Astronomy Program

Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
Can anyone recommend a commercial OS X native astronomy program? It doesn?t have to have a lot of bells and whistles; I want it for naked eye star and constellation identification and for printing out sky charts for both northern and southern hemisphere. It should also be able to show the sky as it would appear/appeared for at least several thousand years.



Thanks for any suggestions.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    paulpaul Posts: 5,278member
    starry night pro...



    do a search on apple's os X download site (get software link in the apple menu) or www.macupdate.com



    I used it a few years ago and it was phenomenal... I had no real use for it so I didn't buy it or keep up with it, but I'm sure it has gotten much much better since then and last I heard it was Mac OS X native...
  • Reply 2 of 4
    bartobarto Posts: 2,246member
    KStars is more functional, and free.



    1) Install X11 off your Mac OS X install CDs (if you haven't already).



    2) Download Fink



    3) Install Fink (if you haven't already)



    4) Open Fink Commander (it's in the Fink disk image).



    5) Select KStars in the FInk Commander window, and then click the top left button in the toolbar (the one with the blue + sign). This will download and install KStars... wait until the process is completed.



    6) Open X11 (probably in your Utilities or Applications folder), and select "Customize..." in the Applications menu. Click "Add Item", and type "KStars" (without quotes) for the name and "/sw/bin/kstars" (without quotes) for the command.



    Now to open KStars anytime, just open X11 and then select "KStars".



    Barto
  • Reply 3 of 4
    Starry Night Pro for OS X is impressive, but there's an AI option...

    one of our members writes some web-based astronomy tools



    paging Shetline... your Java is now serving



    SkyviewCafe
  • Reply 4 of 4
    <<starry night pro...>>



    Thanks for the suggestion. I downloaded a trial copy of Starry Night Enthusiast and will play with it for a few days. The Pro version, while impressive, seemed like overkill for what I wanted.



    I've been using a golden-oldie, Voyager, which was written for, I believe OS 8. It works in OS 9 but is flakey, crashing the system if you have the color set for millions and displays best at 4 bit grey scale.
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