I woke up early, and started to fill in time by looking at this forum. Looking out of the window to the east I noticed the light, and wondered about the time of sunrise (about now, but I've been writing for a while). I also wondered if I could see Mercury - that was maybe 40 minutes ago, so I looked at Stellarium which showed that it might just have been possible. Stellarium - http://www.stellarium.org/en_GB/ is a free software system for showing the sky configuration at any time and from any Earth location, and runs on several systems. I have it on Mac OS X, and use it quite frequently. The only slight snag I have is that if Stellarium is used to show a high speed "movie" of sky star patterns, then the processing power requirements go up, and my MBP gets hot. It isn't a problem.mostly, however.
Looking out of the window again, I decided that despite Stellarium, it wasn't going to be worth looking for Mercury today, as there's cloud on the horizon.
I also filled in some time by looking at another package, Celestia. I have to admit that I couldn't figure this out too well, though it looks very powerful. The user interface allows one to move through space to a vast range of different objects. I did run the demo, which showed some of the power of the system, but still didn't get me much further with the interface. Celestia - http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
Probably I ought to look at the documentation - http://www.shatters.net/celestia/documentation.html
Now time to give up and go back to bed I think, but I do recommend some of the available software for showing the state of the sky.
Looking out of the window again, I decided that despite Stellarium, it wasn't going to be worth looking for Mercury today, as there's cloud on the horizon.
I also filled in some time by looking at another package, Celestia. I have to admit that I couldn't figure this out too well, though it looks very powerful. The user interface allows one to move through space to a vast range of different objects. I did run the demo, which showed some of the power of the system, but still didn't get me much further with the interface. Celestia - http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
Probably I ought to look at the documentation - http://www.shatters.net/celestia/documentation.html
Now time to give up and go back to bed I think, but I do recommend some of the available software for showing the state of the sky.
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