Starry Night Pro Plus 6.2
by Imaginova

List Price: $249.95
Our Price: $119.99
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Category: Software
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Software Summary

• Includes DVD-ROM software, DVD movie, astronomy book, and user's guide
• Sky-exploring software for the advanced amateur astronomer
• Full-color AllSky CCD image mosaic of the entire night sky visible from Earth
• View positions and outlines of 1400 dark, emission, planetary, and reflection nebulae
• Comprehensive observational tools; sophisticated telescope controls

Software Reviews of Starry Night Pro Plus 6.2

Customer Review: Requires Quicktime
Summary: 1 Stars

Description of Starry Night Pro Plus 6.2

100 degree field-of-view of the AllSky Image. View larger.

From any place on Earth, see the real night sky in full-color photographic detail. View larger.

Hover above the Earth for a detailed view of our home planet before blasting off to explore deep space. View larger.

Recognize 1000+ craters, valleys, and more instantly with surface feature outlines for the Moon. View larger.

Enhanced telescope control makes Starry Night even easier-to-use for unsurpassed astronomical observations. View larger.

Pro Plus Version 6 Features
The biggest single addition to Starry Night software since its inception is now yours in the Pro Plus version 6.0--a full-color AllSky CCD image mosaic of the entire night sky visible from Earth--a picture so detailed, it weighs in at an astounding 6.44 billion pixels in size. Named AllSky for its uniform coverage from pole to pole, it's a single picture of the whole sky that has now been precisely mapped to Starry Night's computer generated stars and databases. Previously only available to Windows users through Desktop Universe planetarium software, the display of the AllSky image has been drastically improved in Starry Night and is now accessible to Mac users as well.

Computer Images With Exquisite Detail
With Pro Plus version 6.0, you can view on your computer screen an image better than the best-trained human eye can capture in real-time viewing through a telescope on a "good seeing" night. You'll be able to see the entire Milky Way in exquisite detail and then zoom in to explore dust lanes and nebulae. Instead of dots and circles, you will see an actual photo of a star or a deep sky object.

Smooth and Swift Navigation
With Pro Plus version 6.0, you'll smoothly and swiftly navigate the full color AllSky CC photograph of the entire night sky, to a limiting magnitude of 14-15. Five years in development, the AllSky CCD mosaic is comprised of about 20,000 individual images, originally imaged at a resolution of 12 arcseconds per pixel with a scientific grade, custom built AP9E CCD camera. The AllSky image in Starry Night presents the entire sky as a full-color, seamless mosaic at 5 resolution levels depending on your zoom setting. This consistent resolution, color and depth of coverage eliminates the uncertainties of comparing images from many and varied sources. Zoom from the widest possible view of 180 degrees to 0.5 degree field of view.

If you have the processing power, set the AllSky image to be more precise and a better match between the photographic stars in the AllSky image and the Starry Night stars. For the highest quality AllSky image, you will need a video card with a minimum of 96 MB VRAM.

Pro Plus version 6.0 includes an additional 6 GB of the AllSky image in DDS texture format, which enables the AllSky image to load up to 20 times faster. In addition, at wide fields of view, the AllSky image can be rendered via shaders for perfect rendering accuracy and a dramatic speed improvement, but you will need a higher-end OpenGL 2.0 capable graphics card to see this phenomenal improvement. A 128 MB nVidia GeForce 6600 (or higher) or ATI Radeon X800 (or higher) are recommended.

In all, Starry Night Pro Plus version 6 has over 25 new features that bring more power and control to your observing and imaging. Starry Night Pro Plus will change how you look at the night sky.

Exclusive to Pro Plus:

• View positions and outlines of 1400 dark, emission, planetary and reflection nebulae
• Identify 1700 globular and open star clusters
• Fly over super-high resolution 24-bit color map of Mars land mass topography above the sea.
• Hover over Earth and see details within 1 km (0.6 miles) resolution
• Create your own astrophotography using imaging plug-in to integrate Starry Night and MaxIm DL imaging software (sold separately, Windows only)

Education & Reference Software

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• Macintosh > Education & How-To