Posted by David Bostedo on February 21, 2008 at 11:55 AM
With the eclipse last night bringing it to mind, I thought I'd throw out a post to mention some really cool (to me anyway) free software. These are "planetarium" software, that can show you a simulation of the sky in real time, and have a variety of features for overlaying labels, constellations, terrain, declination/ascension marks, etc. You can set your time and location anywhere on the earth, and see the sky from that point. You can also fast forward and slow down time at will.
I used Stellarium to watch the eclipse a little prior to getting some pics of it last night (just to make sure of what direction it would be visible). And it even simulated the eclipse in the software.
I haven't had time to play with Celestia yet, but it looks pretty cool too.
Anyway, not sure if anyone's interested, but I think this stuff is great.
Posted by Susan Griffith on February 21, 2008 at 12:08 PM
For planning my night sky photography i use Clear Dark Sky.
This is a great resource for looking up the viewing conditions where ever you may be traveling to in the US.
-Susan
Posted by Mark Stahlke on February 21, 2008 at 1:58 PM
I like KStars. It's part of the freely available KDE-Edu package and runs on any system with the K Desktop Environment installed.
Posted by David Bostedo on February 21, 2008 at 2:49 PM
I haven't looked at KStars Mark, but one nice thing about Stellarium and Celestria is their availability for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux; Stellarium on Linux though is only the source for the Linux compile-it-yourself crowd.
Susan - looks like that might be a very nice companion to the other programs I mentioned, but doesn't really do the same thing.
Posted by Buck Ward on February 21, 2008 at 9:40 PM
David
I downloaded Celestia yesterday after seeing it in another thread (you posted it, I think) It crashed my PC. It's the only time I ever saw the 'blue screen of death' using Windows XP. I had to uninstall it.
Posted by David Bostedo on February 22, 2008 at 2:03 PM
Very sorry to hear that Buck. I haven't had any problems and I've run it several times. I'm running Windows XP Pro myself. Hopefully others don't see that problem.
Posted by Neale Dyster on February 24, 2008 at 6:55 PM
Stellarium is amazing, I've only had it a couple of weeks, but I know i'll be using it for years!
Discussion
6 repliesThe two pieces of software are Stellarium and Celestia.
I used Stellarium to watch the eclipse a little prior to getting some pics of it last night (just to make sure of what direction it would be visible). And it even simulated the eclipse in the software.
I haven't had time to play with Celestia yet, but it looks pretty cool too.
Anyway, not sure if anyone's interested, but I think this stuff is great.
This is a great resource for looking up the viewing conditions where ever you may be traveling to in the US.
-Susan
Susan - looks like that might be a very nice companion to the other programs I mentioned, but doesn't really do the same thing.
I downloaded Celestia yesterday after seeing it in another thread (you posted it, I think) It crashed my PC. It's the only time I ever saw the 'blue screen of death' using Windows XP. I had to uninstall it.