Added Chinese_Xianglin_Star_Chart and Manchu sky cultures#4779
Added Chinese_Xianglin_Star_Chart and Manchu sky cultures#4779Guanjin0562 wants to merge 20 commits intoStellarium:masterfrom
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| The Chinese_Xianglin sky culture originates from a 17th-century Chinese antique star chart. The English translations of its constellation names are consistent with those of other Chinese sky cultures. Its classification parameter is "single". The Manchu people are an ethnic minority in Northeast China. This sky culture is derived from ethnographic literature. All star names in the source material are recorded in Chinese, with no corresponding Manchu terms provided. Therefore, I believe it is necessary to include both Chinese and Manchu (reconstructed from Chinese pronunciation) in the "native" field. Its classification parameter is "ethnographic". |
| Thank you very much for your contribution! I have a question - is it possible to add an IPA data to Chinese Xianglin sky culture? |
Of course, it is possible, and I noticed that the Chinese Song dynasty sky culture already has IPAs with identical star names, so we can simply migrate and use them. However, this might take some time. |
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| *The Xianglin Star Chart (composited from 31 sectional maps)* | ||
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You could add a section ### Constellations here which could describe the figures a little more. Things you would like to tell when you explain the sky to others.
| Thanks a lot! |
| Regarding the IPA for the Chinese Xianglin sky culture, I have already discussed this with Sun Shuwei. I will conduct a more systematic organization and add them. If necessary, I may revise the existing IPAs in the Chinese Song Dynasty sky culture to ensure consistency. For the description of the Chinese Xianglin sky culture, I believe we can follow the approach used for Chinese Chenzhuo—briefly describing a few distinctive constellations as examples. There is no need to list them all, as the complete constellation table is already available in the Chinese sky culture. It would be sufficient to highlight only the notable differences between them in this specific sky culture. The constellation illustrations in the Manchu sky culture are indeed not essential. They are all hand-drawn star charts from field research. When creating the star lines, I referred to these images. However, some of them deviated too significantly from the actual starry sky, so I had to apply some stretching and adjustments, which resulted in two versions. The images in the description section are all the original ones. I can remove the unnecessary illustrations from the sky view and modify the filenames, displaying only all the original images in the description. |
| Of course the hand drawings give some personal/historical touch. If they fit well (did not check yet) you can leave them in. But i know sometimes adjusting a drawing with star symbols is a nightmare. |
| Hmm, the drawings don't really fit well, unfortunately. These should be re-made probably based on screenshots of Stellarium. Some distortions are unavoidable, but this cannot be presented to an auditorium of laypeople. You could fully remove the drawings and emulate this style with our lines: zero-length sections (only one star) are drawn by circling the star. On my European Windows the first name (sorry for my ignorance, what character set is this?) is only displayed as empty blocks. We used a certain tweak for Cuneiform. Can you identify the character script name in https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qchar.html? |
| Three issues:
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It's the Manchu script. For the first character in ᡤᠠᠰᡥᠠ I get this on Ubuntu 22.04: BTW, does it not display even in the browser for you? |
| This script is another example of a script that will break in gravity labels, e.g. ᡤᠠᠰᡥᠠ will look like so with the letters separated by spaces: "ᡤ ᠠ ᠰ ᡥ ᠠ". |
| I see the chars here in the github website. But the Qt font database needs a little nudge. I just added "Mongolian Baiti" to the list. (Qt6.8+ only.) Gravity labels: Yes, this feature needs a rewrite for many non-Latin scripts. :-( |
thanks @Guanjin0562 for this amazing contribution! As your hand drawn images serve as a reference in scholarly work, I recommend to leave them in. @gzotti |
| It seems we don't need to install any extra fonts. Qt has its own font database, but it may not know which fonts to apply to more exotic script systems. We can at this point not say when the next skyculture will be brought to us or which script it may use. It seems @10110111 can see the glyphs out of the box on Linux, but on Windows we must help Qt a bit in code and tell it "use font XY for xy script". I have added a fitting font for Mongolian script in master some days ago. (see above.) Of course someone could work into the future and go through the list linked in the discussion above, and decide on a stock Windows11 install which fonts to use for all these script systems, just in case. |
| sorry for not being clear: I did not think of "installing own fonts", but allowing them to be pulled if necessary. background thought: fonts are continually developed further - our knowledge on scripts grows, laypeople will be happy with "any" cuneiform-like font that happens to float around in any public library (might that be Qt or GoogleFonts or anything else), but specialists who wish to create illustrations for their research papers may want a specific font. Not Old Babylonian but NeoAssyrian (is the most frequent issue). Of course, not all amateur astronomers and school teachers will need that - or even be able to distinguish it. So, it would be nice of us to provide the specialists with the option to pull (download or use-by-hyperlink ...) a specific font if required. |
| The "Divine Eagle" constellation is drawn with stars down to mag 9 or so, most likely to show an idea of its imagined shape, but such stars are way beyond human eyes. Are there historical records for it that use only naked-eye stars? |
| Maybe I missed it, but the description should explain why there is a transcribed first constellation name, then a Chinese (of which only few non-Chinese users will understand that it is not the original Manchu name), then again the same string in the Pronounce tag. Would the Pronounce and IPA tags now fit to the Chinese or Manchu strings? Or are they equivalent? If the Chinese strings are translations for Chinese users but are not Manchu language, these should be provided in the Translation system. Then the Original should be the Manchu Unicode strings, and a proper font identified. If a font is missing, users can still read Pronounce and IPA (which should represent Manchu), and just configure away display of the malformatted "original" strings. |
| The Constellations chapter in description.md is also not formatted translation, display and speech output friendly as documented in the Guide, ch.9.1. It should not be a table but a list of |
| The "Divine Eagle" (Gas'ha) constellation does include some symbolic lines with no actual stars. In fact, some constellations in star charts use imaginary lines for the constellation shape regardless of real stars—another example is the Rat constellation (Leo). Should I change the specific HIP codes for these lines to coordinates to indicate the absence of actual stars? For the native field: Manchu is the culturally native name, with IPA/pronounce being Manchu transliterations. However, I believe Chinese characters are the academically authoritative native names and equally important. All source materials document these names in Chinese characters, and no academic papers provide Manchu spellings (the Manchu forms used here were reconstructed in collaboration with several Manchu speakers). Thus, I consider Chinese characters to be the more authoritative source. Of course, if you feel these Chinese characters should be classified as Chinese translations and excluded from index.json, that is perfectly acceptable—please kindly let me know. If retained, I will add the following text to the description: I will revise the Constellations section to the correct format below. Please let me know if you would prefer the Chinese characters to be removed here: I have removed the constellation illustrations as I noticed they are sourced from an academic paper and may be subject to copyright restrictions. Additionally, after reviewing the User Guide, I understand that Manchu constellation (Off-topic note: The User Guide uses Tibetan as an example for pronunciation—could you confirm if the Tibetan SC uses Wylie transliteration? I noticed the letter ö is included, which seems inconsistent with standard Wylie transliteration rules) |
I understand your point regarding Manchu characters. If you think it's acceptable, I can restore the Manchu Unicode in the native field, and then let the user configure the Manchu font or not display the native name. |
| I am by far no expert in any eastern-Asian sky culture. If Manchu is now written in Chinese script, but older Manchu script still available, a Manchu-Chinese double name is IMHO OK. But I don't know how to best then write the other fields. Maybe separated with hyphen or slash? Using 5-7-Latin-char names as ID: OK, no problem. They must be unique, and should be short to not clutter the screen, that's at least the idea. The Tibetan SC should use Wylie in the 'transliteration' fields, but uses "simple pronounce" as found in non-Tibetologist expert textbooks in the 'pronounce' fields, I hope this is where you saw an ö. It also "should" have genuine Tibetan in the original strings, but I can provide neither this nor Wiley by myself, sorry. If anybody can improve our Tibetan SC, go for it please. I cannot say what the best way to show the SC names is. I cannot discuss "small" misrepresentations in a few Unicode code points. If it looks sufficiently OK for you, Manchu glyphs (even if borrowed from Mongolian) 'look' more authentic to me than just Chinese. If it is too erroneous to be useful, you may want no not even show it. For anything but decorative value I must resort to whatever pronunciation, transliteration, or IPA is made available to users. Maybe @10110111 , @alex-w and @sushoff can also share their thoughts? |
| The both SC are OK for me |
…o xianglin-and-manchu-skycultures
I was not able to run the Python test utility mentioned in the Guide successfully. I will investigate this further. Regarding the line data for asterisms like "Gasha" (Divine Eagle) that seem to mix real stars with symbolic lines: I understand a single constellation cannot use both HIP numbers and pure coordinate pairs in its definition. For now, I have left the data as is. Perhaps the solution is to split such a constellation into two separate logical parts? |
Well, all HIP numbers have coordinates: The sky culture maker-plugin gives an output that runs correctly (although the layout needs to be beautified for human-readability).
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I see. However, constellations connected solely by coordinates are treated as "dark constellations" and are displayed differently from those bound to actual stars. More importantly, they cannot be linked to specific stars and therefore cannot account for proper motion over time. |
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great SC, well done! thank you so much <3
Oh, interesting aspect ... indeed, we discussed that dark constellations have to be propagated with precession, but of course, no pm is given. |
 The most practical approach seems to be splitting the asterism into two parts in the data: one with HIP-bound lines, and another for the purely symbolic lines defined by coordinates. Would an entry with no common_namecause any issues? Ideally, I'd still prefer a way to mix HIP numbers and coordinate pairs within a single constellation entry, and to tag it appropriately (coordinate-based lines aren't necessarily "dark"). Using only coordinates for bright stars is less precise and doesn't account for proper motion. |
| The dark constellations explicitly are formed from dark clouds seen against the bright Milky Way, so the lines should not involve stars and their proper motion. What you want to show is (probably) what the authors of the classical European copper print atlases were "imagining" with their artwork, without showing connecting telescopic stars when they were engraving figure details and outlines. When I see Cygnus in a dark sky, I can imagine its wings and feathers although I only see the stick figure "skeleton". The outline of a swan figure would be given in the artwork layer, and not by a connect-the-dot drawing of whatever mag10 stars are sitting on the imagined outline. One question is, is there a tradition (at least a few decades, necessarily from the telescopic era) in those outlines, did you invent these mag6/mag8 star chains to outline the figure artistically, or is there a publication that already has them? |
No, this is not the question. The problem is that sometimes it may make sense for your 'cygnusses' to use both stars and coordinates to draw a stick figure that helps the modern viewer to imagine the constellation in the same way as the ancients. Technology is made to provide options and must not limit what can be done. |
| The lines in question are traced from hand-drawn star charts created during ethnographic field research in the last century. This is the sole source for these outlines, and the researcher who created them has since passed away. I had initially included these original drawings in the description for reference, but have since removed them. |
| OK, omitting the "idea" of the shape is a loss, but that makes the drawing of "wing is somewhere over there" eligible in the artwork layer. Deviations from this rule are possible if sufficiently explained in the text. ("We want to show XY because...", "lines based on the fieldwork by..."). Else, without such explanation, it appears the Manchu have seen an outline of the figure formed by mag8 stars, which is just not plausible. |
| I think we/ I start over-engineering... As far as I understand @Guanjin0562 , he found a workaround for Manchu SC. So, we can - in my view - just accept the SC as is for the March release. However, @gzotti, I think we could think about providing more technical options in future releases - with no urgency, of course... pretty much as for the "sky culture explorer" in the other threat ... |
| It is also that somebody relevant here once told me the Chinese SCs traditionally have used stick figures only (of stars visible with the unaided eye). Of course, any SC author can decide to fill the sky with patterns as needed. However, only brighter stars (mag<5 with rare extensions into mag6) make sense to me for "traditional" SCs. And sorry, yes, I am just projecting that presumably many other users will have the same expectation. Questions will go to us, and we will have to write or at least coordinate the answers. So, better clarify now. |
| No, in English the m-dash is not separated from the words—at least not in this use case. …On Wed, 18 Mar 2026, 20:01 Alexander V. Wolf, ***@***.***> wrote: ***@***.**** commented on this pull request. ------------------------------ In skycultures/chinese_manchu/description.md <#4779 (comment)> : > @@ -54,6 +54,8 @@ The stellar nomenclature in this Manchu sky culture comprises two distinct layer Stellarium includes over 20 of these shamanistic constellations. It also uses asterism lines to represent the *xingguans*(Chinese costellations) from official Qing dynasty star catalogs (such as the *Yixiang Kaocheng*). +It should be noted that some of the connecting lines in the traditional Manchu asterisms—especially those representing imaginative or symbolic parts of the figures—are artistic interpretations from historical hand-drawn charts and do not correspond precisely to actual stars. In order to preserve the overall shape of these constellations as traditionally depicted, lines occasionally link to stars fainter than 6th magnitude. This does not imply that the original culture recognized or included such faint stars; it is merely a graphical means to render the envisioned form. typo: asterisms—especially -> asterisms — especially — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4779 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABQU3MRARKRLCNUATDPFZ4D4RKF2DAVCNFSM6AAAAACVUJFI4SVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43YUDVNRWFEZLROVSXG5CSMV3GSZLXHMZTSNRXGI4DSNZSGU> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***> |
English English or American English? |
You are right. For almost all traditional SCs, there is a tendency to use stars brighter than magnitude 5, and it's almost impossible for them to include stars fainter than magnitude 6.5, which are invisible to the naked eye. However, for some specific SCs, this general rule might not strictly apply. |
that's right ... the faint stars are rather brave identifications and I would be VERY careful with them in historical stick figures (with regard to their use in transdisciplinary research = use of maps by users without knowledge of the culture). However, I think, this does not really apply to the problematic cases here - this needs to be clarified in the description: you're right. |
| *Well, Ghosts, Willow, Star, Extended Net, Wings, Chariot Mansions* | ||
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| ## Constellations | ||
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Also here: The technical structure of this section is important. The introductory text must be moved above into the ## Description. Hmm, actually all of this should be moved up. The chapter ## Constellations should consist of ##### constellation A elements only.
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So, in the Constellation section, do I really need to write an introduction to all 283 constellations, each with a five-level heading #####?
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If the goal of this section is to simply give some common information rather than describe each (or some) of the constellations, you can just make it ### Constellations. The level-2 heading is reserved for the section that contains per-constellation descriptions.
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I understand that the ## Constellations section is used for audio explanations and therefore requires strict formatting. What I'm more concerned about is the specific content of that section, specifically the introduction to each constellation. I may not be able to complete the introductions for all 283 constellations.
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This section isn't mandatory.
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The text in the ##### constel inside ## Constellations is used for display and audio output. If the program cannot identify this structure, these output elements just don't show up. The system allows very detailed explanations or storytelling, it is up to you to make use of it.
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Description
Added Chinese_Xianglin_Star_Chart and Manchu sky cultures.
The Chinese_Xianglin sky culture originates from a 17th-century Chinese antique star chart. The English translations of its constellation names are consistent with those of other Chinese sky cultures. Its classification parameter is "single".
The Manchu people are an ethnic minority in Northeast China. This sky culture is derived from ethnographic literature. All star names in the source material are recorded in Chinese, with no corresponding Manchu terms provided. Therefore, I believe it is necessary to include both Chinese and Manchu (reconstructed from Chinese pronunciation) in the "native" field. Its classification parameter is "ethnographic".
skycultures/CMakeLists.txtfile respectively to changes in sky cultures?index.jsonfile)?description.mdfile)?index.jsonfile)?Fixes # (issue)
None.
Screenshots (if appropriate):
Type of change
How Has This Been Tested?
The two sky cultures can be displayed normally, including constellations, names, illustrators and descriptions.
The sky cultures do not affect other code files or the program's operation.
Test Configuration:
Checklist: