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Deepsky 2000


Free program to draw sky charts 
For use with Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP


M 86 Lune
Read a review of this software in September 2005 issue of Bitwise Magazine

and the Rod Mollise review  in the January-February 2002 issue of Skywatch



News :
October 3 2009 New UCAC3 star catalog is available
With 100 million stars this catalog set a new standard for quality star chart.
You can now download this catalog for use with Skychart V2.76 or V3.0.
Read more at the Skychart V3 page.
May 19 2007 Fix incorrect field alignment with the ASTORB file and a problem when you start the program on Windows Vista .
Get the 2.76c update from the download page.

May 25 2006 Comets and asteroids elements download failed because of a url change at CfA web site.
Get the update from the download page.
For the new version 3.0 the code is updated to support url redirection.
December 21 2004 Update for two catalogues, SKY2000 and WDS with more recent version.
Give much improved position of the double star system.
This catalog are part of the testing version 3.0 but are compatible with the version 2.
November 23 2004 New version 2.76 !
This is mainly a bug fix version. The program must now run without problem with old ATI OpenGL drivers.
One new function: access to USNO-B1.0 catalog online from Vizier.
A small patch (1.4MB) is available to upgrade from the version 2.75.
August 25 2004 Prepare your observation of asteroid Toutatis in September.
Philipp Salzgeber write a very interesting tutorial about how to make an asteroid chart using Toutatis as an example: http://salzgeber.at/articles/CdC_Toutatis_HowTo.pdf
January 4 2004 New version of TLE-downloader by Christopher Welfare give you more power to update the artificial satellites elements.
December 18 2003 New Czech web page
November 13 2003 Update of the Czech translation.
New translation in Japanese.
September 21 2003 Two correction related to the artificial satellites and the use of certain catalog are now available to the Download page.
June 1st 2003 Two contribution by Jim Cornmell are available from the Source Page.
CDCcmd let you script Cartes du Ciel from a simple .bat file!
The source code is an example how to use the DDE interface from C++
There is also header file to use catalog.dll from C++
December 19 2002

A preview of the future version 3 is available!
Many feature of the version 2 are still not implemented so it is principally interesting for Linux users: http://skychart.sourceforge.net

December 12 2002

New Hipparcos catalog containing much data for each star.
New catalog are also available on Jeff Burton web page.

December 10 2002

English documentation update kindly provide by Dick Steiner.
Please install this file that provide a much better spelling.

November 9 2002

The program popularity increase rapidly, this is a good thing but one of the consequence is I receive more and more message. This is also a good thing but we arrive now to a point I can no more find enough free time to reply to all. So I ask you to use the mail list as the prefered contact way.

A new web page let you informed about the advance of the future version 3.0.
 

September 27 2002 Version 2.75, new options for the labels and printing.
Help file for Catgen.
New double stars catalog WDS with a working search index.
June 15 2002 Version 2.74, draw the nebulae outlines with the new Catgen, quick search box, ability to translate the constellation names, search by object common name, interface to the Virtual Moon Atlas.
Program to help to update the TLE files.
May 7 2002 Version 2.73, this is a bug fix version, see readme.txt for more details.
April 13 2002 Version 2.72, show images of the planets.
Updated telescope plugin.
February 24 2002

New Chinese translation and help translation in Spanish.
Telescope plugin Meade 1.1 et Ascom plugin to use with any telescope supported by the Ascom platform.

January 20 2002 New Norwegian translation.
December 21 2001 Version 2.71
Minor bug fix, see readme.txt for details.
November 26 2001 Version 2.7
The new version is available after one year of development !
More history



Description

This program enables you to draw sky charts, making use of the data in 16 catalogs of stars and nebulae.
In addition the position of planets, asteroids and comets are shown.

 The purpose of this program is to prepare different sky maps for a particular observation.
A large number of parameters help you to choose specifically or automatically which catalogs to use, the colour and the dimension of stars and nebulae, the representation of planets, the display of labels and coordinate grids, the superposition of pictures, the condition of visibility and more.
All these features make this celestial atlas more complete than a conventional planetarium. 


M31 FITS image by IRAS with corresponding chart

Instead of a long description I rather invite you to go through the examples , the handbook and the catalog descriptions so that you can get a better idea of the features of Sky Chart .

This program has been developed to satisfy my own requirements. Feel free to mail your ideas if you find that a useful functionality is missing. I will try to include it in the next version if it is possible. 

It is possible to choose the program language. Actually more than 20 languages are available.

Please look at the catalog descriptions and download pages for explanation about the catatog used and how to obtain the extra catalog for use with the program, and the RealSky® support pages for using this CD's.
For most of them you must use a binary version available from the download page.


Subscribe to  Sky Charts Discussion and support Group
Click here to join by mail

Click here to join  from the list home page

Group  archive

Subscribe to this mail list to be able to send message to discuss with other users about the utilization of the program. 

This mail list is the prefered way to get support in case of problem.
Always consult the program documentation and the message archive before to ask your question, you probably find quickly a response.


Subscribe to 
Cartes du Ciel / Sky Charts News
Click here to join skychart by mail

Click here to join skychart from the list home page

skychart archive
Subscribe to this mail list to be informed on new program version. There are two ways to subscribe to skychart: via e-mail or via the web.
Your e-mail address is treated confidentially. It will not be use for any other purpose and not send to other people.

Why freeware ?

I originally developed this program for my personal use, because I like to adapt my tools to my needs. In my opinion the functionality of Sky Charts might be of interest to amateur astronomers or students. Therefore I decided to distribute it as freeware. I feel that you should rather invest your money in buying a good eyepiece than to waste it on software!


Terms and conditions

"Sky charts" is a  freeware. You can freely install and use an unlimited number of copies for your personal usage or redistribute it on any support under the restriction that you must not modify it and that you have to include all the documentation files. 
Any commercial use is however prohibited.

For the conditions and citations of the single catalogs, please refer to the original descriptions in the files ".TXT" in the  subdirectory "CAT\". 



Thanks

I would like to thank the Centre de Données Astronomiques de Strasbourg as well as the Astronomical Data Center who make accessible valuable astronomical catalogs to any amateur astronomer.

Sky Charts uses catalog extracts provided by these two institutions:

5/50 Bright Star Catalogue 5th Revised Ed. Hoffleit+ 1991
5/102 SKY2000 - Master Star Catalog Version 2 Sande+ 1998
1/197A Tycho Input Catalogue Revised version Egret+ 1992
1/239 The Hipparcos and Tycho Catalogues  ESA 1997
1/259 The Tycho-2 Catalogue Hog+ 2000
1/220 The HST Guide Star Catalog  Lasker+1992
1/237 The Washington Visual Double Star Catalog USNO 2000
2/214 General Catalog of Variable Stars Kholopov+ 1998
2/219 New Catalogue of Suspected Variable Stars Supplement  Kazarovets+ 1998
7/118 NGC 2000.0  Dreyer 1888, Sky Publishing ed. Sinnott1988
7/155 Third Reference Cat. of Bright Galaxies de Vaucouleurs+1991
7/119 Catalogue of Principal Galaxies Paturel+ 1999
5/84 Strasbourg-ESO Cat. of Galactic Planetary Nebulae Acker+1992
7/9 Lynds' Catalogue of Bright Nebulae Lynds 1965
7/202 Globular Clusters in the Milky Way Harris 1997
7/92A Open Cluster Data 5th Edition Lynga 1987
6/79 Lunar Solution ELP 2000-82B Chapront-Touze+ 1988
6/87 Planetary Ephemerides  Chapront+ 1996
6/49 Constellation Boundary Data Davenhall+ 1989

I also would like to mention the US Naval Observatory who kindly supplies the USNO-SA1.0 CD-ROM,  the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams for the elements of comets and asteroids and their permission to distribute these files, and Lowell Observatory for the asteroids elements.

The Saguaro Astronomy Club distribute is Database Version 7.2

Michael. G. Christensen produce the FITS table with Uranometria 2000 charts boundaries.
Jim Cornmell produce the object common name list and give the idea for the nebulae outlines.

Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA/GSFC

Satellites calculation use QuickSat by Mike McCants,
Iridium flare prediction use Iridflar by Robert Matson
Thank's to them for their permission to include their software and data with this package.


Deepsky 2000

Programming

This program is entirely written in DELPHI 6

Calculations of the ephemerides of planets between 1900 and 2100 are based on " Ephemerides of planets between 1900 and 2100 Chapront-Francou, Bureau des Longitudes 1996 ". The program serie96.f was rewritten in Pascal and include in a DLL.

Planets calculation between -3000 and +3000 are based on plan404 by Steve Moshier, a DLL interface this C program.

Calculations of the ephemerides of the Moon are based on " Lunar Solution ELP 2000-82B Chapront-Touze, Bureau des Longitudes 1988". The program elp82b.f was rewritten in Pascal and include in a DLL.

Planetary satellites calculation between 1997 and 2020 use posxy by J.-E. Arlot, Ch. Ruatti, D.T. Vu et  W.Thuillot, Bureau des Longitudes. The program diffpos.f was rewritten in Pascal and include in a DLL.

Many calculations are based on the essential "Astronomical Algorithms by Jean Meeus".

RealSky® CD support use a library developed by Bill Gray of Project Pluto.

Some graphic files format use the library " NviewLib.dll " by K. Nishita.

Some graphic components use the Delphi library RXLIB.

Support for GZIP compression format use ZLIB by Jean-Loup Gailly and Mark Adler.

Installation files have been produced using the freeware version of GInstall

I will to thank specially all the people who translate the program in different language.

Many thanks to Luca Crivelli and Greg Roberts for their help with the development of the program.




Since 1999-09-22

This web page is maintained by Patrick Chevalley