Free Software Downloads

[Bizibilder]

There seem to be quite a number of people who make requests for “Free Astronomy Software”. Maybe its time to develop a list of what’s out there and whether or not it’s worth downloading. Perhaps this could eventually become a “sticky” to help new members? I know there are sites that have lists of dozens (sometimes hundreds!) of lnks but often these are not kept up to date and many links fail. Few of them give any idea as to whether the software is actually useful

Here goes with a few I have collected over the last year. I have found most of them useful (in no particular order):

http://www.stargazing.net/astropc/index.html

Known as Cartes du Ceil – a desktop Planetarium that can be used to print off star charts, drive your telescope etc.

http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html

Image stacking software.

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/lunar_orbiter/

Digital Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Moon.

http://www.uv.es/jrtorres/index.html

The home of CnebulaX – three star atlases of ever increasing complexity!

http://avex.org.free.fr/cartes-pl/uk/UK-pl-relief-topo.html

UK Light pollution map.

http://pruss.mobi/moon.html

Printable Lunar Maps

http://www.astro-tom.com/messier/messier_finder_charts/messier_maps.htm

Messier Maps and finder charts.

http://www.ngc891.com/index.php

Messier, Caldwell & Herschel 400 charts + Loads of others.

http://www.stellarium.org/

Stellarium! Star Atlas.

http://www.geocities.jp/toshimi_taki/index.htm

Star Atlas to mag 8.5

http://www.ap-i.net/avl/en/download

Virtual Moon Atlas.

http://astrojargon.net/(X(1)S(2sns4s552wn1qm45rsw4i055))/MaskGen.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

Bahtinov Mask Generator

http://focus-mask.com/Free_Templates.html

Bahtinov Mask Templates.

http://planetpixelemporium.com/index.php

Planetry “texture” Maps.

Please feel free to add your own!! If the job is not too onorous I may correlate the list eventually!!! (NEVER volunteer Bizibilder!! :) )

[richbyers]

Very useful post, thanks

rich

[Digz]

What an excellent idea. I thought I had everything I needed but there are some great links.

Another one that may be useful:

SAT24.com, Satellite Weather Europe. Watch the Clouds and Sun over Europe

Satellite Images for weather forecasts

[Bizibilder]

And A few more:

These are downloads that I have made recently. I have just quoted the software title – you would need to Goole for the website:

Moonphase 3.3

TUBA – Touring the Universe through Binoculars

Microsoft ICE – mosaic/panorama making software

Helio creator and Helio Viewer – For Solar observers.

Astro Workbench

Registax 5

Iris – Photo software (never used it yet!)

Mars previewer

Celestia – tour the universe

Meridian – planet information/ephimerides

Win JUPOS 8.3.0

[richbyers]

Heavens-Above Home Page

my one

[drummerp]

Very very usefull, I'll be downloading a few.

[the_laughing_crow]

Where is M13 – the 3D location of what youre looking at

[Bizibilder]

Oops - forgot a favourite of mine!

GIMP - Free photo processing software:

GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program

PS Thanks "Crow" for M13 - I'd not seen that one before!

[Merlin66]

Don't forget great programs like:

PHD

Vspec (spectroscopy)

WinJUPOS

Craterlet

CcdCalc

and SGE (Star guide emulator)

SGE Star Guiding Emulator

[Ben Ritchie]

I spend much of my time working with IRAF, which is free and enormously powerful (albeit not terribly user-friendly). It'll do just about anything you can think of with the data coming out of a CCD

IRAF Project Home Page

What is it? How do I get it?

IRAF is the "Image Reduction and Analysis Facility". The main IRAF distribution includes a good selection of programs for general image processing and graphics, plus a large number of programs for the reduction and analysis of optical and IR astronomy data (the "noao" packages). Other external or layered packages are available for applications such as data acquisition or handling data from other observatories and wavelength regimes such as the Hubble Space Telescope (optical), EUVE (extreme ultra-violet), or ROSAT and AXAF or Chandra (X-ray).

[Bizibilder]

I've had a bit of a thunk on this one and reckon on maybe the following:

When we have a good list of reasonably common and useful software they could be put into a new "holding" thread. Maybe grouped as "Five best for Beginners" and "Photoediting" or "guiding" and "Star Atlases" etc or some such simple categorisation? This way folks could look up what they want. any thoughts?

Anyway - Keep 'em coming folks!

[Digz]

Sounds like a good plan Bizibilder, who long do you plan on keeping tis thread active so we can generate a good list of sites etc?

[Bizibilder]

I reckon another week and then start to collate things. Folk can then still add their bits and bobs after that so maybe an update to the "master" thread every once in a while.

[Digz]

Sounds great.

Thought Id add the link to tis post with the sky simulator in it:

http://stargazerslounge.com/primers-tutorials/93950-light-polution-any-where-uk.html

Link to simulator:

need-less light pollution

[splatt]

Let the downloading commence

Got a copy of Stellarium last week after setting my scope up outside and then standing there for 1hr scratching my head making "duhhhhh" noises and not seeing a great deal.

[IvanT]

Thanks for the list, very useful.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Bizibilder]

Thanks for ccdcalc Merlin66! Its going to get a lot of use! (and the others of course).

[Bizibilder]

"BUMP" any more out there???????

[TopHouse]

Yes,

Wcctrl and WcRmac along with other good info :-

Welcome to my Astro Pages

And our own member RWG (Robin) for his brilliant sharpcap imaging software that now has it's own little page :-

SharpCap - rwgastro

[Dons255]

*expands bookmark list - thanks