Scripting Stellarium 2023

There are some changes after my earlier post about creating views of the night sky using stellarium. And I've forgotten the locations of some controls. So, a set of reference notes.

• Initial setup - to set the place and time to Puttaparthi, 14.17N, 77.81E, 23 Nov 1926 4:30 am  - (F6) Location window and (F5) Date Time window. (F2) Configuration window --> Time tab to start at that time every time, or to stop time at that point. 
  
  
• Switch off captions with (F4) Sky and Viewing Options --> Sky tab, Labels and Markers.
  
  
• Switch off detailed information for selected objects in (F2) Configuration window --> Main tab, if we leave only Name checked, the name of the selected object is shown on top left corner, which would not be visible in a fulldome frame. 
  
  
• To set field of view to 180 degrees, scroll-wheel on mouse - slightly inaccurate. More accurate to use scripting, below. We can change mapping to Fisheye from (F4) Sky and Viewing Options --> Sky tab.
  
  
• Use Ctrl+T to remove/toggle the controls from view. Ctrl+S will save a screenshot. The screenshot directory is set on (F2) Configuration window --> Tools tab. Or use scripting, as below.
  
  
• Scripting example for screenshots - https://renenyffenegger.ch/notes/Wissenschaft/Astronomie/tools/Stellarium/script/API/core/screenshot
  In our case, instead of StelMovementMgr.zoomTo(25, 0.01) we wanted to change / set the FOV from 195 to 30 degrees - progressively zooming in. Scripting console (F12) or run saved scripts with (F2) Configuration window --> Scripts tab.
  for (i=195; i>30; i--) {
  StelMovementMgr.zoomTo(i, 0.01);
  core.wait(0.01);
  // Take screenshot
  core.screenshot('sirius-zoom') ;
  }
  
  
•  Unfortunately, the values mentioned in a previous post for "good-looking" night sky, which was for version 0.9 or something like that, don't seem to be valid now for version 1.2 or 2023. (F4) Sky and Viewing Options --> -> Sky tab -> Absolute scale = 1 and Relative scale = 0.5 with Limit magnitude = 5.5 or 6.0 makes the stars look good for 1080p fulldome screenshots in the current version 1.2.