While photographing at night I started to think that some software with ability to predict what is going to happen on the night sky (for example, Moon sets or rises, presence and time of meteor showers) would be very useful. Online tool wasn’t an option - there are times I don’t have internet connection. I looked at standalone, preferably open source programs. There’s plenty of free software for watching night sky, like Celestia, Stellarium or Kstars. I knew about them but I chose to install Xephem on my Mac. It’s not the prettiest program available, it does not have fancy graphics like competitors mentioned before and being so powerful Xephem is probably an overkill for a night photographer. It’s features list is long and target audience are rather astronomers. Why I chose it?
- it does not eat computer’s resources almost at all
- its features may actually be quite useful in the near future, because I want to jump into astrophotography some day
- it has a nice window called Night-At-Glance - it’s an overview of what is happening on the sky on the particular night
Here’s the mandatory screenshot.
Note on installing: Xephem is available for all major linux/unix systems mainly. Installation under OSX should be performed through Fink - otherwise you may run into trouble while compiling it by yourself. I haven’t tried installation under MS Windows, but Xephem’s homepage states it’s possible.
Why all this you may ask. Here’s the answer - look at this photo by Brian Chapman. It’s one of the most stunning examples of night photography I’ve seen recently.
Tags: night photography, software tools, xephem
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