STELLARUIM
I'm an avid supporter of all that is open source, and I came across Stellarium in my search for a non-Microsoft version of their new WWT.
(Even though WWT can be downloaded from Microsoft for free, they didn't see fit to give the rest of us the ability to use it.)
First, I must say, Stellarium is incredible! It very accurately lines up everything you'd normally be able to see with a high powered telescope, and even further.
I plugged in where I live, it took that, and the time of day, and presto! I can explore the sky as it is at this very second without a telescope. Of course, to see anything during the day, you have to turn off the atmosphere. Heh.
No need to go mucking about trying to figure out what that damn bright star is, just look at Stellarium, it will tell you what it is, and even give you a much better view than your telescope could hope to achieve... so that's what I was looking at.
When I started the program, and entered my location, behold, exactly what I see on my balcony, minus the neighboring apartments of course.
But.... but... I want to go stargazing... I don't want to see sky... oh... whats this button do?
Oooooooh. Hey... whats that spec? Lets have a look... that looks familiar...
Okay. Now if you want to know what all those robed people thousands of years ago were yammerin' about... here's the constellations.
.... ah yes. The things you see when you're stoned... er... ancient....anyhow. If you're sort of into stargazing... but sorta-not-really... don't go buying a telescope! Get Stellarium!
If you use a debian form of linux (Ubuntu included) just get it from your synaptic package manager... no need to go searching download sites like those windows users.
(Those guys scare me.)
1 comments:
Thanks, I am downloading it now. I always wanted to by a telescope, but I wanted a good one. Never could save - there was always something more important. I don' want to buy a cheap one, so this should be a good learning tool for me.
Thanks a lot!
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