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Hi Brooke.

You asked about Stellarium and then said that your longitude calcs were off by 1.5 degrees. I don't think that's Stellarium's fault. 

Here's an example taken directly from Stellarium (ver.25.4 --check yours!).

Observer Position: x°00' N, y°00' W. (you figure out x and y)
Date (Gr.): July 25, 2026 (local date would be July 24 so be careful)
Vega: 59°43' at 00:15:30
Polaris: 34° 25' at 00:20:30 UT

So get latitude from Polaris. It's obvious that it has to be 34 or 35. How do you do it?
Then plug that latitude into Frank Reed's "ABC" longitude calculation. What do you get?

By the way, you can solve this directly in Stellarium by playing with the input latitude and longitude until the sights match up. 

You asked about basic Stellarium settings. There's no place to input a height of eye, so that means you have to assume zero height of eye (zero dip) in your work. Pressure and temperature only matter at low angles. Can ignore that in this example.

I agree with Homer S. You should activate the celestial plugin and be sure to turn on its data in the setup: "Configuration window", "Additional coordinates (from plugins)". And then in the controls at the bottom of the screen, hit the button that looks like a sextant. Then when you click on any star (even a faint one), Stellarium will show GHAY (Aries) and GHA, SHA, Declination for the star.

Josh