SkyChart Updater is a user-friendly software that offers sky simulation, planetarium, and telescope control functionality. Ideal for astronomy enthusiasts, the application provides an immersive experience and a smooth interface to explore the celestial world.
As a telescope control program, SkyChart supports all the computer-controlled telescopes on the market. This means that you can use your computer screen to see where your telescope is pointing, or move the telescope to any object in the sky with just one click of the mouse. However, the SkyChart Updater is only available for registered users.
Some of the key features of SkyChart include its ability to accurately reproduce eclipses, transits, and occultations. Additionally, the program can show you the sky from beyond the solar system, highlighting the change in celestial scenery as you move. SkyChart also has the ability to animate the sky forward or backward in time over thousands of years.
SkyChart can support leading telescopes from Meade, Celestron, and other manufacturers. It allows users to see where their telescope is pointing on their computer screen, and to slew it to any object in the sky with one click of the mouse. There is even a "red screen" mode in SkyChart III to preserve your night vision when observing at the telescope!
The program comes with two fully-customizable object databases. The Standard database, which contains 400,000 stars, tens of thousands of star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies, is installed on your hard drive. On the other hand, the Large database, which resides on the CD-ROM, contains everything in the Standard database plus over 19 million additional stars, and 1 million more galaxies. You can import your own database files to add new comets, asteroids, stars, planets, or deep-sky objects. You can also edit any existing object in the database, even the constellations!
SkyChart renders star images and planet surfaces in 32-bit color with data derived from NASA spacecraft imagery. Users can print high-resolution finder charts in black and white or color, as well as export images in many different file formats like BMP, GIF, JPEG, PICT, and TIFF. Animations can also be saved as GIF files that can be viewed in any web browser.
SkyChart computes positions of celestial bodies, such as the Sun, Moon, major planets, their moons, dozens of comets and asteroids, to within milli-arcseconds of their values in the Astronomical Almanac. This means that users can investigate historical events like eclipses and conjunctions that took place centuries ago and reproduce them with accuracy.
Lastly, SkyChart computes and displays the positions of Earth satellites using standard NASA/NORAD two-line element satellite orbit files with the full-precision SGP4/SDP4 satellite orbit models. Users can follow the International Space Station across the sky or predict a satellite passage in front of the Moon.
SkyChart is compatible with operating systems that have 128 MB of memory, 35 MB of hard disk space, and a PowerPC G3 233 MHz or faster processor. With all these features, SkyChart is an impressive software program that is perfect for building your astronomical knowledge while having fun exploring.
Version 3.6.4: N/A