Sky Chart 3.6 - Draw astronomical charts of the night sky and more. (Free)

Sky Chart 3.6 - Draw astronomical charts of the night sky and more. (Free): "

Sky Chart is a software to draw charts of the night sky for the amateur astronomer from a bunch of stars and nebulae catalogs. Show the position of the planets, simulate any eclipse or look at the artificial satellite. It can also drive the telescope.

Version 3.6:

Interface:

• Change the way the „Show grid' buttons are working.
• Add „Show compass' button.
• Add distance measurement tool, add „Measure distance' button.
• Add chart legend. See menu Chart / Labels
• Add option to only show the meridian lines.
• Increase planet simulation up to 500 positions, no change for comets and asteroids.
• Can change the color for lines and nebulae from the catalog setting.
• Add Tirion constellation figures created by James Trogolo

Catalog and data:

• New default star catalog based on Extended Hipparcos to replace the BSC and Sky2000.
• Add user defined objects in catalog setting.
• New online Internet resources:
• Add any catalog from Vizier, allow for full or partial download.
• Search Simbad, NED, Vizier.
• Link object detail to Simbad, NED, HyperLeda.

Projection mapping:

• Add Mercator projection.
• Cartesian and Mercator projection are rotated to the screen center for full sky coverage.
• Change the default projection to Tangent for FOV up to 90 deg. and Mercator for wider fields.
• Limit the use of Arc projection to 250 deg. FOV.
• Limit the vision of objects below the horizon to 180 deg. FOV.

Coordinates computation:

• Improved precision of the apparent coordinates (many thanks to P. Wallace for its help):
• Star parallax
• Take account of the radial velocity to compute the proper motions.
• Light deflection by the Sun.
• Extended time validity for nutation and aberration if using DE422.
• Compute the precession using „New precession expressions, valid for long time intervals, J. Vondrak, 2011'
• Compute DeltaT values from „Five Millennium Canon of Solar Eclipses, Espenak & Meeus, 2006'
• Extend the allowed date to +/- 200'000 years

Pictures:

• Improved precision in the display of FITS images by using WCStools. Can show the images with transparency.

Internet connection:

• Allow to use Socks proxy

OS X 10.4 or later

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(Via MacUpdate - Mac OS X.)