Home Planet Full Edition

like to think of Home Planet as putting a somewhat different spin on the Earth and sky. It allows you to view: An earth map, showing Day and night regions, location of the Moon and current phase, and position of a selected earth satellite. Earth maps can be customised and extended by editing a DLL which provides maps to Home Planet. A panel showing detailed position and phase data for the Sun and Moon. Panel showing positions of planets and a selected asteroid or Comet, both geocentric and from the observer`s location. A sky map, based on either the Yale Bright Star Catalogue or the 256,000 star SAO catalogue, including rendering of spectral types, planets, earth satellites, asteroids and comets. Celestial coordinates are included, and an extensive and user-extensible deep-sky database includes all Messier objects and many of the NGC objects. Precession and proper motion are Accounted for in the display. Databases of the orbital elements of 5632 asteroids and principal periodic comets are included, allowing selection of any for tracking. These databases can be user-extended using standard orbital elements. MS-DOS utility programs are included which convert asteroid and comet orbital elements in the form published in Minor Planet Electronic Circulars (MPECs) to the CSV format used by Home Planet. Subscribers to the MPECs can thus easily add newly reported asteroids and comets to the database. Source code for these programs is included. A telescope window which can be aimed by clicking in the sky map or telescope itself, by entering coordinates, or by selecting an object in the Object Catalogue (see below). Limiting magnitude, labeling, coordinate display, etc. can be defined by user. Right click on an object to display its entry in the Object Catalogue. Stellar magnitudes can be plotted for stars in a given magnitude range in the telescope window. This makes it easy to Create comparison star charts for variable star observing.