Starry Night Pro 4

Graphing Tool

The graphing tool is a very powerful new feature in Starry Night Pro. With the graphing tool you can graph the separation between two objects such as the Moon and Venus over time. This is awesome for predicting conjunctions. It also graphs altitude of an object so you can see when it will be at its highest for a night. Apparent magnitude can be graphed. For instance you can graph how bright a comet will be for a given time. You can graph an objects distance form your current location. Elongation of two objects can be graphed such as Mercury and the Sun so you can see when is the best time to see Mercury. Last but not least angular size can be graphed. This is great for Mars.

The graphing tool is very unique feature that many other software don?t have. Sure all software will predict the above things but it isn?t has handy as the Starry Night Pro graphing tool. It is a great feature that I think a lot of Starry Night users should get to know.

Planner

Starry Night has a nightly planer. You click on the planner tab on the left and out comes a list of suggested objects visible that evening sorted by time when best viewed. It displays sunrise, sunset, moonrise/set and dusk ends. The planner list comets, planets and some brighter well known deep sky objects that are mostly messier. You can add any object you wish simply by right clicking on it on the chart or find tab. You can click on the arrow to the left of the object and Starry Night will display a menu which list center, magnify, graph, add field of view indicator and others.

The planner is a very handy feature that is extremely useful. It will answer the question what can I see tonight especially for the beginner. The planner however is not as full featured as programs such as Skytools or Deepsky 2003 but it isn?t suppose to be. It is just a simple what can I see tonight planner.

User Interface

The user interface is one of Starry Nights strong suits. To move around in the sky you just click and drag and the sky moves. To zoom just use the handy zoom slider. Starry Night has full menus and a nice toolbar with descriptive icons. One thing I like about Starry Night that is different then most other astronomy programs is its tabbed interface. On the left there is a series of tabs such as find, view options, movies, planner, info, FOV indicators and telescope. You click on one of the tabs such as find and a panel slides out with options to help in finding objects. Click on the find tab again and the panel will become hidden. The tabs are very nice, handy and reduce the pop up dialog boxes.

The interface is so simple even those who have never used astronomy software before can jump right in and do at least the basics. The controls are well placed and labeled well. Starry Night is probably the easiest astronomy program to use.

Miscellaneous features

Starry Night has other features worth mentioning that really doesn?t fit in the other categories that I am going to lump into this one. One is the movies. Starry Night has several well produced movies 8 to 10 minutes in length on various topics of astronomy from planets, comets and deepsky. The information in the movies though interesting is info most experienced amateurs have heard before. But they are great for the beginner. Once you watch a movie you probably won?t watch it again.

Starry Night features field of view indicators. The indicators represent telrad finder circles, finderscope, binoculars or telescope. The indicators are fully customizable plus they are a great aid to help you find your target object.
The orbital editor is a very handy tool to use. Its main purpose is an easy interface to add comets, artificial satellites and asteroids that are not in Starry Night?s database. You can find sources for elements on the internet and enter in the data in the corresponding fields. You can even add a graphic for the objects detailed look.

Adding known comets and asteroids is not the only thing you can do with the orbital editor. You can add imaginary objects such as planets. The editor through stunning visual graphics will show the orbit through the solar system. This can be a great tool for teachers explaining basic orbital mechanics to their students.

Added:  Wednesday, August 20, 2003
Reviewer:  Shawn Grant
Score:
Related Link:  http://www.starrynight.com/
Hits: 7200
Language: eng
Page: 4/5