Home Planet
| Home Planet
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|---|---|
 View of the earth with a full moon and ISS |
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| Basic data
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| developer | John Walker |
| Current version | 3.3 (August 2006) |
| operating system | Windows as well as an online version |
| category | Astronomy program |
| License | public domain |
| German speaking | Yes |
| www.fourmilab.ch | |
Home Planet is a free astronomy program , under Microsoft Windows running 9x, NT, 2000, XP.
The program allows a view of the earth map, telescope view, horizon view, a view of the solar system and shows planets , over 5000 asteroids and periodic comets , the fixed stars of the Yale Bright Star catalog or the SAO catalog , as well as all Messier - and most of the NGC objects and around 1000 satellites . It also has a telescope interface and a cuckoo clock . Home Planet was programmed by John Walker , the founder of Autodesk . The name means translated "home planet", it is an English name for the earth (the home planet of mankind).
The program is - in today's terms - very small (version 3.1 with the simple earth map 19.5 MB, version 3.2 with the Blue Marble : Cloudless Earth, high resolution [8192 × 4096], natural color 47.3 MB) and fast, but does not have any 3D graphics.
The program has produced a whole family of modules as stand-alone applications:
- MoonTool : A small moon phase calculator for Amiga , Windows and Unix
- Earth Screen Saver and Sky Screen Saver : two screen savers for Windows
Interactive server variants:
- Earth and Moon Viewer : Shows the earth and moon from different positions
- Solar System Live : Diagram of the solar system with the planetary positions
- Your Sky : Telescope simulation
Web links
- fourmilab.ch John Walker's home page - with an overview of many programs