Ok, let's take a look at the actual program.Here is a screenshot of the program in action, with the constellations outlined on the main screen:
Or, you can have the outlines and/or text identifiers switched off, at your preference.
You can even 'switch off' the sky-glare, so that you can see where the planets and stars are even during the day:
As you can see from the above picture, you can even switch on the visualisation of the orbits of the planets.
One of the more difficult things about some planetarium programs is that you can't always put in your observing location in easily. With my Planetarium, you can set your location easily either by typing in your town into a search box (like in the picture below), by clicking on a map, or by putting in your latitude and longitude - I even include a link to a free website that finds this for you from your postcode! Once you have put your location in, the program remembers it from day to day so you don't have to do it again. Or, you can see what the night sky looks like from any other point on Earth, or even from other planets in our Solar System!
The program runs in real time so that what you see on your computer is always what you will see in the sky at that time and place. However, the program also has a 'time skip' mode so that the night sky changes at an accelerated rate, so you can watch the sky
as it will be in the future - perhaps to see what time Jupiter rises tonight, or when the moon will set.
Now, it's a well-known fact that many online star maps, ephemerides and such like are difficult to use; maybe they give small and hard-to-see results, maybe they have difficult-to-use interfaces or poor imagery. This program is not like that at all. It took my breath away the first time I saw it - and it still does - with its simple and intuitive interface, its clear, full-screen imagery and photo-realistic views. I have never seen a planetarium program as good as this one, and I am making it available to you now for this excellent low price.
Here's a full list of the features of this program:
Sky - Default catalogue of over 600,000 stars
- Extra catalogues with more than 210 million stars
- Asterisms (star patterns, sort of small constellations) and illustrations of the constellations
- Constellations for twelve different cultures
- Images of nebulae (full Messier catalogue)
- Realistic Milky Way
- Very realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset
- The Planets and their satellites
Interface
- A powerful zoom
- Time control
- Multilingual interface
- Fisheye projection for planetarium domes
- Spheric mirror projection for your own low-cost dome
- All new graphical interface and extensive keyboard control
- Telescope control
Visualisation
- Equatorial and azimuthal grids
- Star twinkling
- Shooting stars
- Eclipse simulation
- Skinnable landscapes, with spheric panorama projection
Customisability - Add your own deep sky objects, landscapes, constellation images, scripts...
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