Astronomy Software List

dlofnep

Hi guys, I thought it would be useful to compile a list of astronomy orientated software. Feel free to add yours to the list.


Stellarium

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. It will give you an accurate display of what the sky will resemble in your city, at any given time interval. A very useful piece of software for anyone trying to figure out what they are looking at in the sky.

Stellarium will also show you constellations which allows you to quickly learn the sky, to ease the process of star hopping.

Google Sky Map

Google Sky Map is an innovative piece of sky-mapping software, that allows you to point your phone to any point in the sky, and it will in turn present you with the names for every star, constellation or planet in that field of view. Google Sky map works by using the inbuilt compass and GPS hardware on Android based devices to identify the portion of sky that the phone is pointing at. A must have for any astronomer.

Registax

Registax is a wonderful piece of image-stacking software. It enables a user to take a collection of frames of an object (ideally a planet), and stacks the best frames to create an enhanced image. It allows for many post-image modifications, that allow you to bring out the detail in your image. Registax is traditionally used with CCD cams - importing video footage, and extracting each individual frame. The software is pretty user-friendly, but has many advanced features - so make sure to play with it and check out some online tutorials.

AMCap

AMCap is a simple video capture suite, to allows you to tweak the a live capture of video from your cam. AMCap allows for you to manage the white-balance, shutter-speed, and gain - to allow you to really bring out the best image possible from your cam. A simple solution for capturing video.

Orbitron

Orbitron is a satellite tracking system for radio amateur and observing purposes. It's also used by weather professionals, satellite communication users, astronomers, UFO hobbyist and even astrologers. Application shows the positions of satellites at any given moment (in real or simulated time). It's free and it's probably one of the easiest and most powerful satellite trackers.

peterako

Great list! Thank you.

I'd also include:

WxAstrocapture

Good, free, astro capture software.

WcCtrl

Good camera control software.

K3CCD is also good.

djhaxman

http://www.worldwidetelescope.org

Free program from Microsoft, includes video and animation, decent bit of software.

Popoutman

Free software:

Cartes du Ciel
I really like this software, especially the v3.0 version, when the extra datasets (e.g. UCAS 3) are made available. Nicely realistic views depending on which star painting algorithm you choose. CdC has nice integration with Ascom drivers for telescope control as well

Virtual Moon Atlas
This is actually quite good for showing the moon's surface, and it has the useful ability to show bumpmapping of the surface based on actual height measurements of the surface for a nicely realistic view.

Avistack
This appears to perform better than Registax on lunar or solar .avi streams. It's slower for sure, but it matches a lot more points to align.

IRIS
Hugely powerful astronomical image processing suite. Very steep and high learning curve though but it can be worth it.

Jupiter 2.0
Handy for predicting the positions and mutual interactions of Jupiter's satellites, and the position of the GRS (currently at ~157 longitude)

For-pay packages:

TheSkyX
I've used TheSky6 and I do like it. If you wish to have a professional supported package, this is a good one, and if you have a high-end mount and computer control over the mount this is also a good item to have based on the rest of the Software Bisque astro software items such as TPoint or hte cmoplete observatory control.

Starry Night Pro Plus
I've also used this in the past, and it's a fine product.

shedweller

I vote to make this a sticky.

Popoutman

Nearly forgot:
For the Linux users amongst us:

Xephem
Free to download the source code to compile yourself, works with my 9Gb copy of the USNO star database, it's pretty good.

Kstars
The K Desktop Environment planetarium. Fairly simple, but good enough.

Wibbs

On the iphone

Pocket universe is a good un. For an amateur like me anyway.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pocket-universe-virtual-sky/id306916838?mt=8

Sorry I'm not as techy as the locals here with the blue linkage. :)

dbran

Hi

For those folks with android phones here are some pretty cool apps that I have found usefull.

Where is IO A pretty nifty app which gives you the positions of the gallilean moons of Jupiter on any given night in real time and for the next 72 hours.

Iridium Flares Another nice app that predicts the time of iridium flares and their expected position and magnitude.

Solaris This is a nice one too. It gives realtime information about aurora and solar flares.

Ephemdroid This gives the the positions of all the planets in RA and DEC, moons and the sun. Moon phases as well as other interesting information

Google Sky Map Self explanetary! Shows the position of the sky from your location and ties into the gps and accelerometer to move in real time to match the part of the sky you are looking at.

Nasa Images View the daily "Astronomy picture of the day" from the Nasa site and search for previous APOD images.

Hope this helps

dbran

bogman

Skymap by Chris Marriott

A CD-ROM planetarium and star-charting program for Microsoft Windows 98 or later

http://www.skymap.com/

Use this a lot

whynotdo

Google Sky, Slooh bringing users live astronomy

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20019568-52.html

coylemj

bogman wrote: »

Skymap by Chris Marriott



http://www.skymap.com/

Use this a lot

I have had Skymap for years, starting with the very first version that ran on Windows 3.1 all those years ago but Skymap Lite 2005 has stopped working on Windows 7 and I got nowhere with the support people despite the fact that the 'support' page claims that it runs under Win7

http://www.skymap.com/smlite_info.htm

By the looks of it there is zero technical support available for this product and they are just milking the last few bob out of it. The product page for Skymap Lite 2005 was last updated in 2006, the only webpages they've updated since are the pages that list the supported operating systems and the pricing page so it looks to me like they keep adding to the list of 'supported' Windows operating systems and jacking up the price but if you buy it and it doesn't work - tough.

The last service pack for Skymap Lite 2005 was released in Nov. 2005 yet they claim it runs under Windows 7, it doesn't.