Skymap v. SkyMap (was: Re: Finally saw GRO)
Neil Clifford (clifford@astro.ox.ac.uk)
Wed, 18 Feb 1998 12:22:30 +0000 (GMT)
JAY RESPLER scribbles:
|>Mark Hanning-Lee wrote:
|>
|>> Marriott's SkyMap gives
|>> this star as 3.47.
|>
|>Would anyone familiar with this Skymap and Rob Matson's original SkyMap
|>explain the differences between them?
Sure - SkyMap (author Chris Marriott, UK) is a windows based planetarium
program (which is/was quite nice - I have an old Windows 3.1 version I
run under wine, a Linux Windows emulation program; I have not seen the
more recent Windows 95 version so don't know if it adds any satellite
tracking facilities). Rob Matson's Skymap (no capital M) is of course a
planetarium _and_ a satellite tracking program (though I would rate it
as a tracking program first - it can be used to produce star charts but
I think it is fair to say that it doesn't offer as many facilities from
the _astronomical_ point of view as does SkyMap).
Skymap has a web site with more information at:
http://www.skymap.com
Thus I have occasion to use SkyMap when I simply want a planetarium
(though I now usually use xephem, but that's another kettle of fish). I
find Skymap endlessly useful for satellite tracking..... IMO it is one
of the best satellite tracking programs around (along with quicksat
Mike ;-)
Hope that has been informative and has cleared up some of the confusion
(I do get questions in email from time to time where it is clear people
have confused Skymap and SkyMap, understandably).
--
Neil Clifford <neil@satellite.eu.org>
http://www.satellite.eu.org/satintro.html