There’s no better place to find astronomy related software than the web archive created by Astro Events Group of Ostend, Belgium. “Our compilation will actually never be complete,” says Patrick Jaecques, a member of the group. “We have updates about every week. It’s also the only part of our Dutch web site that is translated into French, German and English.”
There you’ll find hundreds of programs for a wide variety of computing environments, including Java, Pocket PC, Palm, and — the usual suspects — various Windows and Mac flavors. They even have one entry for my old Psion Series 5 palmtop. (Hey, it was hot stuff in the last millennium.)
Folks at Astro Events Group assembled the archive to support and promote their favorite hobby. “This project started out about five years ago, when we saw how amazed people were at our big-screen projections of planetarium software,” Jaecques says. Teachers at schools where the nonprofit group gave presentations asked where they could find such programs. So, Astro Events members began burning “Heavenly Moments” CDs that included the best freeware and shareware programs.
Demand for these CDs quickly outstripped the group’s means of producing them, so they turned to the web. “Our archive consists of just over 400 programs, all placed on our own server for optimal connection speeds while downloading.” Jaecques says. “Every program is placed alphabetically by type, and comes with a handy screenshot and a link to the maker’s homepage.”
If you visit through their home page, www.astro-event-group.be, go to the Educatief (Educational) menu and select Software. Better yet, use this direct link to the catalog.