On Thursday 29 May 2003 02:33 pm, Orlando Andico wrote:
* I finally installed RedHat9 last night. Not for the NPTL. Not for the O(1)
* scheduler. Not for the preemptible kernel. But for this really neat KDE
* (kdeedu) application called KStars.
Yehey!!! Another KStars fanatic!!! Ever since I started using KStars, the
nasty neck muscle cramps have stopped. The sky in KStars will sync with the
computer's system clock and move appropriately like a real planetarium as
time passes by. :-)
* Basically, it's very similar to Cartes du Ciel or Starry Night, except it
* runs on Linux. Obviously it's not as powerful as Starry Night (which costs
* $50), but the feature set is similar to Cartes du Ciel (which is
* open-source but for Windows only). The only thing missing from KStars is
* LX200 or ASCOM telescope control.
I'd go for the free KStars any day. The telescope control would be nice too.
* KStars is quite powerful -- in addition to complete NGC, IC, PGC, SAO,
* Hipparcos, and HD data, it can download Deep Sky Survey (1 or 2), Palomar
* Sky Survey, or Hubble data for any of the objects it displays. Also, it
* doesn't consume 100% of the CPU when scrolling (which Cartes and Starry
* Night do).
I don't think KStars' bulk performance is affected by CPU. I installed KStars
on an AMD-K6-500 mhz, 128MB system memory, SIS 530 8MB RAM video card.
Whenever I start KStars on this machine, the program's startup loading would
take too long.
I upgraded the machine's video card with an Nvidia TNT2 M64 32MB vid card
(using Nvidia's proprietary drivers) and loading speed is fast, almost the
same with a Pentium 733mhz, 128MB system memory with SIS 630 32MB vid card.
I don't know why startup times are the same. Must be the OpenGL and vid card
memory.
The ability to download Hubble data is really neat.
The only major functionality lacking with KStars is the ability to plot (or
see the schedule of) solar/lunar eclipses, as well as plotting planetary
alignments and solstices.
It would also be helpful if the range of dates can be extended back to 5,000
to 10,000 BC, up to the theoretical time of Egyptian civilization (or even
Stonehenge)
I've been trying to study Mayan calendar and it would be neat if "baktun"
cycles can be represented as well.
* Of course there is XEphem, which does have LX200 telescope control (as
* well as it can import photometry data from AAVSO), runs on Motif, and
* open-source as well. But the interface of XEphem leaves much to be desired
* -- it's not user-friendly.
The interface is indeed scary! XEphem's an excellent program, but if the GUI
sucks and hides the real usefulness of the program then it's not my cup of
tea.
optimus
--
/*
* Oops. The kernel tried to access some bad page. We'll have to
* terminate things with extreme prejudice.
*/
die_if_kernel("Oops", regs, error_code);
(From linux/arch/i386/mm/fault.c)
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