NavList:

Steve,

You asked:

"Can Stellarium be used to measure angular distances between objects?"

Yes. There is an "angle measure" tool which can be activated using the toolbar at the bottom of the screen or by pressing "Ctrl + A". Left click and drag to measure an angle, then you can right click on any spot to automatically move the end of the line to that spot. Left clicking any spot once resets the tool and removes the measurement from the display. Pressing the toolbar icon or "Ctrl + A" again will deactivate the tool. While the tool is activated, you can pan the view with the arrow keys and zoom in/out with the "PgUp/PgDn" keys - which is helpful to get a more accurate measurement.

Be advised, however: it has been my experience that the tool is really only useful for getting approximate distances. No matter how carefully I click, the resulting measurement is usually a couple of arcminutes off compared to a calculation using almanac data (even if the almanac data is for topocentric positions and I have the atmosphere turned off in Stellarium). But it's close enough to get you in the neighborhood.

Regards,

Sean C.