There are many differences between a desktop environment and a minimalist production environment. Living in a big city (Amsterdam), where city lights, air pollution and airplane and car traffic limit the quality of stargazing, a high quality software simulation is the nearest I can meaningfully get to the past. Therefore, it was with great pleasure that I recently rediscovered the software version of this experience. We had an understanding that during these quiet moments only the stars counted and nothing else was said. My father loved to tell me stories of the Greeks and the Romans and relate them to the patterns above. Cold nights were perfect for viewing the stars. When I was five or six my father used to walk with me on cold winter nights from my house at the top of a country hill to the bottom where my sports club existed. Why am I writing this? This is an article based on a remembrance of my father and reinforced by the brilliance of modern well-written open source Astronomy software. Figure 2: Celestia’s view of Earth via the software’s default dataset Memories Both Stellarium and Celestia have a supportive community of developers and their project homepages reside on Sourceforge. You may tour the solar system or with the help of extra datasets discover the scale of the known Universe. Stellarium is one of the highest quality products in the market placeĬelestia is a real time 3D space simulation using open GL graphics (figure 2) and a plug in infrastructure, this software delivers an educationally valuable double punch. This is one of the highest quality products in the market place. Don’t be fooled by the software’s 0.8 version label (at the time of writing). You may even choose to view the heavens from the moon. The software is a precision tool with hairline accuracies, which places you anywhere in the world at any time. Stellarium (figure 1) is a sky renderer that marries accuracy and correctness with pure, unadulterated art. Figure 1: Stellarium with constellation art rendered And, if not, at least your eyes will feast upon some delicious candy. You never know, you might learn something along the way. These packages are visually appealing and fun to use. I will describe the installation and use of two astronomy related software packages: Stellarium and Celestia. Being a devoted backseat observer to the evolution of the Universe in general and GNU/Linux software in specific, I thought it was time to show off what I consider to be the elite of desktop elegance. You can also check out a free sample issue here.Astronomy software comes in many forms-from the details of computer intensive Grid computing of the distribution of stars (okay that’s astrophysics) to rendering the night sky in artistically detailed and sumptuous graphics. ![]() ![]() Click here to get these deals which only will be available for a very limited time. You can learn more on what’s available in the latest version release here.Īnd to make it easier for you to get the most extensive telescope and amateur astronomy related news, articles and reviews that are only available in the magazine pages of Astronomy Technology Today, we are offering a 1 year subscription for only $6! Or, for an even better deal, we are offering 2 years for only $9. If you want to compile development versions of Stellarium you can get the source code here. The latest development snapshot of Stellarium is hosted on GitHub. Highlights of the release include direct ASCOM support for the Telescope Control plugin on Windows, refactoring of the GUI, improvements in DSO catalog and many other improvements to the code. The community behind the free software has announced v0.19.3 has been released. A plugin is available to provide telescope control. The software offers a built-in catalogue of more than 600,000 stars and provides the ability to download additional catalogues of over 170 million stars. There is a zoom option available to simulate using a telescope or binoculars. Users can fast forward the time to track the movement of stars and other objects across the sky. Stellarium provides a real-time view of what the sky looks like from anywhere on earth. Stellarium is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 and is available for Linux, Windows, and macOS. Stellarium is an open-source planetarium software which renders 3D photo-realistic skies in real time displaying stars, constellations, planets, nebulae and more.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |