Skyglobe 3.6 Astronomy Simulator
Here is a great piece of software that works beautifully with the palmtop, Skyglobe 3.6.
Available from Shareware.com, the package is around
360K, but don't worry about disk space. The documentation is fairly large, as is an optional
data file, which contains some 29,000 stars, names for (all?) of them, and RA/Dec lines. While
I'm not sure why the RA/Dec lines weren't included in the main file, none the less 3216 stars,
constellations, names, Messier objects, planets, orbits, you name it, are included in one
executable, which using PKLite or Diet compresses to about 147K, and that's all that you need
to have on the palmtop. Not bad for all that data!
More information
Skyglobe 3.6 has a multitude of features, and is in plain black and white for the Palmtop. It
has video card autosensing so if you load it on a desktop, it'll come up in the best resolution
possible, and in color of course. Can't say how it looks, as I only own one PC; my LX. :)
The display is clear, easy to read, and once you learn the keys you can turn off the location
display and help display, and have a full-screen sky. If you find the display 'dusty' you might
reduce the number of stars, it's normally set to M6.2 with the optional datafile, M5.6 without.
I reduce this down to M5.2 to give a display of only 1988 stars. Not that you really miss them
(unless you're holding the palmtop up towards the sky comparing or something..?) but it does
make the display 'cleaner', only showing the brightest of stars. Of course, you can reduce it
farther than this as well. Some keys do nothing on the palmtop, as a CGA display does not do
color (even on the desktop, as it runs in highres) such as brightness, some of the key combinations
that change colors of lines, etc.. Nothing you'll miss, as there is no need to alter colors to
see everything as with a lot of normal DOS software.
In all, Skyglobe 3.6 has all the features my $100 Galileo package on my Amiga has for a shareware
fee of $20.
Some examples of power
Here are a few simple examples of the cool stuff Skyglobe can do, taken from the docs:
- Display solar eclipses. You can Find the Sun, pressing L rather than Enter to select the
sun, thus Locking the display onto the sun. Making sure the moon is displayed (F3 related
options)) you can watch and see when the moon passes in front of the sun! Hit Enter to set
location information directly, set your date to July 11, 1991, 14:00, zoom to 30. hit A for
auto advance. Watch the moon approach and eclipse the sun around 15:30!
- Watch the Polaris, the North Star, stop being the North star! Hit N for a northern
view, hit enter to put in information. Set zoom to 10, location North Pole, Lat 90, Long 0.
Set elevation to 90 degrees, turbo with U or J, and watch Polaris go off from the RA markers.
Installing
Place Skyglobe.EXE whereever you desire (c:\bin for me) and fire it up. It complains about
not having the optional data file (and beeps, ugh), but it soon displays the screen, with a
shareware reminder. Read it, and do what it says; press a key to continue. On your left is
your location information, on your right is a quick list of keys. Now, if you have a big
computer and a little computer like I do, open up the Skyglobe.TXT on your big computer and read
it while playing with Skyglobe on the palmtop. Go through the tutorials, read the docs all
the way through.. There's a *lot* of power in this program, I used it for a few weeks before
I realized half of the stuff it can do. I just wish it had more built-in help. The F keys all
do various things, listed in the manual, but Shift, Alt, and Ctrl also do different things with
the F keys, such as adding / subtracting / changing / expanding information. I used an editor to cut
out lines 573 - 613 from the manual and put it on the palmtop, it's around 4k but it basically
lists what all the keys do that aren't documented on the Skyglobe display.
It works great with DOSShell too! I put it in the DOSShell program listing, name of Skyglobe,
program pointing to c:\bin\skyglobe.exe, directory c:\bin, no pause when exiting, then went
into advanced and changed it to graphics. With this done, I can have Skyglobe running and switch
to the SysMgr at any time. Of course, it is possible to run Skyglobe with SysMgr, but it requires
over 310k (it tries to load for me, but fails) and might be best left to a MaxDOS session.
Last remarks
Again, be sure to read the manual, and if you didn't read close enough, 0-9 save 10 settings,
Shift 0 - 9 reload those settings. And 0 is the default upon loading. However, remember that
Shift 0 is normally ), so you gotta actually hit Shift &... on the Palmtop! And Shift 1 is !, etc..
Just save your regular configuration by hitting 0 after you have Skyglobe set the way you want it
and it'll automatically load that setting.
