Didn’t sound like something that could help deep sky crazy Unk with the Herschel Project, but it might be just the Skyglobe replacement I was looking for. I’d heard about Stellarium, which was, from what I could tell, focused on showing a realistic sky rather than displaying hundreds of thousands of LEDA galaxies. Surely there was a 21st century program that could do the job and was a little easier on the eyes. I’d probably be using Skyglobe still if my Windows XP laptop hadn’t gone belly up.Įven before the tragic death of my Toshiba Satellite, I’d been searching for a Skyglobe replacement. It was fast to load, blazingly fast, and getting the area of the sky I was interested in centered was the work of a few seconds. For years and years.ĭespite its age and the undeniable clunkiness of its graphics, Skyglobe was all I needed for quick looks at the sky. What has Unk been using, then? The ancient DOS app, Skyglobe 3.6. That leaves out the heavy-hitters, including big names like Starry Night Pro Plus and TheSky 6.

I want a program that is quick like a bunny. I do not want to cool my heels while the program loads. Fer instance, I want to know if Saturn is high up enough RIGHT NOW for me to tote our StarBlast mini-Dob onto the front porch for a 5-minute peep at the ringed wonder. I like to have a planetarium program for spur-of-the-moment sky checks. And, while the updated display of CdC version 3.0 looks good, it can’t compete with the likes of Starry Night and RedShift. It’s a little slow to load for use for quick “what’s up” looks at the virtual sky. That’s the good, but like every other piece of software, Cartes ain’t good at everything. It can interface with other programs like Deepsky and RTGUI, can go incredibly deep, and is all many deep sky obsessed amateur astronomers need or ever will need. Some folks like it even better than Cartes, though it is aimed at a somewhat different audience.Ĭartes du Ciel is great. With Cartes du Ciel, it’s become the most popular freeware astronomy application. If’n you have even a nodding acquaintance with the world of astronomy software, I don’t have to tell you what a “ Stellarium” is.

Stellarium download for mac