Sky Safari 3

[Astralstroll]

Is it worth the extra expense of getting the Plus or the Pro version rather than the standard version? At £27.99, £10.49 and £ 1.99 there's a bit of a difference in price.

Dave.

[badgerchap]

Depends what you need it for. There are a lot of features that the Plus and Pro have that I'm sure can't be on the cheapo version, but as far as I know the only difference between the top 2 is telescope control. Someone may well correct me on this though!

I have the Pro version and it's brilliant. I probably rely on it more than Stellarium, both because of it's portability and useability. I can definitely recommend it, but maybe if you don't require 'scope control, maybe Plus is the best idea?

[upahill]

Its worth nothing that there is no upgrade path, so if you get Plus, you cant later upgrade to Pro you have to pay the full amount again.

For that very reason I bought pro, and its turned out well as I now have a mount that can be controlled using it (when I buy their rather pricey adapter!)

[Scooot]

Is it worth the extra expense of getting the Plus or the Pro version rather than the standard version? At £27.99, £10.49 and £ 1.99 there's a bit of a difference in price.

Dave.

I think if you buy the standard version you'll have to pay the full price of one of the others later if you want to upgrade. You can't just pay the difference, at least you never used to be able to. The main difference between the pro and the plus is the size of the object database. The plus is very comprehensive and fine for me. There's no telescope control on the standard.

It really depends to what extent you want to use it. If you're going to occasionally point it at the sky to identify stars the standard will be fine. If you're going to use it a lot I think the plus is excellent value, just for the larger database and more in depth descriptions.

[Scooot]

I type slower than badgerchap and upahill

[badgerchap]

You did write more, and very coherently!

[Astralstroll]

Well I can't ever seeing me to use it for scope control, so it sounds like the in between option would be best. Will have a go at downloading the app tomorrow.

Many thanks, Dave.

[upahill]

Good luck & enjoy, the observing lists are particularly helpful.

[badgerchap]

Good for the upcoming comets too!

[greglloyd]

Plus and Pro both have telescope control. See here :-

http://www.southernstars.com/products/skysafari/versions.html

I have the Plus version. The main difference with the pro version is the huge databases included with the pro version :-

Number of Stars 119,889 2,637,760 15,466,327 Star Magnitude Limit ~8.0 ~12.0 ~15.0 Number of Deep Sky Objects 222 31,586 743,500 Deep Sky Magnitude Limit ~10.0 ~15.0 ~18.0 Number of Planets & Moons 34 34 185 Number of Asteroids 134 4,180 583,858 Number of Comets 237 492 3,139 Number of Satellites 151 828 828

This is not an issue for me as the Plus version has over 30000 DSO's going down to magnitude 15 (which is more than enough for me). The Pro version has 16M stars compared with 2.6M stars in the plus version. Again, this is fine for me as the plus version's 2.6M stars goes down to magnitude 12.5 - which is not bad. I use Stellarium on the PC to go any deeper than this.

I really do like the observing lists feature. This is an excellent way of building and keeping lists of objects to view. Good for planning sessions or having your own little 'sky tours' containing your favourite objects.

[greglloyd]

Sorry about that. Table didn't render. The figures are :-

Plus version: 2,637,760 stars (down to mag 12.5), DSO's 31,586 (down to mag 15)

Pro version: 15,466,327 stars (down to mag 15.0), DSO's 743,500 (down to mag 18)

For me, the number of planets, asteroids, moons, etc in the Pro version is irrelevant as most of the extra objects I could not be bothered with.

[biondi]

Hi, how is Skysafari when controlling scopes? Have you found it easy to sync and accurate?

Many thanks,

Matt

[Scooot]

Hi, how is Skysafari when controlling scopes? Have you found it easy to sync and accurate?

Many thanks,

Matt

What scope have you got?

I use it as a "push to" system on a dob with an IPAD as a handset. Its very easy to align and very accurate. Can't comment on anything else.

[biondi]

Hi Scoot, I have a heq5 pro mount with a c8 sct scope. Unfortunately as I have a iPad mini I would have to buy something else to get it to connect, the cost of the cable and connector is putting me off a bit and the wireless option is also very expensive.

[Scooot]

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/130335-sky-safari-bluetooth-telescope-control/

There's probably some help in this thread, towards the end I think. Some ingenius people have worked out how to connect up on the cheap which might help you.

Although I haven't used SS3 with an EQ mount I get the impression those that have are pleased with it. Its very user friendly being able to see the objects on the screen to target. You can also highlight user lists on the screen so I think its worth perservering with.