This piece of software - sadly absolutely enormous even when compressed -
may be of interest because amongst other things it shows a Mercator
Projection of the earth with the areas of day and night indicated. The
'shadow' can run in real time or the whole process can be speeded up to jump
hours, months......millenia forward. Clearly the software also displays the
night sky.
I have attached a file to this e-mail which gives a full description.
I downloaded it when I came across a reference but have no other involvement.
Enjoy!
[Home Planet for Windows]
Release 2 -- November 17th, 1994
Release 2 of Home Planet, a comprehensive astronomy / space /
satellite-tracking package for Microsoft Windows 3.1 and above, is now
available by anonymous FTP; see details at the end on how to FTP and
install the software. Home Planet is in the public domain; you can do
anything you like with it. Significant additions since the original release
of Home Planet are flagged in the following feature list in bold. In
addition, dozens of bugs were fixed and user suggestions implemented.
December 1995 upgrade: If you've already installed Home
Planet, or once you complete the installation process
described later in this document, you can upgrade your copy of
Home Planet to include a much higher resolution topographical map
(1440x720 pixels as opposed to 720x360) made available by the
Marine Geology and Geophysics Division of the U.S. National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The upgrade includes a
revised help file containing information about the new map
images, and corrections for information which has changed since
the help file was last updated almost a year ago. To upgrade your
installed version of Home Planet, download the update archive and
extract it into the directory in which you installed Home Planet
with the "pkunzip -o hp2-9512.zip" command.
I 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.
* A horizon window which shows the view toward the horizon at any given
azimuth. The horizon can be adorned, if you wish, with fractal forged
terrain and randomly generated scenery, including houses, livestock,
and trees. The scenery is generated by a user-extensible DLL which
allows customisation.
* Object Catalogue allows archiving images, sounds, and tabular data
about celestial objects. Both new objects and new categories can be
added. Bidirectionally linked to the Telescope window.
* Chart catalogues, selectable from within the Object Catalogue, can be
plotted in all sky view windows (Sky, Telescope, and Horizon). Objects
are specified by right ascension and declination, and can use any of
the star, deep-sky, satellite, or user-extensible scenery icons, plus
text (in various colours) with user-defined justification. Commands
allow plotting straight lines and lines which curve along parallels of
latitude. Chart catalogues are included which display chart boundaries
and numbers of Sky Atlas 2000.0, and radio sources from the Third
Cambridge Survey (3C) cross-identified with the 4C survey.
* Orrery allows viewing the solar system, including a selected asteroid
or comet, from any vantage point in space, in a variety of
projections. Orrery uses precalculated planetary orbits for
contemporary epochs, resulting in a 100 to 1 speed up of orrery
display in most cases compared to Release 1.
* Satellite tracking panel. Select an Earth satellite from a database of
two-line elements, and see its current position and altitude.
Satellite will be shown as an icon on Earth map, Sky, and Telescope
windows.
* View Earth From panel allows you to view a texture-mapped image of the
Earth as seen from the Sun, Moon, a selected Earth satellite, or the
antisolar point. For a real thrill, fly Molniya through perigee! View
Earth from above your observing location.
* Satellite database selection allows maintenance of multiple lists of
satellites, for example TV broadcast, ham radio, low orbit, etc.
* DDE server permits export of real-time Sun, Earth, and Moon
information to any DDE client. A sample Excel worksheet is included.
* Computerised telescope pointing is supported via DDE. When the
Telescope window is pointed at a given location in the sky, its
coordinates are exported via DDE (in both Right Ascension and
Declination and Altitude and Azimuth), permitting a concurrently
running telescope drive program to direct a physical telescope to the
given location. The sample Excel spreadsheet displays the telescope
pointing coordinates.
* Catalogue look-up allows you to right click in any of the sky windows
(Sky, Telescope, or Horizon) and locate the closest object in the
Object Catalogue. With no keyboard modifier, this searches all
eligible catalogues. With SHIFT, CONTROL, or SHIFT+CONTROL, you can
direct the search to a specific catalogue. Catalogues are provided
which give the chart/plate number for the given location in the
following atlases:
SHIFT Sky Atlas 2000.0
CONTROL Uranometria 2000.0
SHIFT+CONTROL Palomar Observatory Sky Survey
* Observing site selection lets you choose a site from a database of
more than 1300 cities and towns, or by clicking on the world map.
* Animation lets you put the heavens into higher gear, with selectable
speed, time direction, and time step. Demonstrate seasonal changes,
Moon phases, satellite orbits, precession, proper motion, etc.
* Time and date can be set to any moment from 4713 B.C. into the distant
future. Examples of historical research are included.
* Planetary position calculations use the high-precision VSOP87 theory,
and lunar position is calculated with the revised ELP-2000/82 lunary
theory. Calculation of dynamical time, obliquity of the ecliptic,
nutation, precession, and aberration have all been upgraded to higher
precision algorithms.
* When iconised, shows a small image of the illuminated portion of the
Earth. Can be launched as an iconic desk accessory.
* Cuckoo clock. Hey, I live in Switzerland! You can turn it off.
* A comprehensive WinHelp file is included, describing not only the
program but the astronomical concepts that underlie it and how to
learn more about astronomy.
* Complete program development log included in WinHelp format,
accessible from main Help file.
* An optional screen saver that shows the illuminated Earth and position
and phase of the Moon is included.
Home Planet was built entirely from source code using Microsoft Visual C++
version 1.5 bought directly from Microsoft. Hence the risk of virus
contamination is minimal.
Obtaining and Installing Home Planet
Home Planet Release 2 is supplied as five PKZIP-compressed archives which
vary in size from 930K to 2.4 megabytes. You need all five files to install
Home Planet--the distribution is broken up into pieces purely to avoid FTP
timeouts encountered when transferring a single monolithic archive across
slower network links.
To obtain a copy of the Home Planet distribution:
ftp site
Name: anonymous
Password: your e-mail address
ftp> cd /pub/kelvin/homeplanet
ftp> binary
ftp> prompt
ftp> mget hp2-?.zip
ftp> bye
If your FTP client doesn't support "mget", use "get" to obtain each of the
five archive files individually.
The Home Planet distribution is available from the following sites and
directories. Please use the archive closest to your location! Due to the
publicity Home Planet recently received in Sky & Telescope, a huge number
of download requests are arriving at my site, many from the Western
Hemisphere. Home Planet is big, more than 8 megabytes, and sending one copy
over my 64 Kb Internet connection takes more than 20 minutes. If many
people request simultaneous downloads, everything slows down to a crawl.
So, be kind to the Internet and considerate of other users and get Home
Planet from a site near you, ideally at an off-peak hour. Clicking on the
site name in the table below will take you directly to the Home Planet
archive at that site. If one of the U.S. sites is down or refuses a
connection, try one of the others.
Site Directory Location
================ ======================== ===========
ftp.seds.org /pub/software/pc/win US: Arizona
ftp.netcom.com /pub/ke/kelvint/homeplanet US: California
libra.libs.uga.edu /sys/pub/windows/hplanet US: Georgia
ftp.tas.gov.au /pc/homeplanet Australia: Tasmania
European downloads only:
ftp.sadeya.cesca.es /pub/windows/astro/homeplanet Spain
ftp.fourmilab.ch /pub/kelvin/homeplanet Switzerland
If you'd like to mirror the Home Planet distribution at your site, please
feel free to, and let me know so I can add your site to the list.
Once you've obtained all the distribution archive files:
hp2-1.zip
hp2-2.zip
hp2-3.zip
hp2-4.zip
hp2-5.zip
create a directory called HPSETUP and, from MS-DOS or an MS-DOS window, CD
to that directory and unpack each archive into that directory using PKUNZIP
(you'll need PKUNZIP version 2.04 or later). Once the extraction is
complete, you can delete the hp2-?.zip archives. Then, from the Windows
Program Manager, run SETUP from this directory, and specify a separate
installation directory. After SETUP is complete, you can delete the
temporary HPSETUP directory into which you extracted the SETUP files. Home
Planet is about 12 megabytes installed. The installation process requires
about 22 megabytes free. If you have multiple disc drives, you can share
the various files and directories among them.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
by John Walker
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----------------------------------------Andrew
Pettit------------------------------------------
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Postman Pat: 3, Lucastes Road, HAYWARDS HEATH, West Sussex, RH16 1JJ,
ENGLAND
Tel. UK: (+44) (0)1444 453111
