SpaceChart
What is the distance between us and Alpha Centauri? Which stars reside in a radius of 5 light years?If you can't sleep because of such questions, you urgently need SpaceChart.
A new program for displaying celestial charts has been available for a short time. Unlike the programs already
reviewed, XEphem and xplns (http://www.linuxnetmag.de/de/issue4/m4xplore1.html)
the starry sky is not shown from any observation point on earth. Our galaxy with all stars in an area of
about 100 light-years around the sun is shown 3-dimensionally.
Then the data are drawn in a freely moveable (!) 3-dimensional representation where you can zoom and rotate
in all dimensions at will.
Even more celestial charts
The data used are loaded from a file that has been taken from the Gliese Catalogue.
The representation of the many stars is remakable.
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Of course, you can choose specifically which stars to show to simplify a search for special spectral classes ( O to M and white dwarves are chooseable)
In addition, every single star can be selected with your mouse to achieve information about it:
The stars can be shown sorted by their absolute shining intensity.
Unfortunately, the same choice does not apply to the visual brightness of the observation point earth (sun), so
not only are the stars you could actually observe shown, but also the ones you cannot see.
It would be interesting if you could use the existing engine for extra-galactical astronomy
by loading a file with the galaxies of the local group (and further) instead of celestial charts.
In spite of these (little) annoyances, it is fun for every hobby-astronomer to move through the star-constellations of our galaxy and to get a 3-dimensional impression of our starry sky.
Homepage: http://zipi.fi.upm.es/~e970095/spacechart/
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