> And here's the REAL can of worms: What do you guys
> general prefer? I've heard a number of votes for
> "Megastar" in the last few days. Are there any other
> serious contenders?
A while ago I tried out all the "free" or shareware planetarium
programs.. cartes'du'ciel and Earth Centered Universe were
the two that come to mind. I ended up getting myself
a copy of thesky level iv. Maybe more than I need, but there
were times where stars were missing from the shareware, but
they were in TheSky. I also received a copy of StarryNightPro.
As it is now, when I look in the eyepeice, I see the same stars
on TheSky as I see in the eyepiece... and it seems that the
limiting magnitudes are set correctly such that I see *all*
the stars that are in the eyepeice. (This is imo essential
for confirming the eyepiece view with the map.)
(Fwiw, I'm using a PC laptop, though I wish I was using OSX.)
My preference is TheSky mainly cuz I've used it for a couple
years.. at this point my brain is sorta trained on it, sorta
to the point of it being instinctive to use. When I get
under a dark sky and I wanna look something up, its almost
automatic with TheSky.
Here are a couple features that imo are neccessary...
Note that this follows the general "workflow" of
observing deepsky... you should be able to move
between these features with as little effort as possible...
1) find object easily from database -- i.e. the "search" function.
2) wide sky view with constellations and crosshairs showing
selected object.
3) attributes of selected object (e.g. magnitude), either in a
popup window or on the chart itself.
4) zoom. especially an *easy* way to zoom. (TheSky does
zoom in/out this with page up/down buttons.)
5) Object size/orientation in various eyepeices - field of view
indicators, including the telrad FOV indicator (very useful for pointing the scope).
6) Ability to flip field for newtownian FOV - eyepiece matching.
TheSky does this with the "N" pointer thing -- you drag that
around until the view matches the eyepeice.
7) Ability to easily select other objects that are a short
starhop from the centered object.
8) Work from a pre-observing-session defined list...
There doesnt seem to be a way to do this with TheSky.. DeepSkyPlanner
may be the ticket here, I dunno. In general, I just work
constellations.
Nice to have...
Overlay display on eyepeice -- eg a transparent
window ala heads-up-display that is placed on top
of the eyepiece.. this shows the program display
superimposed on the actual view. (yeah right.)