Paul Cella had a post here about stargazing.
For stargazing I highly recommend the shareware program Skyglobe. It is truly shareware. If you try to send a check to the address, it comes back to you in the mail. I got my copy before there was a Web, so I didn't download it off the Web. I hope the download from here works. You can Google other sites that let you download it as well. I hear it doesn't work with Windows Vista, which is just another reason not to get Vista. We've had to create a generic icon for it on our desktop, which makes it easier to get to (without having to go to the DOS prompt).
It's hard to believe something so useful is absolutely free. Skyglobe works chiefly by keystrokes. It will come up showing the sky at the time on your computer. Hit L and choose a location near you for the most accurate picture of the sky. Hit C repeatedly to add more and more constellation lines (and eventually to make them go away). Arrow keys allow you to look around your sky. If you point your mouse at a star directly, you will see the name or number displayed in the corner of the screen.
Where I am, the bitterest cold of winter is over, and we are even occasionally having clear nights. It isn't yet light into the night, as it will be in the summer. So around about 8:30 we can sometimes see some neat things. Orion, westering a bit, still dominates the southern sky, hunting Taurus the bull. Canis Major, with Sirius brightly visible in it, lopes at his heels. Just above Canis Major, Procyon wags the tail of Canis Minor, who refuses to be left out of the hunt. And over to the east, Leo now rises, ramping straight up the sky.
I also recommend the books on the stars by H. A. Rey, best known as the creator of Curious George. The books are geared to kids, but grownups will find them useful too.
Comments (5)
I use Stellarium, an amazing application for looking around, and learning about, the night sky. It is graphically driven, allowing you to pan around with your mouse, and you can choose to display (or not) stars, planets, constellations, and even nebulae. Like the program you describe, it shows you the sky as it looks from your location and time. It is also free.
Posted by cnb | March 25, 2009 12:25 PM
I got skyglobe working in Vista in about 3 minutes. DosBox ( http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1 ) allows backward compatibility that vista doesn't support natively.
It's definitely not ideal, but it does work.
Posted by Todd | March 25, 2009 9:20 PM
Cool. Obviously the guy at Sidewalk Astronomy (who I believe is the one who said that about Vista) doesn't know how to do that. (Neither do I, but I don't have to, because I don't have Vista.) But it's good to know, because the program shd. be widely usable. It's a lot of fun.
Posted by Lydia | March 25, 2009 10:00 PM
Microsoft's World Wide Telescope is also a great free program, as it includes access to lots of photographic images from various sky surveys. On my laptop, I use WWT and Stellarium.
But generally I do my stargazing, and planning thereof, with AstroInfo on my Palm TX (disclosure: I'm one of the authors of AstroInfo), which is also free.
I'm lucky to live in an area where we don't suffer from bitter cold.
Here's the moon from a couple of days ago.
Posted by Alexander R Pruss | April 3, 2009 12:39 PM
" got skyglobe working in Vista in about 3 minutes. DosBox ( http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1 ) allows backward compatibility that vista doesn't support natively.
It's definitely not ideal, but it does work.
Posted by Todd | March 25, 2009 9:20 PM "
How'd he do that?
Posted by martha | August 14, 2009 10:04 PM