Astronomical Software for PCs and Macs

Courtesy of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
GalacticSurfs Astronomical Software
A nice annotated list of astronomical software, mostly for PCs and Macs by Edouard Reny. It's also available in French.
Adastra Freestar
A free program offering realistic views of the night sky from any location on any date, solar system objects animated against a stellar backdrop, printable finder charts, and searches for constellations, stars, and planets.
Astroart
This Italian program for PC's running Windows 95, 98, or NT is available without its image processing capabilities as a freeware viewer, AVIS, which displays 8- and 16-bit FITS files, as well as other standard CCD formats.
AstroVirgil
A Java-based browser for looking at Chandra X-ray images retrieved over the web by Steve McDonald on top of ESO's JSky Java Components for Astronomy.
Cartes du Ciel Sky Charts
This multilingual (French, Portugese, Thai, and maybe more) mapping program is free and runs under Windows 95,98, and NT.
DeskNite
A free sky display program with 3000 stars, 9 planets, Messier and NGC objects and lots of display options. It is by Coeli Software, who also make Stella 2000.
ISIS (Integrated Software for Imaging Spectrometers)
The United States Geological Survey's comprehensive, user-friendly, portable tool for processing, analyzing, and displaying remotely sensed image data.
FitsX
This astronomical image processing application handles 16- and 32-bit FITS images. FitsX can be freely downloaded and used for 21 days. After that time it must be registered on-line for US$29 plus 17% VAT for EU residents.
GeoVirgil
A Java-based browser for looking at planetary images in NASA's PDS format by Steve McDonald on top of BBN Technology's OpenMap RJavaBeans for viewing and manipulating geospatial information.
Linux for Astronomy
A CDROM containing much of the freely distributed software used by the astronomical community.
MyStars!
Registration for this shareware sky mapping program is $17.00. An online version, My Stars Live, generates starmaps over the web.
SkyMap
This inexpensive program for Windows displays stars, planets, comets, asteroies, and non-stellar objects. It is available for Windows 95, 98, and NT from World Wide Software Publishing.
Starry Night
A $28 Macintosh and Power Macintosh shareware sky simulator including 65,000 stars, planets and satellites and NGC galaxies.
Stella 2000
A $50US astronomy software suite which displays the 7,000-star Yale Bright Star Catalog. The extended edition ($80US) displays the 118000-star Hipparcos Catalogue and more. It is by Coeli Software, who also make the free DeskNight.
Voyager III
The software CD includes Hipparcos, Tycho, and HST catalogs, and can create very handy sky charts in many different coordinate systems. Accurate precession routines and the ability to input your own source lists are other good features.
Xephem
This software package displays the sky in many ways. Source code is free, Unix and Windows executables are available for $80 and $160, respectively.
The Jumbo shareware site has lots of astronomical software for PC's and Macs.

The Tennessee Sky