Cartes du Ciel
Sky Charts 

Version française 

Versão em Português

Czech Version


Greek Version  

Spanish Version

 

Best from 640x480
to 1280x1024

Free program to draw sky charts 
For use with Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP

Complete Program Documentation   Examples   Screen shot   Download. It is FREE !    Get a CDrom    Part of the source code   Related software   Support

Read a review of this software in September 2005 issue of and the Rod Mollise review  in the January-February 2002 issue of Skywatch

This program enables you to draw sky charts, making use of the data in 16 catalogs of stars and nebulae.
In addition the position of planets, asteroids and comets are shown.

 The purpose of this program is to prepare different sky maps for a particular observation.
A large number of parameters help you to choose specifically or automatically which catalogs to use, the colour and the dimension of stars and nebulae, the representation of planets, the display of labels and coordinate grids, the superposition of pictures, the condition of visibility and more.
All these features make this celestial atlas more complete than a conventional planetarium. 

Instead of a long description I rather invite you to go through the examples , the handbook and the catalog descriptions so that you can get a better idea of the features of Sky Chart .

This program has been developed to satisfy my own requirements. Feel free to mail your ideas if you find that a useful functionality is missing. I will try to include it in the next version if it is possible. 

It is possible to choose the program language. Actually more than 20 languages are available.

Please look at the catalog descriptions and download pages for explanation about the catatog used and how to obtain the extra catalog for use with the program, and the RealSky® support pages for using this CD's.
For most of them you must use a binary version available from the download page.

I originally developed this program for my personal use, because I like to adapt my tools to my needs. In my opinion the functionality of Sky Charts might be of interest to amateur astronomers or students. Therefore I decided to distribute it as freeware. I feel that you should rather invest your money in buying a good eyepiece than to waste it on software!

"Sky charts" is a  freeware. You can freely install and use an unlimited number of copies for your personal usage or redistribute it on any support under the restriction that you must not modify it and that you have to include all the documentation files. 
Any commercial use is however prohibited.

For the conditions and citations of the single catalogs, please refer to the original descriptions in the files ".TXT" in the  subdirectory "CAT\". 

I would like to thank the Centre de Données Astronomiques de Strasbourg as well as the Astronomical Data Center who make accessible valuable astronomical catalogs to any amateur astronomer.

Sky Charts uses catalog extracts provided by these two institutions:

I also would like to mention the US Naval Observatory who kindly supplies the USNO-SA1.0 CD-ROM,  the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams for the elements of comets and asteroids and their permission to distribute these files, and Lowell Observatory for the asteroids elements.

The Saguaro Astronomy Club distribute is Database Version 7.2

Michael. G. Christensen produce the FITS table with Uranometria 2000 charts boundaries.
Jim Cornmell produce the object common name list and give the idea for the nebulae outlines.

Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA/GSFC

Satellites calculation use QuickSat by Mike McCants,
Iridium flare prediction use Iridflar by Robert Matson
Thank's to them for their permission to include their software and data with this package.

Programming

This program is entirely written in DELPHI 6. 

Calculations of the ephemerides of planets between 1900 and 2100 are based on " Ephemerides of planets between 1900 and 2100 Chapront-Francou, Bureau des Longitudes 1996 ". The program serie96.f was rewritten in Pascal and include in a DLL.

Planets calculation between -3000 and +3000 are based on plan404 by Steve Moshier, a DLL interface this C program.

Calculations of the ephemerides of the Moon are based on " Lunar Solution ELP 2000-82B Chapront-Touze, Bureau des Longitudes 1988". The program elp82b.f was rewritten in Pascal and include in a DLL.

Planetary satellites calculation between 1997 and 2020 use posxy by J.-E. Arlot, Ch. Ruatti, D.T. Vu et  W.Thuillot, Bureau des Longitudes. The program diffpos.f was rewritten in Pascal and include in a DLL.

Many calculations are based on the essential "Astronomical Algorithms by Jean Meeus".

RealSky® CD support use a library developed by Bill Gray of Project Pluto.

Some graphic files format use the library " NviewLib.dll " by K. Nishita.

Some graphic components use the Delphi library RXLIB.

Support for GZIP compression format use ZLIB by Jean-Loup Gailly and Mark Adler.

Installation files have been produced using the freeware version of GInstall

I will to thank specially all the people who translate the program in different language.

Many thanks to Luca Crivelli and Greg Roberts for their help with the development of the program.

Since 1999-09-22