitude. Represents the brightness of the stars.
Point Size. Represents the size of the displayed star in pixel space.
Translucency. Values vary from 0, completely opaque, to 100, completely transparent.
The actual representation of a specific star is determined based on interpolation/extrapolation of the provided settings. The brightest star, Sirius, has a visual magnitude of approximately -1.46 while the dimmest star will depend upon the selected star collection. The dimmest stars visible to the naked eye on a clear night have a visual magnitude of about 6.
- The range of visual magnitudes for the currently selected collection is displayed.
- Increasing the size of Stars is useful when capturing 3D frames using high-resolution.
Colorize Stars. If Show as Points is selected, applies a false colorization to stars based on the star effective temperature. For a description of how the effective temperature is determined, refer to Construction of the STK Star Catalogs.
Show as Texture. Displays the celestial texture map in the 3D Graphics window.
Filename. The name of the celestial texture map file (.ctm).
The celestial image takes precedence over other textures in the texture cache so once the cache is full textures on the globe may not render and areas of the globe may appear blurry.
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