Star Watch Software

Dummy

Hi there - A number of years ago I had software that once you entered the date, time and your location, would give you a "map" of the skies above. As far as I remember this was a shareware package but could be wrong.

Does anyone know of such a system and what it is called?


Regards,

D

hamster

Dummy wrote: »

Hi there - A number of years ago I had software that once you entered the date, time and your location, would give you a "map" of the skies above. As far as I remember this was a shareware package but could be wrong.

Does anyone know of such a system and what it is called?


Regards,

D

Do you mean a map for printing or viewing? I know for Starry night will do that. I think Cartes du Ciel will also do that. Finally let me suggest you have a look at Stellarium - doesn't print (yet) but it's open source and development is ongoing. There is a site for specifically printing star charts here. Hope that helps you.

Dummy

Thank you Hamster.

No this will be for viewing, not printing.

My 11 year old niece has taken an interest in star watching and while I can point out a few things in the night sky to her, she is looking for more information. And where we live, there is no light pollution at all and our night time skies are amazing to watch. So much so that the kids have competitions to see who can see the first satelite.


Thanks again Hamster.

D

hamster

Dummy wrote: »

Thank you Hamster.

No this will be for viewing, not printing.

My 11 year old niece has taken an interest in star watching and while I can point out a few things in the night sky to her, she is looking for more information. And where we live, there is no light pollution at all and our night time skies are amazing to watch. So much so that the kids have competitions to see who can see the first satelite.


Thanks again Hamster.

D

Excellent! Try Stellarium - it's a very friendly tool to start off with. Link above. There is a manual on the website and when you run the program you can hit h for help. It will give you all the short keys - many of these are on the buttons on the bottom of the screen.
Very handy keys to remember are:
- and = ... go back and forth a day
j ... slow time down... and then go in reverse.
k... stop time
L... go forward in time....
Press * to set the time back to current time.

for each of these keys, tap them a few times to speed up the time... and watch the time on the top left.

Use that with the Track key T to follow a selected object over days. eg. Track mars up to the 24th December - it gets very close to the moon in Gemini.
Turn off the Atmosphere if you want to see the stars in the day (use A key). Turning on the constellations is useful to get to know the sky (use C). I like the area around Orion, Tauras, Gemini and Canis Major myself. It's interesting part of the sky this year.
Actually look out for the Geminids meteor show on the night of the 13th-14th of December. Hopefully we'll see something - Look for Mars and then very slightly (10 degrees) to left. Hopefully we'll have some clear nights like last night.
I didn't get a telescope yet but a handy pair of binoculars is a great way to start as you get to see a wide view - even see some of the planets around Jupiter - although it is setting with the sun these days.

Starry Night - is not bad - I got it with a pc magazine two years ago. It has extra information like the moon phase (rise/set and transit times) - which Stellarium currently lacks - but hopefully will be there someday.

If you go to Heaven's above and register (free) - you can get the passover times for satellites and a lot of information for your area (and multiple profile sites).
You could look for the International Space Station whizzing over head. It gives you the times:
eg. 11 Dec is at 17:07:02 - and should be plainly visible over head 17:09 and gone at 17:12. It will give you the chart and where to look - like today to the south/se. Looking at the list - its viewable every night to the 20th Dec at least. Register and look - loads of stuff to get timings for. Beats paying 99c/min for a certain phoneline to get that info.

Ps. Just one thing about stellarium. When you run it you will notice it will run in fullscreen. If you want the program in a window. Open config.ini in the stellarium menu and change fullscreen = false (instead of true). You can change the window resolution here too.

Dampsquid

I remember a program years a go that did the same thing. it was called skymap. its was shareware, and could be used for 30 days. i could get around this by changing the system time to the original date i installed it before i launched the program and the trial never expired