Re: [APML] Star chart software (was Comet Ikeya-Zhang)

[Roland Roberts <roland@astrofoto.org>]

>>>>> "Bobby" == Bobby Middleton <bobm@koyote.com> writes:

    Bobby> I'm very jealous of the nice chart you provided from Starry
    Bobby> Night at the link below. How did you update the comet
    Bobby> elements into your software? Is your version of SN the Pro
    Bobby> version or one of the less expensive versions?  

I have the Pro version and it has a feature to automatically download
them from the Starry Night website.  The files they load are the same
as the one from MPC except they have reordered the listing.  Starry
Night will normally not load the entire file (there is a configurable
limit), so they put the brightest ones first.

    Bobby> Would others recommend SN or perhaps other software?

Starry Night is great for its imagery.  And the Pro version will let
you put up an arbitrary sized "eyepiece" e.g., the FOV of a camera
lens or CCD.  At the Summer Star Party
(http://www.rocklandastronomy.com/) I saw someone using The Sky which
has a nicer interface for setting up a camera FOV.

I also use XEphem under Linux (http://www.xephem.com/).  It doesn't
have such a flashy interface, but the functionality is good.  It can
also use USNO SA-2.0 or A-2.0 in their native format which SN can't
do.  It comes with some scripts to pull down the latest comet and
asteroid orbital elements, or you get just get them preformatted from
MPC.

roland
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Roland B. Roberts, PhD                             RL Enterprises
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