There is a total of 112519 background stars available for Orbiter (+ the star you are orbiting).
The standard Orbiter settings (magnitudes 0.0-6.5) will give you 8816 stars displayed, either in linear or exponential mode. The cutoff range for displayed number of stars is defined only by magnitude, and not by minimum brightness or brightness mapping mode.
The minimum of displayed background stars (if you don't rename/delete the Star.bin file) is 6, when you set range of magnitudes to 0.0 - 0.1.
The maximum of 112519 stars (not including the main star, e.g. Sol), you can achieve by setting magnitudes' range to 0.0 - 13.3.
Linear mapping will give you brighter stars of magnitudes that are between minimum and maximum, than for exponential brightness mapping, and exponential mapping will allow you to display all the available stars on the sky, without the sky being cluttered if you use appropriate minimum brightness.
My settings I usually have set are:
- Exponential magnitude-brightness mapping.
- Apparent magnitude 0.0 mapped to max. brightness 1.
- Apparent magnitude 30.0 mapped to min. brightness 0.01.
But that's on a CRT display, where the monitor's brightness is set that the darkest stars aren't normally visible.
Why do I use those settings? I don't know. Maybe because they look just fine for me. I could increase the minimum brightness instead of increasing the value for magnitude, but meh. I just want all stars on the sky.
