constellationship.fab no longer in stellarium repository

[emilycardwell]

I was trying to download the constellations file to draw constellations on a star chart. But when I tried the code from the documentation here:

from skyfield.api import load 
from skyfield.data import stellarium

url = ('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Stellarium/stellarium/master'
       '/skycultures/modern_st/constellationship.fab')

with load.open(url) as f:
    constellations = stellarium.parse_constellations(f)

I got the error:

OSError: cannot download https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Stellarium/stellarium/master/skycultures/modern_st/constellationship.fab because HTTP Error 404: Not Found

This is my current "brute force" workaround which uses the index.json from the stellarium repository instead:

import pandas as pd
import json
from skyfield.api import Loader

load = Loader(<my path to data folder>)
url = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Stellarium/stellarium/refs/heads/master/skycultures/modern_st/index.json'

with load.open(url, filename='constellations.json') as f:
    data = json.load(f)
    const_data = data['constellations']

    names = []
    lines = []
    for const in const_data:
        names.append(const['common_name']['native'])
        lines.append(const['lines'])

    const_df = pd.DataFrame({
        'name': names,
        'lines': lines
    })

the changes to the graphing code:

lines_xy = [
    [stars.loc[star, ['x', 'y']].values for star in line]
    for const in const_df['stars'].values for line in const
]

[brandon-rhodes]

Thank you for pointing out that the URL no longer works, and, wow, for the example code that parses their new JSON file!

For anyone who does want access to the old file, it can still be accessed by asking for an earlier revision of the Stellarium repository, before the file was removed. We can replace master with a commit hash:

url = ('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Stellarium/stellarium/'
       'eb47095a9282cf6b981f6e37fe1ea3a3ae0fd167'
       '/skycultures/modern_st/constellationship.fab')

I'll make that change immediately to the Skyfield code and docs, to get the example working again immediately. Then I can circle back and try your update to the code that parses their new JSON file.

Thanks again!

[emilycardwell]

No problem!