The path of any moving object such as a planet, asteroid, or comet can be drawn on the map as a line labelled with the date and magnitude at specified intervals - ideal for comet or asteroid finder charts.Ī tabular 'ephemeris' can be created for any planet, comet, or asteroid. 'Field of view' circles showing any combination of eyepiece and telescope can be drawn on the map - ideal for finder charts intended for 'star hopping'.
You can add your own notes to the supplied information for any object.Ī large library of telescope and eyepiece data is supplied.
Complete information from many different professional data catalogs is available this can be copied to the Windows clipboard from where it can be pasted into any other application, such as a word processor. These include:Ī powerful search facility allows any of the millions of objects in SkyMap Pro's databases to be easily located.ĭetailed information can be displayed about any object known to SkyMap Pro, either by clicking the object on the map with the mouse, or locating it using the search facility.
SkyMap Pro has many powerful features primarily targeted at the more 'advanced' user. Print high-quality star charts on any printer supported by Windows. This can either be read from the RealSky® CD-ROMs (not supplied), or automatically downloaded from the Internet. If the computer is connected to the Internet, a picture of any object can automatically be downloaded and displayed, or you can add your own photographs and CCD images to create your own custom picture library.Īdd your own 'annotations' to a map, including text labels, lines or arrows, eyepiece field of view circles, camera and CCD field of view rectangles.ĭisplay a photographic 'background images' on the star chart.
Updated asteroid and comet data can be downloaded free of charge from this web site, or automatically updated from the internet from within the program.ĭisplay a wide range of different coordinate grids and scale lines showing altitude/azimuth, RA/dec, ecliptic and galactic coordinates.ĭisplay pictures of more than 15,000 astronomical objects from the picture collection supplied with SkyMap Pro. Positions have an accuracy of a small fraction of an arc second.ĭisplay the names, official boundary lines, and 'stick figures' of all 88 constellations.ĭisplay the positions of all known asteroids and comets. Virtually every object which can be observed in a typical amateur telescope (and many that can't be!) are included in SkyMap Pro's extensive databases.ĭisplay the positions of the Sun, Moon, and major planets.
The 2.5 million brightest stars are displayed with (approximately) their true colours.ĭisplay more than 200,000 deep sky objects - star clusters, nebulae, galaxies, and so on. The program's evolution has always been primarily guided by feedback from existing users of the program, thus making it the ideal tool for use by the practical amateur astronomer.Īmongst the basic facilities of SkyMap Pro are the following:Įasily move the map around the sky, zoom in and out, and rotate the map with a single key press or click of the mouse button.ĭisplay more than 15 million stars as faint as magnitude 15. SkyMap Pro 11 is the end result of almost 20 years of development work (work on the program started in 1986) and the program is used by many thousands of astronomers all over the world.