Ascom compliant pc planetarium programs

The daytime sky mode is pleasant to view, the moon phase calendar and its appearance have been improved too as the object information dialog box, the Dreyer descriptions for all NGC and IC objects, the astronomy tutorial, to name a few.

On robotic side, the program is able to drive any telescope including Dobsons or the Nexstar5 with Autostar and offers the ability to display the field of view of the ST-4X guiding CCD detector as many finders.

As its competitors, update files can be download from the publisher website. It requires a 1. There is no demo version. Software Bisque provides support to customers via their Community forum and their Knowledge base. It is the first time that I see a company providing software to amateurs that charges for their support. This price is not justified and prohibitive! TheSky version 5 on a VGA screen.

Starry Night Pro. Thanks to its graphical performances, this very complete program displays the sky, celestial objects and events in a realistic way. You can also edit the horizon to add trees and create hills or load a picture. It is a huge package including all options that an advanced amateur astronomer is in right to wait for. As said Sienna this is for serious astronomy To complete these options a custom image layer help you to add external CCD images or digitized photographs.

So far, no other planetarium software provide this option. You can also set the limit magnitude for each catalog separately, and easily select any object to determine its rise, transit and set times, magnitude and position in several coordinates systems. Starry Night Pro is also an powerful educational tool. Its requires QuickTime to display multimedia features as movies of sky animations, planets flybys, liftoff's and more.

Among its most amazing tools you may quit the solar system and observe the nearby stars in 3D, travel anywhere in the universe up to millions light-years, display dynamic Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams, create alien planets with customizable surfaces details and satellites, add custom horizon panoramas, edit orbits to add or modify planetaries objets.

If you like historical simulations, you can go years in the past or in the future, speeding up or slowing down time.

The Internet links are everywhere present; connecting to LiveSky you can for example display information about planets, stars or constellations or download DSO pictures connecting to the Digitized Sky Survey database. Starry Night Pro is able to create artificial satellites reading their 2-line elements or to track them. In the same way it is able to track comets and asteroids. At last, the program is able ASCOM compliant and able to drive any telescope but its controller looks to light and display weakness to consider it as a serious tool.

On-line support is fast and update release can be downloaded from the publisher website. It is available in two versions, Pro and Pro Plus. Good news, contrary to its main competitor, all users and prospects can question their support team free of charge.

Starry Night Pro v3. Documents WAP. It replaces the old "Starry Night Backyard" version and comes with a totally redesigned GUI much more attracting and faster. This version is created for the casual observer or the one who doesn't use a telescope with tracking capabilities.

It takes advantage of the same engine that the Pro version, the same intuitive interface with multimedia features that require QuickTime.

It is able to display a variable sky brightening including light pollution and details in the Milky way. This version gathers all you need to learn astronomy. All the planets and most moons are displayed with high resolution surface rendering and you have the ability to add new objects comets, asteroids, moons, planets and even satellites using the built-in orbit editor or to change surface map of planets.

Like the Pro version, this version is able to manage artificial satellites reading their 2 line elements Keplerian elements. This light version has at its disposal a reduced number of stellar and deep sky objects : 2. Contrary to the previous Backyard version, this new version has built-in background landscapes. It can print advanced sky charts showing deep star fields and DSO. The Enthusiast can link out to LiveSky for the most up-to-date information about them.

Here also all update release notes can be downloaded from the publisher website. Starry Night Enthusiast is now at version 6. On slow computers the OpenGL will not initiate and some optional features will not be displayed on screen.

A trial version is available from Starry Night Store. A trial version of "Starry Night Backyard" is available from Download. Good news, all users and prospects can question their support team for free. Voyager This planetarium software displays the sky and celestial objects in a realistic way. It can simulate the aspect or the movement of celestial bodies or any celestial event like conjunction, moon and sun eclipses, transits of planets and moons, and more. In addition, the older Hipparcos, Tycho-1 and Tycho-2 catalogs are available.

The basic version includes 2. Voyager can also display 1. A startup file is saved locally to show for example the the sky over your location at the current time. The file is preserved between versions. Voyager provides several panoramas that you can use for the background lake, forest, rocky, beach, etc or you can create your own horizon.

However the blending at the horizon or the separation between terrestrial objects and the sky could be improved. The magnitude limits are adjustable, with a limit of You can also configure how Voyager 4. You can also filter the display of stars by spectral type or luminosity class. The menu is made of dialog boxes, small windows containing tens of icons and controls to access rapidly to all main functions.

Their aspect could be improved. Clicking on any object with the mouse, contextual data can be displayed too. Voyager displays updated high-resolution pictures of the Earth, Moon, and other planets taken by spacecrafts. Planets and moons are rendered realistically based of images from Clementine, Magellan, Mars Global Surveyor, Galileo, and Cassini missions.

Voyager displays planets, rings, moons and their shadow taking into account the effects of perspective and rotational flattening. Voyager provides animations of many celestial events : solar and lunar eclipses, spacecraft encounters with the major planets, rare shadow transits on Jupiter and Saturn, the changing shape of the constellations over tens of thousands of years, a journey around the Pleiades and Hydes star clusters, precession of the celestial pole over its year cycle, and the orbits of the newly discovered dwarf planets in the outer solar system.

In addition, Voyager can display the sky from another locations, including from another planet or from space. Voyager uses the precession to extrapolate lunar and planetary positions up to years in the past and in the future but the highest precision matching JPL data is limited within years. You can print start charts, and create observing lists suited to your telescope. Voyager is now at version 4.

Upgrades are also available but the demo is no more available. The company also sales a software to exlore the sky named " SkyGazer ". This low-cost desktop planetarium program is an excellent software, a true challenger for its competitors. The Guide is able to display a view of the sky full customizable, including the horizon and objects fixed on it. Fixed occasional lines across main map. Double-buffered the PEC graph so it doesn't flicker anymore. Added image catalog support for stars. Exposure setting now remains disabled until changed filter position arrives.

Telescope dialog is generally more tolerant of communictions errors now too. Also, added more focuser error reporting to the log. Improvements to application message flow for better stability while imaging my Quantix camera would periodically disconnect in the IC if OnStep was connected, this is fixed.

Added Focuser presets and position reporting in mm when available. Added telescope connection detection to scripts. Added ability to select imaging camera from scripts. Added optional [date] and [time] to file and directory naming for images. Fixed star catalog path bug. Added better support for searching star names More detailed description of OnStep alignment sequence in help. More detailed description of search features in help. Fixed Plate-Solve bug triggered by a minor Astrometry.

Integration of OnStep pointing model with Goto Assist. Faster histogram code. Added: support for more user defined object catalogs. Telescope Pad now groups pulse-guide rates separately from guide rates as a reminder that these can be maintaned separately in OnStep. PEC Index. ASCOM cameras'. Also, reordered sequencer logic to keep messages flowing. I'm still using the ancient Microsoft Help format.

The help viewer is still available to download for even the very latest Windows 8. This information will eventually be used in many places throughout Sky.

Fixed solves repeating. Added option to disable Dec guiding. Configure calibration movement amount seconds of guiding. Clear PEC data now erases the local buffer immediately. PEC data display updates immediately now for data clear and scale changes. PEC maximum buffer length extended to seconds.

Support for importing arbitary celestial object catalogs. This improves the positional accuracy for those objects to the sub arc-sec level. Improved LX capture with "bright frame" detection. Calendar was built with Delphi TCalendar component which is no longer available in my version of Delphi. Adapted TStringGrid to do the same thing. Moves filter-wheel, adjusts focus, adjusts exposure length, and names files as you specify in sequence. When previewing the image in the console, you can shrink or stretch the image and overlay several different cross-hairs.

Double-clicking gives a highly zoomed area for focusing help. Figures out where you're at in the sky, easy to setup and use. Another general purpose feature is the Goto Assist.

The main window now responds properly to being maximized by loosing it's scroll-bars on XP and Vista. It's also smarter about saving defaults, it asks to save if you changed something about the location. I think this was written in Borland Pascal 2. There are various other interesting tools that these listed planetarium software have to offer.

Go through the list to know more, and also know how to view sky using these planetarium software. Stellarium and Celectia are the planetary software that I like the most. These software provide excellent sky exploring tools and are very easy to use and get along with. The high quality imagery that these software provide are just amazing to view at. Stellarium is an open source planetarium software for Windows, Mac and Linux. It lets you have a look at the sky, just like you would from your eyes through a binocular, or through a telescope.

It is a very vast software with extensive set of tools and options. Once you get to know about its features, you will be amazed by its capabilities. The tools available help you view stellar as well as interstellar objects, including satellites, planets, galaxies, constellations , etc.

When you open the software, it displays a simple landscape along with sky. According to your time zone which this software updates from internet , the landscape is displayed in day time view or night time view. The day time view only displays the Sun and the Moon if its in the visible sky. The sky lightens up during night time with the moon and all the visible satellites, planets, and stars. Click on an object to view its details, such as: name, magnitude, hour angle, elliptical information, distance from Sun, distance from Earth, diameter, phase angle, etc.

Using this planetary software for the first time can be confusing, as it has no options on the interface, just the landscape where you can look around. To put this software to a proper use, you will need to download the Stellarium User manual , which is available on the homepage of this software. What you see when you open this software is a simple landscape, but the tools can be used to visualize a hell lot of things.

Information about various other tools, features, and configurable options including Plugins is available in the user manual. This planetary software runs very smoothly and does not lags even on computers without high end graphics card. Celestia is a multi-platform Planetarium software available for free. It lets you explore the Solar System along with the vast expanses of the Universe, which includes planets, clusters, galaxies, and even deep space objects.

All of this can be viewed in high resolution or low resolution, which can be manually set. You are free to go to a planet, a star, or even a galaxy to view it from a defined distance. You can Zoom to extremely high levels and view the celestial objects of our universe. While viewing an object, the info related to is displayed along with the distance from which you are viewing it in kilometers or astronomical units.

All the objects being displayed on this planetarium software move in real time. You can view their exact movements with respect to the distance of view. If you want, you can Pause time, fast forward time, or slow time to view objects the way you like. You can also jump to a time in past or in future to view objects at the given point of time.

A tour guide is available, which when given the name of a planet, satellite, star, galaxy, etc. There are various other options available that can enhance your planetarium, or rather universe exploration experience. You can take a screenshot and even capture a video of your entire voyage through space. You will also find certain plugins on the website of this software which will enhance its capabilities and help you view more of the Universe.

Celestia is an extraordinary planetarium software which runs in high resolution. If you do not have a high end graphic card installed on your PC, you can always lower down its resolution for it to work smoothly. Hallo Northern Sky is a simple yet feature rich free planetarium software for Windows and Linux. It lets you look at the observable universe from your location. It has a huge database of millions of stars, galaxies, and deep space objects, which you can see by zooming onto them.

When you load this software, a view of the visible sky is displayed with all the stars, planets, galaxies, and constellations.

The constellations are connected and marked with lines. The Sun, nearest stars, and other 8 planets are also displayed along with their satellites. Scroll your mouse to zoom in and get a telescopic view of an object. If you want, you can jump to any given time in past and also up to 10 years in future to view position of stars, planets, etc. You can also type the name of an object to find it. For the first time users, this software may seem to be tad bit confusing.

Once you start exploring its options and get used to it, this planetary software will impress you by its simplicity. WinStars is another good planetarium software for Windows.

Along with Planetarium view of the sky, it also offers Solar system view. It is very close to Stellarium in terms of the features and tools it has to offer, with an added advantage of interface. The Planetarium view lets you have a look at the sky from your location, which it detects automatically through internet. You can also jump to any place on earth and view how the sky looks from there. Also, you can set a desired time in past or future to view the respective sky.

Zoom in to view objects in telescopic views.