"Sky and Telescope" has a nice collection of on-line astronomy utilities. One of my favorites displays the positions of Jupiter's Galilean moons. It also gives you some nice heads up on the transit and eclipses of the moons. Its fun to play with the "+10 minute" button and see how they move around. The view you see above is fairly close to what I see through my telescope (but Jupiter's stripes are not quite so pronounced). You can get the utility for free -- you just have to fill out a registration form.
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4 hours ago
Have you ever tried Celestia? http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
ReplyDeleteI think you would like this. You can view the sky as it appears from wherever you want to in space. You can speed up and slow down time to watch moons and planets move. There are free addons for adding the various probes and satellites which have been launched over the years.
As long as we're mentioning astro programs I'll mention mine called XEphem. You can download a free version from http://www.xephem.com. It's designed for UNIX platforms, such as linux or Apple OS X, but does run on Windows under Cygwin.
ReplyDeleteI'll also add Stellarium to the comments ( http://www.stellarium.org/) :)
ReplyDelete73,
Nick LaPointe, KB1SNG
"You can get the utility for free -- you just have to fill out a registration form."
ReplyDeleteIt's not free if you have to divulge personal information in exchange.