Shadows 1.6X
Have you ever tried to build a sundial? This program lets you choose among 9 types of sundial, does the calculations and prints the plans according to the size you specify. Fully documented in French and English. Supports French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and Hungarian menus. See a screenshot.

Spica 1.3
Several features: celestial charts in several modes of projection; ephemeris, planetary conjunctions graphics, almanac like reports (a sort of "this week's planet roundup"), Saturn's rings and Jovian moons status graphics et cetera...
Available both in French and English. See a screenshot.

Encyclopaedia Galactica 3.X
A star charting and graphical ephemeris program. Three features particularly caught our attention: a nice looking Jovian satellites ephemeris graphic; the ability to produce for a chosen object a visibility graph for any given period of time; and the ability to associate images and text files to celestial objects, allowing the user to create a customized database.
Other features included are: an editable observing list; a Moon explorer tool which describes craters and points their location on a picture; a solar system orrey; a Moon phase and position table calculator for a chosen range of time; and a Jovian system simulator.
The main distribution file features deep sky objects and stars down to mag. 8 - but the complete PPM star catalogue is also available for use with the program. See a screenshot.
Download all files to the same directory and run the executable. For additional catalogues visit the homepage.

STD Aurora Monitor
Have you ever glimpsed an aurora? This program uses four auroral activity models to predict potential visible auroral activity over the high, middle and low latitudes.
Automatically fetches a variety of spacecraft and ground-based auroral activity imagery in near-real-time. Brings to your desktop the latest auroral activity watches and warnings and shows the latest forecasts and daily summaries.
Enables you to post sighting reports to the Auroral Activity Observation Network and to read the ones submitted by users elsewhere. Additionally, you are given access to a discussion forum.
Since the release of version 2, the program can now also display and animate Solar Imagery from a variety of sources (including: SOHO spacecraft, Yohkoh x-ray spacecraft, professional solar observatories such as Big Bear Solar Observatory and real-time solar imagery from Sacramento Peak, NM and Kanzelhohe Solar Observatory, Austria), show satellite weather pictures of clouds and their motions on the Earth (for many regions of the world, including the U.S., Canada, Alaska, Hawaii, Europe, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, east Asia, Japan and South America) and display plots of solar x-rays, space environment conditions and even solar wind conditions in near real-time.
The Trial version is fully functional and it is not time restricted, but it does show nagging reminder screens from time to time. See a screenshot.

Space Station Manager [NEW ADDITION]
«Realize your dream of building a space station with this relaxing game. Enabled with an intuitive interface you will be building your dream station withing minutes.
Let your creativity flow and apply you problem solving skills to master higher levels of station building lore. If you feel like taking a break you can just sit back and watch the earth flow slowly below.
Trial limitations: The trial lets you play the game an unlimited number of times but limits the size of the station you can build.»
See a screenshot.

DarkSky 1.0
A Windows 3.1 program which installs and runs fine under Windows 98.
Designed around Release 9.0 of The Arizona Database of deep-sky objects, contains data and information on over 61,100 deep sky object.
This older deep sky planner, which also produces charts and lets you log notes, is an overlooked piece of astro software. More advanced than DOS programs like NGP v2.7, this is less evolved than DeepSky 2000, NGCview, etc... See a screenshot.
Read the installation instructions here.

Other freeware programs in this category (links to the homepages)

Logiciels d'Astronomie Maison (7 DOS util. French)

GrandTour

Free Software from COAA

Christophe David's Astronomical Algorithms

Wolfgang Stricklings Softwareecke (in German)

Astronomy Software for Calculators

Astronomy Software

Il Mio Software (in Italian)

Other shareware programs in this category (links to the homepages)

Deep Sky 2000