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I saw an interesting application, and though it would be cool if this capability was available in kstars. The application is called Where is M13. What it does is shows the location of objects in the galaxy, as well as the position of objects relative to Earth (with a line connecting Earth to the object). The program only shows nebulae, but it should be possible to show any object for which kstarts knows either the galactic coordinates or the distance and angle relative to Earth. The former could be used to place the object directly on a map, while the second could be computed fairly easy using basic trigonometry based on Earth's location in the galaxy. The kstars implementation would probably also show the galactic coordinates in the star details page (with margin of error, probably).

Here is a picture of what the program looks like, I imagine the kstars implementation looking similar, except probably lacking the table (the information in the table would be contained in the star details as I said earlier):

[img]http://www.thinkastronomy.com/M13/assets/WinGalaxyView.jpg[/img]

I think there should be three views, top down, along the galactic plane perpendicular to a line from Earth to the galactic center, and a third looking parallel to that line. Alternatively, have two views, but make it so that the view along the galactic plane can be rotated horizontally.

To get the galactic map view, you would probably just right-click on a star and there would be an option to "show in galactic map", which would bring up the galactic map window and clear any stars already in it, and "add to galactic map", which would bring up the galactic map but leave already-present stars there. These options would only appear when the object's position is known, otherwise they would be grayed out. Within the galactic map view there would be check boxes to show the position of Earth, show a line connecting Earth to the object, and ideally one to show a cone that represents the area that can be seen from your location on Earth at the time you are looking at.

Another very impressive program is Celestia - though I'd love to have its capabilities in KStars, I doubt it would be possible without making KStars fat and use 3D graphics..

Couldn't there be a plugin for Marble with the KStars-features?

Marble is for showing a globe, a sphere. I do not think it is very well-suited to working with a disc like this. Further, marble only shows features on the sphere's surface (a 2-dimensional task), while this is inherently a 3-dimensional task. Plus it only shows one view, while this would show two or three (depending on the implementation).

I considered the possibility of a fully rotatable 3-D representation of the galaxy being used, which would be more suitable to marble, but that would require either an open-source or public-domain 3D map of the galaxy be available, and I have not heard of one (not that I necessarily would have, but I don't want to suggest something unless I know it can actually be done). It would probably also require some fancy transparency effects to look like the cloud of stars, gas, and dust the galaxy is rather than a photo of the galaxy painted on a solid disc, which would be a lot of work and probably some fancy opengl capabilities that I don't think kstars or marble have yet.