I have an old version of Starry Night Pro. Although it's severely outdated for near-Earth objects, all the light-year stuff is still accurate. It's also OpenGL, so it renders well in 3D. The interface is decent. Navigation is easy, but time changes could be made quite a bit easier. Maybe they've changed it with more current versions.


On a related note, I've been looking at the truss-tube dobsonian scopes. My old scope has seen better days (not to mention the optics). I figure 8" is more than what I could use with all the city-glow, and they are compact (and lightweight) enough that I could find a place to store it. Anyone messed around with a Lightbridge?

No, but I used to use an Scottish-made NGC1701 Beamer for that certain plus in immediate experience.

So I see that you do render, and well equipped to take any beatings too. cool! :D

Great suggestions here. :up:

I am still using Redshift 4, but the latest version is probably available. The best I have seen so far.

If you have Linux/Unix with KDE, Kstars is good.
http://docs.kde.org/stable/en/kdeedu/kstars/
There's also Xephem, however the full system is not free or gratis.
http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/

I got both Stellarium and Celestial

Both me likee very much.

I'm going to go to some field nearby and do a panoramic photo job so I can put my own scene in Stellarium
Celestial I'm going to use to teach my daughter about the solar system and also learn to write scripts to do a fly by set to Holst's The Planets suite. I know original but what the hell.

What I want to do is a script that follows Voyager from earth to exiting the solar system.


cheers Sky and MS you have come up trumps.

try to find an old CD with Tomita'S version of Holst's The Planets. If you do not know him, in the 70s and 80s he used synthesizers for electronical interpretations of classical music, some of these have resulted in really famous albums. Tomita's The Planets is like a radio play in sound and music, from countdown and launch of the rocket to leaving the solar system, having memories of man's cradle back on earth - more impressive than the classical original (which is not true of all his works).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Planets-Tomi...e=UTF8&s=music

Awesome program guys! I am having fun with this thing. Space is just so amazing.

Nice bit of software - cheers :up:

How about a script competition. See who can come up with fun stuff.

anyone here who has tried the blue marble textures for Earth - more than 1 GB of data, that is? some detail-screenshots would be appreciated.

What blue marble textures are you speaking of?

I finally found some "hidden" pictures at the page describingn what blue marble is:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/

Screenshots here:

• <LI class=head>High-resolution images:
• 1024 by 1024 screen (190 kB JPEG)
• 4096 by 4096 screen (1 MB JPEG)
• 4096 by 4096 print (12 MB PNG)