Free Planetarium Programs for Amateur astronomers

Nightfire Scientific \| Telescopes \| Accessories \| Binoculars \| Software \| Tech Papers \| Contact \| Privacy \| About \|
Planetarium Programs You might be surprised to learn that you do not always need to spend a fortune to get the type of planetarium program you would like to use. Now you can get some really high performance planetarium software at a price you will really enjoy. FREE! Be prepared to be amazed! Get a copy of some of the most stunning, free, software ever offered to amateur astronomers and those who enjoy the nighttime sky. But just what is a planetarium program? To put it simply, a planetarium program is a digital computer version of the night sky. What you see on the computer screen represents exactly what you see in the night sky... every star, planet, deep space object, comets and the moon. Planetarium programs are amazing. You simply type in your location on planet earth along with the time and date, and that is it. The software will show you exactly what your local sky overhead looks like. Plus, it will identify every object in the sky that you can see with the naked eye or through a telescope. Do you have trouble identifying the constellations or would you like to teach someone about them? Do you recognize the planets when you see them in the sky? Then a planetarium program is just what you need. Some of these programs can even be connected to your telescope and actually control it for you!	Planetarium Programs HOME PLANET : An earth map, showing day and night regions, location of the Moon and current phase, and position of a selected earth satellite. Earth maps can be customized and extended by editing a DLL which provides maps to Home Planet. A panel showing detailed position and phase data for the Sun and Moon. Panel showing positions of planets and a selected asteroid or comet, both geocentric and from the observer's location. A sky map, based on either the Yale Bright Star Catalogue or the 256,000 star SAO catalogue, including rendering of spectral types, planets, earth satellites, asteroids and comets. Celestial coordinates are included, and an extensive and user-extensible deep-sky database includes all Messier objects and many of the NGC objects. Precession and proper motion are accounted for in the display. Databases of the orbital elements of 5632 asteroids and principal periodic comets are included, allowing selection of any for tracking. These databases can be user-extended using standard orbital elements. MS-DOS utility programs are included which convert asteroid and comet orbital elements in the form published in Minor Planet Electronic Circulars (MPECs) to the CSV format used by Home Planet. Subscribers to the MPECs can thus easily add newly reported asteroids and comets to the database. Source code for these programs is included. VISIT HOMEPAGE AND DOWNLOAD 3D ASTRONOMER: *OK. This one isn't free, but this software is totally addicting and unlike anything else out there. Loading the player ... See the 3D ASTRONOMER in action right here! STARCALC :** StarCalc is the fastest professional astronomy planetarium & star mapping program for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP. It illustrates star positions of any instance of the day observed from any geographic locations on the Earth. The star positions can be viewed and presented as images of hemispherical whole sky or any of the user defined sub-areas. These images can be zoomed at different scales, rotated, screen-captured and printed. Also, StarCalc has many other functions of calculation and showing of sky objects. Best of all StarCalc is freeware. Extensibility: This program is based on common "Plugin StarCalc interface to catalogs and object groups", which allows program to add new modules as Plugins. These modules enable the program to use astronomy catalogs support and many others add-ons down the road or directly from other vendors. Fast performance:: extra efficient algorithms allow the program to calculate a sky image in a fraction of a second even just on very old computers. User friendliness: StarCalc has a simple interface, most operations are implemented by mouse. The program employees the WYSIWYG technology (What You See Is What You Get), which helps you to print a detailed image of any enlarged area of sky in its finest astronomical details. * Latest release supports ASCOM telescope control * VISIT HOMEPAGE AND DOWNLOAD SKYORB : SkyORB is a 3D planetarium, star gazing and epheremis, based from V3X.net engine. It features a modern 3D interface, search engine, a large catalog of stars, planets, moons and updatable comets satellites and asteroids database, and let you choose see the actual sky from any point on Earth or from any planet from the solar system. NEW SkyORB VR 08 : DirectX 10 rendering, terrain rendering in local view, HDR rendering for Windows XP, Vista, and MacOSX. VISIT HOMEPAGE AND DOWNLOAD CELESTIAL MAPS v.8.0 : Celestial Maps 8.0 is an astronomical software that produces accurate maps of the sky in five types of projections. It has been written in Borland Delphi 4 for Windows on 32 bits. The software is very user friendly, a main menu being visible at any time on the top bar under the application title. Beside the application's main form, other 23 forms set the various functions of the program. All the forms are easily accessible using the mouse or the keyboard. This can be done in three possible ways: * Point and click to the main menu's items; * Using shortcut key combinations written nearby each menu item; * Using "F" hot keys (for the main functions of the program). The Database of Celestial Maps v.8.0 runs 10 astronomical catalogues, organized in two main database: The small database (about 25,000 stars up to mag 7.5 and the Messier catalogue); The large database, including the following professional catalogues: > SAO J2000 (about 250,000 stars up to about mag 10); > PPM (4 catalogues of 500,000 stars up to about mag 11); > Tycho-2 (2 catalogues of 2,500,000 stars up to about mag 12.5); > GSC 1.1 (18,000,000 stars and nonstellars up to about mag 15.5); > NGC 2000 (NGC and IC catalogues of 13,000 objects up to mag 17). * All these catalogues add together about 22 millions of objects up to the maximum mag 17. * VISIT HOMEPAGE AND DOWNLOAD CNebulaX Project : The current release is complete and can be used to plot very good maps. The main aim is the construction of powerful sky maps and lists of deep sky objects, to be studied in our deep sky observing sessions. It also implements a library, telescope control, ephemerid facilities, prediction of visibility, overlaying facilities, annotations, and more auxiliary tools for the deep sky observer. It is an excellent instrument for learning to know the sky at many levels. * Absolutely a "Must See" freeware application! * VISIT HOMEPAGE AND DOWNLOAD