XEphem 3.7.6

XEphem is a feature-rich scientific-grade interactive astronomical ephemeris package.

XEphem is cross-platform and it works on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.

Here are some key features of "XEphem":

· computes heliocentric, geocentric and topocentric information for all objects;
· has built-in support for all planets; the moons of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Earth; central meridian longitude of Mars and Jupiter; Saturn's rings; and Jupiter's Great Red Spot;
· allows user-defined objects including stars, deepsky objects, asteroids, comets and Earth satellites.
· provides special efficient handling of large catalogs including Tycho, Hipparcos, GSC.
· displays data in configurable tabular formats in conjunction with several interactive graphical views;
· displays a night-at-a-glance 24 hour graphic showing when any selected objects are up;
· displays 3-D stereo Solar System views that are particularly well suited for visualizing comet trajectories;
· quickly finds all close pairs of objects in the sky;
· sorts and prints all catalogs with very flexible criteria for creating custom observing lists;
· creates plots of any pairs of all data fields throughout the program;
· downloads current asteroid and comets ephemerides from Lowell Observatory and Minor Planet Center;
· downloads timely Earth satellite orbital TLE parameters;
· plots true binary system orbits;
· downloads Digitized Sky Survey FITS files from STScI or ESO;
· provides a handy coordinates spreadsheet for converting among equatorial, ecliptic, horizon and galactic frames ;
· displays live SOHO images of the Sun;
· includes a compiler for entering and solving user-written functions using any data fields;
· serves as the control point for GOTO telescopes such as Meade LX200 or other external applications;
· displays FITS files images overlaid with database symbols and other graphical information;
· performs automatic star pattern matching to automatically solve for World Coordinate System on any image;
· performs 1-click 2D Gaussian relative and absolute photometry;
· defines and saves any number of Eyepieces to use in sky maps;
· captures, displays and clips to any number of local horizon profiles;
· stores sets of all Sky View options in history sets for easy playback later;
· prints using high quality Postscript;
· allows you to assign any number of objects as Favorites for special fast access throughout the program, and makes them available even when their original databases are no longer loaded;
· provides an extensible image gallery initialized with over 300 beautiful and informative color images of deep sky objects;
· provides an observing logbook which is automatically filled in with observing circumstances, with searching on most fields;
· displays magnetic deviation for any location.
· create movie loops of any View, NAAG or Plot window.

Limitations:

· If you buy the full version, you get:
· over 50 catalogs containing more than half a billion objects (see below);
· a complete indexed and annotated atlas of the Moon from Lunar Orbiter IV images;
· several hundred beautiful color images in the photo gallery;
· priority email support for installation and usage questions;
· much simpler installation on Linux and Mac OSX systems;
· the means by which you can show your support for our future effort.

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

New features:
· Show transit azimuth
· Plots now show coordinates under cursor.
· Improved Earth night lights file, nearth.gif.
· Update Jupiter Great Red Spot default longitude.
· Show satellite element age in Index.
· Add Curiosity landing coordinates to mars_db
· Separate Sky View horizon clipping option
· SOHO is back
· New daytime earth image with improved geography shading
· SkyView -> Favorites offers same controls as map right-click
· Telescope GoTo honors horizon map

Bugs fixed:
· Improve Earth sunline in cyl graphic projection near equinox.
· Improve error handling downloading asteroid data.
· Improve accuracy of Earth satellite transits.
· Significantly improve speed of Earth satellite rise and set predictions.
· Significantly improve accuracy of Earth satellite transit predictions.
· Eliminate Earth satellite Objects table values flashing.
· Improve accuracy of Earth satellite ground footprint.
· Saving Favorites after downloading new elements now saves new values.
· Improved earth satellite height and solver...