XEphem 3.7.2 review

License: Free for non-commercial use File size: 18915K Developer: Elwood Charles Downey

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XEphem project is a scientific-grade interactive astronomical ephemeris package.

Here are some key features of "XEphem":
computes heliocentric, geocentric and topocentric information for all objects;
has built-in support for all planets; the moons of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Earth; central meridian longitude of Mars and Jupiter; Saturn's rings; and Jupiter's Great Red Spot;
allows user-defined objects including stars, deepsky objects, asteroids, comets and Earth satellites.
provides special efficient handling of large catalogs including Tycho, Hipparcos, GSC.
displays data in configurable tabular formats in conjunction with several interactive graphical views;
displays a night-at-a-glance 24 hour graphic showing when any selected objects are up;
displays 3-D stereo Solar System views that are particularly well suited for visualizing comet trajectories;
quickly finds all close pairs of objects in the sky;
sorts and prints all catalogs with very flexible criteria for creating custom observing lists;
creates plots of any pairs of all data fields throughout the program;
downloads and displays AAVSO light curves directly online;
downloads current asteroid and comets ephemerides from Lowell Observatory and Minor Planet Center;
downloads timely Earth satellite orbital TLE parameters;
plots true binary system orbits;
downloads Digitized Sky Survey FITS files from STScI or ESO;
displays seti@home client progress and plots position being processed on Sky View map;
provides a handy coordinates spreadsheet for converting among equatorial, ecliptic, horizon and galactic frames ;
displays live SOHO images of the Sun;
includes a compiler for entering and solving user-written functions using any data fields;
serves as the control point for GOTO telescopes such as Meade LX200 or other external applications;
displays FITS files images overlaid with database symbols and other graphical information;
performs automatic star pattern matching to automatically solve for World Coordinate System on any image;
performs 1-click 2D Gaussian relative and absolute photometry;
defines and saves any number of Eyepieces to use in sky maps;
captures, displays and clips to any number of local horizon profiles;
stores sets of all Sky View options in history sets for easy playback later;
prints using high quality Postscript;
allows you to assign any number of objects as Favorites for special fast access throughout the program, and makes them available even when their original databases are no longer loaded;
provides an extensible image gallery initialized with over 300 beautiful and informative color images of deep sky objects;
provides an observing logbook which is automatically filled in with observing circumstances, with searching on most fields;
displays magnetic deviation for any location.