Star Chart released - plot your local night sky and find planets and stars

[Prodatron]

Prevtenet just released Star Chart for SymbOS:

http://www.symbos.org/appinfo.htm?00058

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It calculates and displays a diagram of the night sky at the specified date, time, and latitude/longitude. Stars down to magnitude 5 are included, as well as the known eight planets of the solar system, the sun, the moon, and the current moon phase.

Finally this is possible on the CPC in a really comfortable and clear way. A HLP SymbOS help browser file is included with details about how to use Star Chart, but everything is very self-explanatory (you can find your lat/long very easy with google maps).

The star database contains nearly 4000 objects. The star positions are based on the Mag 5 Star Catalog (C) 2015 John P. Pratt, itself based on the Yale Bright Star Catalog. Planetary positions are calculated using a public domain implementation of VSOP87-Pico by Greg Miller. Asteroids and dwarf planets like Ceres and Pluto are currently not supported.

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Because floating-point math is very slow on the Z80, Star Chart's calculations use a number of approximations and may vary by a degree or more from true celestial positions (especially when high-precision math is turned off, or when viewing dates outside the 21st century). Still, charts are accurate enough for casual stargazing.

Plotting stars down to magnitude 3 using the fast methode takes around 40 seconds on a 4MHz Amstrad CPC. This is what you will usually see in an average european city. Plotting all stars down to mag5 with high precision may take more than 15 minutes. You have to go far out to the countryside to see such a sky.

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[Gryzor]

Used to love these "pointless" apps back in the day, thanks for sharing!

[Prodatron]

Used to love these "pointless" apps back in the day

For me it was pointless as well in the 80ies/early 90ies. But since astronomy, cosmology and spaceflight is my second hobby beside vintage-computing, I am just fascinated about all this, and it is just cool, when you can have a view to the sky and understand how it is all going on there.
This tool is great to help you
Living in Athen or at the west side of the "Ruhrgebiet" (like me) sucks a little bit regarding this, as the sky is completely light polluted. But as soon as you are at a place where you can see the milkyway in a more or less good way (for me the last time was in the north of Denmark) you are completely overwhelmed.

[eto]

SymbOS to me has a similar charm like Steam Punk. It's like going back in time and then inventing the future again, just limited to the technology of that era. 

Totally love it. 

[Prodatron]

SymbOS to me has a similar charm like Steam Punk. It's like going back in time and then inventing the future again, just limited to the technology of that era.

Totally love it.

Thanks, that is nice to hear! Seems, that you are somehow right, haha!
But while Steampunk is solving stuff by using 19ies century technologies, I still think, that you can solve modern problems on old hardware in exactly the same modern way, what you do on actual hardware.

[Gryzor]

Used to love these "pointless" apps back in the day

For me it was pointless as well in the 80ies/early 90ies. But since astronomy, cosmology and spaceflight is my second hobby beside vintage-computing, I am just fascinated about all this, and it is just cool, when you can have a view to the sky and understand how it is all going on there.
This tool is great to help you
Living in Athen or at the west side of the "Ruhrgebiet" (like me) sucks a little bit regarding this, as the sky is completely light polluted. But as soon as you are at a place where you can see the milkyway in a more or less good way (for me the last time was in the north of Denmark) you are completely overwhelmed.

Oh totally agree, it *is* pretty cool. I mean I don't have any specific interest in astronomy (well, I do, but it's not a hobby of mine), but I still find it really nice to explore using such apps

As for the milky way, it's not that bad. Of course in and around the city you can't see shit, but in most of Greece you have an unobstructed view of the sky and the milky way. Used to spend hours and hours looking at it with my dad when I was a kid and on vacation at the feet of Olympus (and yearning to get back to my 464 back home).

[m_dr_m]

But while Steampunk is solving stuff by using 19ies century technologies, I still think, that you can solve modern problems on old hardware in exactly the same modern way, what you do on actual hardware.

Exactly!  That's why I'd love to be able to use SymStudio on SymbOs!

[St-BeidE(DE/GB)]

SymbOS to me has a similar charm like Steam Punk. It's like going back in time and then inventing the future again, just limited to the technology of that era.

Totally love it.

Best description ever read about Symbos !!!