Skytravel: window on our galaxy - Whole Earth Software Catalog - Version 1.3 - evaluation

CHARLES ELLIS: It's January 1, 1985, and you're in Washington, D.C., looking at the Souther sky at 4:15 in the morning; the screen displays the stars you see. Prefer somewhere else? Trade "Sky" for "Map" and go anywhere in the world (by joystick or cursor keys) and to any time plus or minus 10,000 years. Go back to "Sky" and let the stars move from 1 to 64 times natural speed, or hold everything still while you ponder, for example, whether an unusual conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn might have made a signpost to Bethlehem. But why be provincial? Open up "Deep Sky" mode (suspended until now to reduce clutter) and consider the galaxies, nebulae, clusters, clouds, and other globs of Way Out There. To look closer, reduce the field of view (from 72[degrees] down as far as 9[degrees]) and so zoom outward (whereupon, for example, certain stars that appeared single are revealed as double).

The full list of this program's feature is long -- comets, eclipses, celestial coordinate overlays (good for printing sky maps), onscreen tutorials, star-finding, tracking, and more. One of the best features is the accompanying manual. Because running this home planetarium is mechanically easy, most of the book is a carefully scaled introduction to the history and practice of astronomy.

For anyone at all intrigued by the swing of the Pleiades, eclipses of the sun, or the flickering connections between the lights in the sky and our quizzical race, a grabber. For anyone involved with spherical trig, astrology, or any form of navigation, a must.

COPYRIGHT 1985 Point Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group