B.11.2 Examples

Here are some examples of plot2sky:

stilts plot2sky in=messier.xml lon=RA lat=DEC
                layer.pos=mark size.pos=4
                layer.txt=label label.txt=Name color.txt=slategrey

Plots the positions of all the Messier objects on the sky, with text labels giving their object names. This displays a sphere on the screen that you can rotate/zoom using the mouse.

stilts plot2sky projection=aitoff
                xpix=600 ypix=300
                gridcolour=green labelcolour=black
                fontsize=10 gridaa=true texttype=antialias
                sex=true crowd=4

This just plots a celestial coordinate grid with no data. Various options are tweaked to adjust the appearance of the grid.

stilts plot2sky xpix=1000 ypix=500 fontsize=18 crowd=2
                projection=aitoff viewsys=galactic
                layer1=mark size1=0
                shading1=density densemap1=gnuplot2 densefunc1=log
                densesub1=0.5,.95 denseclip1=0.02,1
                in1=gums_mw_all.fits
                lon1=alpha lat1=delta datasys1=equatorial 
                icmd1=progress out=mw.pdf

Makes an all-sky plot using a Hammer-Aitoff projection into galactic coordinates of a large dataset. Density shading means that the colour at each point is dependent on how many points are plotted; the density colour map has been fine-tuned here to get a specific visual effect. The sky coordinates in the input file (alpha and delta) are equatorial, but these are transformed to galactic coordinates for plotting. The progress filter applied to the input table displays a progress indicator on the console to see how far it's got. The result is written to a PDF file.

This command was used to plot the GUMS-10 MW dataset, a simulation of the milky way stars seen by the Gaia satellite; The 2.1 billion row plot took about 45 minutes.