Astronomy’s new Star Dome provides online users with a powerful, customized star atlas for nightly observing.
ASTRONOMY MAGAZINE RELAUNCHES INTERACTIVE STAR DOME SKY MAP ON ASTRONOMY.COM
Waukesha, Wisconsin, Feb. 8, 2017: The editors of Astronomy magazine, the world’s largest publication on the subject, have re-launched a wildly popular online feature, the interactive Star Dome sky map.
The program allows users to look at the sky at any time and from any location on Earth, seeing what stars and planets are visible during any time of the night. The scale, orientation, and many other parameters can be changed at will, allowing users of Astronomy.com to wield a powerful program that will enable them to view many hundreds of objects in the night sky.
The new sky map can be used at the following site: http://www.astronomy.com/observing/stardome
The publishers of Astronomy contacted Guillaume and Fabien Chereau, brothers who operate a software company from their locations in France and Taiwan. The brothers subsequently produced a program called Noctua Sky, which is the basis for the new StarDome program.
The new StarDome program is far more powerful than the previous version on Astronomy’s website. Among its many features, users can specify their location, set the time (down to the second), select from four coordinate grids, define the field of view of the map (in degrees), set the magnitude limit for celestial objects, and even decide whether or not they want to show a landscape and an atmospheric effect.
Visitors to Astronomy.com will no doubt enjoy this new and freely available sky mapping software. All they will need to add to it is a clear sky.