Xplns introduction (english)

Astronomy Simulation
for PC-UNIX

[Introduction] [News] [Screen Shot] [Download] [FAQ]

Xplns reproduces real starry sky on your display of X Window System. It calculates the position of many celestial objects (stars, galaxies, nebulae, constellations, planets, comets, etc.) very accurately. You can enjoy the past and future sky on the desk top as if you have traveled all around the world. In solar system projection mode, you can examine motion of solar objects.

You can observe motion of the stars with tracking an object. The information display function let you know the rise, set and meridian time of solar objects, when dusk ends, when dawn starts, moon age, etc. These functions are helpful for observing stars under the real sky. There are fourteen projection mode in xplns, "Horizontal View Mode", "Equatorial Mode", "Ecliptic Mode", "Galactic Mode", "Planisphere Mode" and "Solar System Mode".

* Xplns includes the computation engine of the high-accuracy multi-media astronomical simulation software StellaNavigator for Windows(Ver.1.0) produced by AstroArts.

Specification of Xplns

Fourteen projection mode (Horizontal, Equatorial, Planisphere, Solar System, Planisphere mode, etc.).

Display stars, nebulae, galaxies, planets, sun, moon, comets, minor planets, galilean satellites, etc.

In addition to standard star catalog (up to magnitude 6.5), SAO star catalog and guide star catalog (GSC) supported.

Display function of name of the constellations, planets, stars, nebulae, galaxies, etc.

Magnified figure of planets.

Grid of equatorial coordinates, ecliptic coordinates, horizontal coordinates, etc.

Motional display of stars with continuous or real-time drive.

Display function of Rise, set, meridian time of solar objects, moon age.

Images of celestial objects.

Environment

Linux 2.4 with libc5(ELF), glibc 2.1, 2.2 or 2.3 on i386

FreeBSD 4.6.2, 4.7, 4.8 on i386

XFree86 4.1 or later (256 or more colors)

Notice

Distribution is in binary code only, because it includes a lot of commercial source code produced by AstroArts Inc.

Xplns will fail to start when your X is running in pseudo color mode (256 or less color) and when some application or window manager is running which uses a lot of colors.

AstroArts Inc. will not support this software at all. Use it at your own risk.

Your suggestions, bug reports are welcome. Please send e-mail to osam-a@astroarts.co.jp. (osam-a's home page is here).