Safe Speed Forums

I know there are some astronomers amongst our number, and I wondered if you were all aware of a bit of free software available to show the sky which you observe in real time.
It's available for MAC, LINUX, and WINDOWS!
If you know NOTHING about astronomy, and want to know what you are looking at, this is for YOU, but if you are a competent astronomer, you will appreciate this too!

www.stellarium.org

No popups or registration, just a brilliant program download for FREE.
Remember to set your latitude/location in the preferences.

I'd guess that eventually this will become a commercial program for sale, so get it now!

_________________
Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

Nice, thanks for the link.

In return I'll offer a link to http://www.orbitersim.com, a free space flight simulator (warning: very addictive).

This is a very impressive planetarium. It is very similar to Starry Night Pro, with far fewer features but, crucially, leaving out none of the important "look-see" ones for planning a night's viewing.

Many thanks, Ern.

I'm particularly impressed with the buildings/trees as a backdrop. It really helps give a sense of scale to the scene. I used to use Redshift and it was very difficult to mentally project the screen map onto the real sky; this is a massive improvement.

Excellent, thanks Ernest

You are

There have been updates to the scenery recently, and other scenes are available to make it look more like your surroundings. A distant relative informs me he is working to make the scenery match the view from his flat!

I used to use a Philips Planisphere, but now use this to entertain and amuse on rainy days, as well as to find my way around. It only just occurred to me to share today - it's been touted by a presenter on Radio Cumbria for some time now in his fortnightly astronomy slot!
Might come in handy if your sat nav packs in unexpectedly!

_________________
Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

Thanks Ernest. Stellarium is wonderful.

I have still been using the very old DOS based Skyglobe because all of the Windows apps I have tried are too frustrating to use. This works just like an updated version of Skyglobe with a simple interface so I'm very happy