Applelust is looking to add writers to its staff. If you
are interested or want to be part of the Applelust community, drop us
a line with your resume or vita. We are always on the look out for good,
very smart, and reliable people to join the staff. If you think you have
what it takes, let us know.
"Observe Different! Join the "AstroMac"
mailing list, a private and spam-free
mailing list for Mac-using pro and amateur
astronomers, hosted by Topica. Discuss
Mac astronomy software, get help on controlling
your scope from your Mac, get and give
tips and tricks, share your photos, talk
about using your Palm as an astromical
helper in the field. We'll show you how
the Mac is the digital hub of the universe,
literally!"
For thousands of years people
have looked up at the sky and looked at the
stars and planets. Astronomy was probably the
first human activity that could have been considered
a science. Iron age men designed and built megalithic
structures like Stonehenge in southern England
so that they could predict the rising and setting
of the Sun, Moon and stars. Using this information
virtually every culture on Earth devised and
calibrated some sort of calendar, of which the
approximately solar Roman calendar used in the
West, and the strictly lunar calendar of Islam,
are perhaps the best known. The Egyptians carefully
watched the dawn sky for the first glimpse of
Sirius. When it could be seen rising with the
Sun, then the the flooding of the Nile, upon
which their whole nation depended, was imminent.
The Romans viewed the same star with rather
less pleasure; in the Aeneid, Virgil describes
Sirius as the Dog Star, and its appearance as
a harbinger of a dry and unhealthy season. Stars
didn't just signal events, they could cause
them as well. Astrology originated in ancient
Babylon over two and a half thousand years ago,
but it was soon widely used throughout the Old
World, from China to Western Europe, and remains
popular to this day.
Astronomy therefore has an impeccable pedigree.
Indeed astronomers today, whether amateur or
professional, are but the latest links in an
an unbroken chain that passes both through time
and between cultures. The telescopes that amateurs
use would be recognizable to Galileo and Newton,
while the names of the stars and constellations
belong to the Arabs and the Greeks. The modern
age has moved the frontiers beyond anything
someone a hundred years ago (let alone two thousand
years ago!) could even imagine; but the experience
is still the same as that felt by the ancients:
curiosity and wonder, humility and contemplation.
So where does the Mac fit into this? For me,
its the second most useful astronomical tool
I have. The first is of course my telescope,
an eight-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain. But my iBook
is an essential part of the kit. It shows me
where to look for things, and predicts where
a given star or planet is going to be at a certain
time. It keeps records of astronomical observations
and allows me to compare them with images from
other telescopes, even satellites. Above all,
it allows me to communicate with other amateur
astronomers around the world. What follows is
a personal selection of astronomical software,
which I hope others will find interesting or
useful.
Starry Night Pro is one of a stable of planetarium
programs produced by SPACE.com that attempts
to combine the best of both worlds. Like The
Sky produced by Software Bisque, Starry Night
comes in a succession of versions each aimed
at more demanding users. The simpler and less
expensive versions of Starry Night, known as
the Beginner ($29.95) and Backyard ($49.95)
versions, are nice applications but they are
a bit limiting for serious amateur astronomers.
For example they lack any deep sky catalogues
other than the 110 object Messier catalogue.
These deep sky catalogues, of which the NGC
or New General Catalogue is the most important,
contains things like nebulae, star clusters
and galaxies and form the backbone of most amateur
observer's observing programmes.
In contrast Starry Night Pro has pretty well
everything you could want included, supposedly
19 million night sky objects in total. It has
the full NGC and IC catalogues as well as the
Messier catalogue, the seventy thousand PGC
catalogue galaxies and millions of stars. So,
plenty to keep the amateur astronomer occupied!
It does have to be said that for most amateurs
most of these objects are rather meaningless,
being too faint to be seen, and so probably
serve more as a marketing ploy than anything
else.
The simulations are as good as you'll find
in any planetarium program, and up to a point
they do indeed approach photo-realism. Starry
Night Pro also comes with a nice book on astronomy,
as well as dozens of simulated astronomical
events for the user to explore after reading
the text. Although a fair enough pitch at the
education and home learning market, and however
good the book is, this still feels like an afterthought.
Beyond what's written in the book, there is
virtually no user-friendly education material
within the application itself. Tons of information,
yes, but nothing like the multimedia tours found
in RedShift, for example.
Starry Night Pro is able to produce perfectly
useful maps to be used at the telescope. These
are usually printed off as black stars on a
white background, an easier colour scheme to
read in the dark compared with true colour.
However, I prefer to install this application
on my iBook and use it outside with the telescope.
Usefully, Starry Night has a night vision setting
that turns the screen a dim red so that you
won't lose your dark adaptation when looking
at the screen. This is a really nice feature.
SPACE.com reports that an OS X version should
be out in summer; this is very good news.
These two applications do more
or less the same thing, and the differences
between, though more than cosmetic, are still
relatively minor. Both simulate the phase of
the Moon and provide the user with related data.
The usefulness of these applications to amateur
astronomers relates to the affect the Moon has
on visual astronomy. When it's up, that beautiful
moonlight obscures the deep sky 'faint fuzzies'
like galaxies many amateur astronomers are keen
to observe. So knowing when the Moon is rising
or setting on a particular night is essential
to planning your observing schedule.
Moon
Tool is a relatively simple application with
just one window, within which there is a simple
greyscale picture of the Moon surrounded by
the various pieces of astronomical information
such as the age of the Moon, when the next full
Moon is, etc. Moon Tool makes use of System
7's balloon help (remember that!); when selected,
moving the cursor to any of the fields gives
you some information about what that piece of
data actually means. All in all it is a nice
little application.
MoonDock
has been designed to have low memory and CPU
requirements, and can be left running without
affecting the overall performance of the computer.
The idea is that after you launch MoonDock you
close its window instead of quitting the application,
leaving you with a real-time simulation of the
Moon in the Dock. Why you would want to do this
is another question, but as an astronomical
novelty it is kind of cute. Another nice touch
are the 'hints' that appear when the cursor
is held over fields within the application's
main window, explaining what it is these fields
describe, a bit like the balloon help in Moon
Tool. In MoonDock, these hints even extend to
naming some of the lunar features on the Moon
image! On top of this, MoonDock has a detailed
help system (using OS X's Help Viewer). MoonDock
a nicely crafted and useful application.
Go-to
telescopes are exceedingly popular among amateurs,
especially newcomers to the hobby who find the
idea of learning the night sky a real obstacle
to finding interesting things to look at. Opinion
is divided on whether or not having a go-to
telescope, long-term, will give the user the
most rewarding experience. Many amateurs maintain
that it is the challenge of learning your way
around the night sky, and the sense of achievement
when you finally do find your target, that provides
the greatest pleasures that the hobby has to
offer. On the other hand, if you're short of
time, or live in the light-polluted suburbs,
then a go-to scope is probably the only way
you're actually going to make any worthwhile
observations.
The two biggest producers of go-to telescopes,
Meade and Celestron, inevitably use different
systems each with their advantages and disadvantages.
The Meade versions are based around a hand-held
computer called Autostar that uses two stars
to set up its alignment. Once aligned, the user
simply presses a few buttons and the telescope
whirrs from one object to the next. Assuming
it is properly aligned, the system works very
well.
Best Pair II deduces the best stars to use
to get the most reliable performance. The algorithms
it uses are complex and not worth going into
here, but suffice it to say the application
does the job nicely. Surprisingly, the optimal
stars Best Pair II chooses don't always match
the automatic ("Easy") alignment selections
made by the Autostar computer by default, and
perhaps this explains why some users find the
Autostar to be unreliable. Users of Autostar
telescopes (chiefly the small and portable ETX
scopes and the much larger LX90 and LX200 Schmidt
Cassegrain telescopes) will undoubtedly find
Best Pair II to be useful.
The interface takes a little while to get to
grips with, with important information needed
to be entered both in the preferences (a menu
item) and in various tabbed fields in the main
window, but beyond that it's pretty straightforward.
Computations of the best pairs of stars on a
G3 iBook take ten seconds or more, which contrasts
with the fraction of that time the Autostar
computer takes to make its rougher approximations,
especially given that the Autostar has a Motorola
68000 chip inside much like that of the Macintosh
computers of twenty years ago!
Requirements: Filemaker Pro 4.0 or
the standalone app
Filemaker pro for just the database file
or
68020 or later or PowerPC processor
System 7.1 or later
8 MB RAM
2 MB hard-disk space
8-bit display.
Price: free
OS X: Yes, with Filemaker Pro for
OS X
This
is a very useful database for the deep sky observer.
The screen shots give a good impression of what
the database is all about. It lists the Messier
objects and allows you to enter your observing
notes, and it also has star charts to help you
find the objects. You can sort the records by
various criteria, most easily use the macro
scripts. One very clever sort puts them in an
order that would best allow you to see as many
in one evening, the famous Messier Marathon.
This database is clearly a labour of love and
a lot of work must have gone into it.
This database could be quite useful
to have with you in field, but one problem laptop
users might have is excessive battery use since
Filemaker Pro continually access the hard disk.
Another problem is that each record fills more
than the average computer screen, so in
the dark you would still need to scroll up and
down to see the entire record. On the other
hand, it does have a red-screen "night
vision"
mode that would avoid ruining your dark adaption,
which is a definite plus. Better yet, for folks
without Filemaker Pro their is a
standalone version, and you can even print off
a Adobe Acrobat version on good old fashioned
paper.
Solscape PPC: Mac OS 7.6.1 or higher,
9 MB RAM, PPC Macintosh.
Price: free
OS X: yes
Solscape is described as a "Solar
data browser" meaning that it searches
the Internet and retrieves information on, and
images of, the Sun. It also gets images of the
Earth taken from satellites and information
on auroral activity. Finally, it includes a
basic Moon phase simulator (but nothing like
as detailed as MoonDock). Obviously it requires
Internet access to get the information, but
the information can be stored for offline viewing.
The interface resembles that of
Best Pair II. There are tabs in the main window
that let you jump between images of the Sun
and the other five fields, but you also need
to access the the Download Settings item from
the menu bar before you are ready to start.
This allows you to choose which pieces of information
you want Solscape to get, and when. Downloading
everything takes about five minutes depending
on your modem connection. The results are impressive:
Solscape seems to visit the websites of lots
of different agencies and satellites, and gathers
pages of information. The images of the Sun
include ultra-violet and white light views,
and are accompanied with rich commentaries.
Then there arethe NOAA satellite plots of auroral
activity over both poles, and the twenty-five
satellite images of the Earth, including visible
light, infra-red and water vapor plots. Add
to this various alerts, graphs and summaries
and you have a very valuable tool for anyone
interested in the Sun or meteorology.
* As of March 11, 2002, Stimpsoft closed it's
doors. Schilling has stated that no more development
is planned for Solscape, although he may farm
out Stimpsoft products to other developers.
Stuffit
7 (10-18-02) Dr. Neale Monks. What purpose does file compression have
in this day of 100 GB hard drives? Is version 7 worthy of the upgrade fees?
Fireworks
MX (10-8-02) Dean Browell. Fireworks is more than just a pretty face;
The last app I needed to convert entirely to OS X delivers in upgrades and
features as well...
Dreamweaver
MX (10-8-02) Joel Davies. Not being satisfied with just carbonizing it's
product, Macromedia made sure that Dreamweaver MX was the killer app for web
design.
SliMP3
(9-6-02) Pat St-Arnaud. The SliMP3 is a small, simple and elegant network
devices that connects to any audio component with RCA inputs and lets you
browse, search and play music directly from your computer's MP3 collection.
Voyager
III v.3 (8-16-02) Dr. Neale Monks. Carina's Voyager is the grandfather
of Mac planetarium programs, but does it still have what it takes to keep
up the current generation?
CodeWarrior
8 (8-16-02) Douglas A. Welton. Doug dives into the latest version of this
robust multi-platform programming tool.
STM
Sports Backpack (8-9-02) Pierre Igot. How will this backpack designed
for the "global digerati" stack up when Pierre puts it to the test
with his mobile digital lifestyle?
Scope
Driver (8-2-02) Dr. Neale Monks. An alternative to the 'point and click'
telescope control paradigm: a powerful list-based utility for Autostar and
LX200 telescopes.
Apple
Final Cut Pro 3.0 (7-19-02) Michael Tate Jones. Tate reviews the video-editing
powerhouse Final Cut Pro 3 and sizes up its competition. Does Final Cut Pro
3 hold its ground?
Strata
DVpro RME (7-16-02) Matt Frederick. Matt Frederick. Matt takes a comprehensive
look at Strata DVpro, Strata's pro-level non-linear editor for digital video.
Stargazer's
Delight (6-28-02) Dr. Neale Monks. Looking for a viable shareware alternative
to the big commercial astronomy software packages? Neale may have found one.
TheSky
(6-21-02) Dr. Neale Monks. Neale takes a look at the easiest to use planetarium
program for the Mac.
NI
FM7 (6-21-02) Matt Frederick. Matt takes this software replica of Yamaha's
DX7 synthesizer for a test drive.
The
Digital Universe (6-14-02) Neale Monks. Planetarium program, astronomy
encyclopaedia and space flight simulator all rolled into one - could The Digital
Universe be the ClarisWorks of astronomy software? Neale Monks takes a look.
After
Effects 5.5 (5-31-02) Michael Tate Jones. Tate reviews the OS X native
version of After Effects and likes what he sees.
InDesign
2.0 for Non-Professional Designers (5-24-02) Pierre Igot. In the second
part of our review of Adobe InDesign 2.0 for Mac OS X, Pierre Igot looks at
InDesign from the point-of-view of the non-professional designer - and finds
plenty to like.
Corel
Graphics Suite, Part 2 (5-24-02) Dean Browell. CorelDraw returns in full
force and Corel R.A.V.E makes its debut.
Corel
Graphics Suite, Part 1 (5-17-02) Dean Browell. CorelDraw is back, and
it's brought some powerful friends that makes this Suite worth the look...
OmniGraffle
2.0 (5-10-02) András Puiz. Analog napkins are so 20th century --
this gem from OmniGroup knows (almost) all about diagramming. András
Puiz wishes all Mac developers developed a similar understanding of Aqua,
and of Mac OS X in general.
Watson
(5-03-02) Michael Tate Jones. Tate discovers a 'Swiss Army Knife' for OS X...
it's called Watson.
Moon
Tool is a relatively simple application with
just one window, within which there is a simple
greyscale picture of the Moon surrounded by
the various pieces of astronomical information
such as the age of the Moon, when the next full
Moon is, etc. Moon Tool makes use of System
7's balloon help (remember that!); when selected,
moving the cursor to any of the fields gives
you some information about what that piece of
data actually means. All in all it is a nice
little application.
MoonDock
has been designed to have low memory and CPU
requirements, and can be left running without
affecting the overall performance of the computer.
The idea is that after you launch MoonDock you
close its window instead of quitting the application,
leaving you with a real-time simulation of the
Moon in the Dock. Why you would want to do this
is another question, but as an astronomical
novelty it is kind of cute. Another nice touch
are the 'hints' that appear when the cursor
is held over fields within the application's
main window, explaining what it is these fields
describe, a bit like the balloon help in Moon
Tool. In MoonDock, these hints even extend to
naming some of the lunar features on the Moon
image! On top of this, MoonDock has a detailed
help system (using OS X's Help Viewer). MoonDock
a nicely crafted and useful application.
Go-to
telescopes are exceedingly popular among amateurs,
especially newcomers to the hobby who find the
idea of learning the night sky a real obstacle
to finding interesting things to look at. Opinion
is divided on whether or not having a go-to
telescope, long-term, will give the user the
most rewarding experience. Many amateurs maintain
that it is the challenge of learning your way
around the night sky, and the sense of achievement
when you finally do find your target, that provides
the greatest pleasures that the hobby has to
offer. On the other hand, if you're short of
time, or live in the light-polluted suburbs,
then a go-to scope is probably the only way
you're actually going to make any worthwhile
observations.
This
is a very useful database for the deep sky observer.
The screen shots give a good impression of what
the database is all about. It lists the Messier
objects and allows you to enter your observing
notes, and it also has star charts to help you
find the objects. You can sort the records by
various criteria, most easily use the macro
scripts. One very clever sort puts them in an
order that would best allow you to see as many
in one evening, the famous Messier Marathon.
This database is clearly a labour of love and
a lot of work must have gone into it.
