Sky Charts (a.k.a. Cartes du Ciel) computes and prints customized charts of the heavens. When you download the program ("basic package") it comes with the Bright Star Catalogue (featuring stars down to mag. 6.5) and a database of 10'000 nebulae from SAC 7.2. Optionally, you may choose to download the "complete package", including also Sky2000, version 3, with 300' 000 stars to magnitude 9, high precision planetary satellites positions and Realsky support.

Anyway, the point is for you to later get additional free catalogues from its homepage, according to your interests and specific needs. For instance, Tycho-2 with more than 3 millions stars, down to mag. 12.1; a catalogue of 68'179 variable stars from GCVS, NSV and EVS; a database of 193'898 galaxies from PGC1999 catalogue etc, etc...

Main features offered include:

• about 30 catalogues of stars, star clusters, nebulae and galaxies;
• ability of demanding portions of star catalogues online so as to plot charts until mag. 20;
• facility of self-updating online, from different sources, the comet and asteroid elements databases;
• option to request from SkyView - Digital Sky Survey, and similar sources, real sky images of the region drawn on the chart - with the ability of superimposing and easily editing, filtering and chromatically juggling them;
• DDE interface allowing the joint use with VAROBS - another freeware by Patrick Chevalley, consecrated to variable stars;
• interface for telescope control;
• additional support of Real Sky and USNO Cds etc, etc...

DeepSkyStacker is a freeware for astrophotographers that simplifies all the pre-processing steps of deep sky pictures and is specialized in RAW files from DSLRs.

• Registering
• Stacking
• Simple post-stacking processes to quickly view the final result.
• Saving the resulting picture to a TIFF or FITS file (16 or 32 bit)

Features:

• Automatic registration of a set of pictures

• Automatic detection of stars using all the picture area

• Preview of registered stars

• Sub pixel registration

• Automatic derotation

• Automatic creation and use of offsets, flats and darks frames

• Sub pixel alignment and stacking

• Supported bitmaps formats : 8, 16 et 32 bit colour and monochrome TIFF files, 16, 32 and 64 colour and monochrome FITS files, JPEG, BMP, PNG

• Native use of RAW files from most DSLRs (CR2, NEF, CRW, ...) without using an intermediate file format (TIFF or other).

• Darks, Flats and Offsets computed from and applied directly to the RAW picture before any interpolation.

• Stacking methods: average, median, kappa-sigma clipping, auto adaptive weighted average, entropy weighted average, maximum...

• Preview of all pictures (including RAW)

• Simple post-processing with RGB levels, luminance curve and saturation adjustments.

• Save the resulting picture to 16 and 32 bit TIFF or FITS files with or without adjustments applied.

• Simple and intuitive user interface

• Optimal memory usage: the same amount of memory is required to register and stack 10 or 500 pictures.

• Optimal CPU usage: fully multithreaded with optimal use of duo/quad/multi processors.

• And much more...

In short: after a shooting night you give all your pictures (light frames, darks frames, offset/bias frames, flat frames) to DeepSkyStacker and you go to bed. The next morning you can see the result and start post-processing.

You can explore real planets - like Mars and Earth - or use imaginary data.

It's conceived to be easily usable "in the field" according to an observing session needs, but also to study "at home" the Moon and its relief. It's interfaced with "Sky Charts" freeware (above). This set is certainly now one of the most complete released.

It's possible to choose the language used by the software and database.

Files have been cut in several packages.

New features introduced in version 2 included :
- Introduction of "Moon complete globe" with Far Side;
- Simulation of a spatial flight orbiting the Moon;
- VMA is now separated in 3 modular versions;
-- AVL "Light”: 2D software for less performing hardware;
-- AVL "Basic”: Basic software presenting the "3D with librations" mode;
-- AVL "Expert”: Advanced software presenting the "3D complete globe" mode;
- New texture of complete globe realized with Clementine high resolution photos by professor Mark S. Robinson and his team of the "Northwestern University";
- More than 600 new Far Side craters and formations descriptions;
- Database corrections for some bad entries;
- New pictures library: "Moon Stars" 130 LOPAM pictures of the most famous lunar formations

News functions introduced with 2.1 included :
- Computerized goto mount support;
- Moon phase calendar.

Features:

• Over 120000 stars from the Hipparcos Catalogue with name and infos for the brightest ones.
• Planets and major satellites in real time, with a powerfull zoom mode to see them like in a telescope.
• Planet position computation now accurate enough for eclipse or transit simulation.
• Drawing of the 88 constellations with their names.
• Textured displaying of more than 70 nebulas (Orion, M31 etc..).
• Photorealistic Milky Way.
• Ground, fog, and landscape.
• Ultra fast realistic atmosphere rendering.
• Automatic eye adaptation to luminance.
• Star twinkling.
• Smooth real time intuitive navigation.
• Equatorial and altazimutal mode.
• Fisheye projection mode (e.g for planetarium dome).
• Grids in Equatorial and Azimuthal coordinates.
• Time control (real time and accelered time modes).
• Graphical menu for simple utilisation.
• Clikable stars, planets and nebulas with informations.
• Ecliptic and celestrial equator lines.
• Windowed and fullscreen modes.

This is the Windows version. Linux/Unix and MacOSX versions are also available.

On the graphical side, it offers the classical representation of the celestial sphere; the situation of the sky over the local horizon; elongations and heliocentric position of the planets and a tool to draft/register your sunspot observations.

On the ephemeris side, it gives you access to a wide set of utilities with all expected calculations: current time in some twenty calendars; eclipses; conjunctions; seasons; distances; moon phases; conversion of coordinates; an option to list the objects by type seen over a given period of time and on a given constellation etc, etc... Also featured is an interface to record personal observations.

It is offered without any restrictions, except it does not include some of the more advanced features the full version has to offer.

A MIDP1.0/2.0 midlet for most Java-enabled mobile phones (cell phones). Simulates whole sky at any point on earth with constellations, stars up to 6 mag, solar systems and some other celestial objects. It may be a useful tool when you are bathed under star lights with your cell phone in the pocket. This also gives you a serious and detailed guide of current sky above your head at your location.

Features:

Both Horizontal and Equatorial Coordinate Display of whole sky. 88 constellation names, 83 constellation stick figures, 10 messiers and stars up to mag 6.0 (5080 stars, and 50 common star names).
• All 8 planets plus Sun and Moon is calculated, information is displayed respectively on a seperate screen.
• Location and Date/Time can be set at startup.
• Applicable for any location on earth given a specific time.
• Auto update of celestial object positions.
• Sophisticated display control over all information on screen.
• Support English and Chinese display of celestial object name.
• Tiny 150KB compressed jar file. (All 6 mag stars insides, for version 0.08)

Features include:
. All stars brighter than magnitude 4.0 clearly visible in a graphic rendering of the sky. Dimmer stars needed to complete the constellation figures are also included, with an accurate reproduction of each star's color.
. Over 100 common star names, including all the standard navigational stars.
. Accurate calculations of the positions of the planets, Sun and the Moon for your location.
. An accurate representation of the current phase of the Moon.
. An intuitive way to determine what is in your sky currently, regardless of the size of your cell phone's screen.
. Wireless network access not required! If you're lucky enough to find yourself at a very remote dark sky site, all of picoSky features will still work. picoSky has completely self contained databases and harnesses the computational power of your cell phone to create a graphical representation of the sky.
. Geometric figures and names for all 88 constellations.
. Over 250 of the brightest and most popular deep sky objects, with each type (globular cluster, open cluster, galaxy, nebula, planetary nebula, and asterism) easily identifiable. If available its common name is also included.
. Search for and find any star, constellation or deep sky object in picoSky's databases and obtain detailed information for that object. A quickly accessible menu also gives you detailed information about the Sun, Moon and each planet. For example: Distance from the Earth and Sun for the planets, Moon, and Sun; Rise, Transit, and Set times ; Right Ascension and Declination coordinates ; Altitude and Azimuth coordinates ; The ability to view the object if above the horizon.
. View what will be or what was in the sky for any given date and time within thirty years from the present.
. Access to a database containing latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates for every telephone area code in the U.S. for simple location selection. Or for more precision, enter your exact location in degrees, minutes and seconds of latitude and longitude.

If you want to learn more about Astronomy, this program also has an on-line extensive Help.

It exports the results to .html, .csv (spreadsheet) and .txt formats.

Version 2 also includes an on-line automatic update feature and a basic sky simulator.

It includes catalogues allowing you to draw individual charts for all constellations (North and South Hemispheres, amounting to 92 charts); 40 generic charts covering all of the sky and seven «special topics» charts (the Pleiads, open clusters on the Milky Way etc...).

Features include: you can fly anywhere in space; each star is depicted with its "real" color; you can filter stars by many parameters; simplified Wireframe of our Milky Way Galaxy is available; you can check a star in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram; finding a famous star by its names is available; you can study constellations.»

StarStrider is a fully three-dimensional planetarium and 'software star ship'.

You can visit not only the planets and moons of our solar system, but also hundreds of thousands of other stars. And you can view spectacular galaxies, cluster, nebulae!

Relativistic space-time effects such asaberration and Doppler shift are optional!

Requires a 3D-card. Anaglyph 3D-glasses (for true '3D stereo') and joystick are optional.

USED FILE FORMATS:
RegiStax can read/write many input/output file-formats. In version 3 the amongs webcammers popular RAW-AVI format has been added to allow direct processing.

INPUT
* NEW:Multiple AVI (bypassing the 2Gb filelimit)
* NEW: Direct RAW AVI debayering (incl. usage of raw darkframes)
* NEW: PNG lossless compressed files support (input 8/16 bit/channel)
* AVI (8 bit/channel; optimized for NON-compressed formats)
* BMP/JPEG (8 bit/channel)
* TIFF (8 and 16bit/channel)
* FIT (16 and 32 bit/channel; multiple channels in one file NOT supported)

OUTPUT
* NEW: Registered AVI-sequence output (non-compressed)
* NEW: PNG lossless compressed files (16 bit/channel)
* JPEG (8 bit/channel)
* BMP/JPEG (8bit/channel)
* TIFF( 16 bit/channel)
* FIT (16/32 bit/channel; multiple channels in one file NOT supported)

Features include:

REGISTRATION
The registration in RegiStax V3 has been optimized to run a lot faster and give the user more options to select images. The 3 new quality estimation methods allow better initial quality estimates.

OPTIMISATION

STACKING

WAVELET PROCESSING
The main power of RegiStax is located in the wavelet tab. This is where all the registered and stacked image information can be used by the user to enhance the image.

Also you can get detailed information of any object from the BSC 5.0 Edition. Beside that you can check out the positions of then planets and then moon over a period of 200 years(1900-2100).

designerSky is easy to use and handle. It runs on WinXP.

You need the ***Visual Basic Runtime libraries*** to run designerSKY. You can get them everywhere on the Net (e.g. here) or I can send it to you via email (size about 1 MB).

The program is still the Beta Version

It can be used for serious astronomical study, or just to enjoy its amazing graphics.