SkyMap Pro 11 is a sophisticated star charting and planetarium program. It can display the sky as seen from any location on earth for any date between 4000BC and 8000AD, showing fields of view ranging from the entire visible sky down to a detailed telescopic "finder chart" for a faint galaxy. The program also provides a powerful set of tools for observation planning and recording.
Although SkyMap Pro 11 has the power to satisfy the needs of even the most demanding user, the program is easy to learn to use, and is primarily controlled with the mouse using simple "toolbars". A printed tutorial manual and detailed "on line" help system provides extensive operating instructions and reference information.
SkyMap Pro 11 is the end result of almost 20 years of development work (work on the program started in 1986) and the program is used by many thousands of astronomers all over the world. The program's evolution has always been primarily guided by feedback from existing users of the program, thus making it the ideal tool for use by the practical amateur astronomer.
We recommend the following as the minimum system requirement for running SkyMap Pro 11:
 | Microsoft Windows 98, ME, NT4, 2000, or XP. Please note that, if running under Windows NT4, service pack 6a or later is required. |
| Pentium 233 or faster. |
| Memory: 64MB or more. |
| Hard disk space: 25MB for minimum installation, 235MB for standard installation, 605MB for full installation. |
| Screen resolution: 800x600 or higher. |
| CD-ROM drive required for installation, and recommended for normal operation (not
required for operation if a "full install" is done).
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Amongst the basic facilities of SkyMap Pro are the following:
| Easily move the map around the sky, zoom in and out, and rotate the map with a single key press or click of the mouse button. |
| Display more than 15 million stars as faint as magnitude 15. The 2.5 million brightest stars are displayed with (approximately) their true colours. |
| Display more than 200,000 deep sky objects - star clusters, nebulae, galaxies, and so on. Virtually every object which can be observed in a typical amateur telescope (and many that can't be!) are included in SkyMap Pro's extensive databases. |
| Display the positions of the Sun, Moon, and major planets. Positions have an accuracy of a small fraction of an arc second. |
| Display the names, official boundary lines, and "stick figures" of all 88 constellations. |
| Display the positions of all known asteroids and comets. Updated asteroid and comet data can be downloaded free of charge from this web site, or automatically updated from the internet from within the program. |
| Display a wide range of different coordinate grids and scale lines showing altitude/azimuth, RA/dec, ecliptic and galactic coordinates. |
| Display pictures of more than 15,000 astronomical objects from the picture collection supplied with SkyMap Pro. If the computer is connected to the Internet, a picture of any object can automatically be downloaded and displayed, or you can add your own photographs and CCD images to create your own custom picture library. |
| Add your own "annotations" to a map, including text labels, lines or arrows, eyepiece field of view circles, camera and CCD field of view rectangles. |
| Display a photographic "background images" on the star chart. This can either be read from the RealSky® CD-ROMs (not supplied), or automatically downloaded from the Internet. |
| Print high-quality star charts on any printer supported by Windows.
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SkyMap Pro has many powerful features primarily targeted at the more "advanced" user. These include:
| A powerful search facility allows any of the millions of objects in SkyMap Pro's databases to be easily located. |
| Detailed information can be displayed about any object known to SkyMap Pro, either by clicking the object on the map with the mouse, or locating it using the search facility. Complete information from many different professional data catalogs is available; this can be copied to the Windows clipboard from where it can be pasted into any other application, such as a word processor. You can add your own notes to the supplied information for any object. |
| A large library of telescope and eyepiece data is supplied. "Field of view" circles showing any combination of eyepiece and telescope can be drawn on the map - ideal for finder charts intended for "star hopping". |
| The path of any moving object such as a planet, asteroid, or comet can be drawn on the map as a line labelled with the date and magnitude at specified intervals - ideal for comet or asteroid finder charts. |
| A tabular "ephemeris" can be created for any planet, comet, or asteroid. Choose any (or all!) of more than 30 different items of information to display. This allows you, for example, to display a table showing the times of sunrise and sunset every day for a year, or to show the coordinates and magnitude of a comet for a period of several weeks. |
| Accurate positions of major planetary satellites can be displayed on the map. The four "Galilean" satellites of Jupiter, the eight largest satellites of Saturn, and the five largest satellites of Uranus are shown. For Jupiter, the planet's belts and zones, the position of the "Great Red Spot", and and transits, shadow transits, occultations, and eclipses of the Galilean satellites are all accurately depicted. |
| Asteroid positions can optionally be computed using either the Lowell ASTORB database or
the Minor Planet Center's MPCORB orbit database, both of which can be downloaded free of
charge from the Internet. Both databases are updated daily and contain the latest orbital
elements for all known asteroids.
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SkyMap Pro has a built-in observing log allowing you to make a record of all your observations. This is fully integrated with the star chart - to record an observation for an object simply display the information dialog for that object and select the Log menu item; the observing log screen comes up ready for you to record your observation with all the appropriate object details already filled in for you.
A powerful search facility makes it easy to locate your observations. If you simply want to see a list of all the observations you've made of a specific object (by far the most common situation), display the information dialog for the object and select the Query menu item. If you want to make a more general query, a search dialog allows you to specify many different parameters - you could, for example, say "show me all the observations of galaxies I made from my dark sky observing site during October 1999".
The observing log has been developed in close collaboration with a group of very active observers, and has been designed to meet the needs of the practical observer, especially as far as ease of use is concerned.
The program has a powerful set of observation planning tools. These are all based around the idea of a "target list" - a list of objects that you wish to observe. A number of target lists are supplied with the program (eg the Messier Catalog, Herschel 400 list, etc), and it's very easy to create your own lists, either manually or from the results of a search operation (you can say, for example, "generate a list of all the galaxies in Leo which are brighter than magnitude 12 and bigger than 1' in size").
At its most basic level, you can simply use the target list to "check off" those objects you've observed. Target lists are closely coupled with the observing log; when you create or open a new list you can automatically check off those objects which are recorded in the observing log, allowing you to concentrate on "new" objects which you've not yet observed.
Additional tools allow you to plan an observing program for your target list - you can easily see which objects on the target list are currently visible, and when objects are best placed for observation during a planned observing session.
A library of target lists is available for download, free of charge, from this web site.
SkyMap Pro can predict the passes of, and display the tracks of, artificial Earth satellites, using standard "TLE" (two-line element) orbital elements. Up-to-date elements can be downloaded automatically from the internet at the click of a button.
The program can either predict the passes of a specified satellite over a range of dates, or the passes of all satellites in its database for a single night. You can display either all passes, or only visible passes (ie passes during which the satellite is in sunlight and the observer in darkness).
Pass predictions are initially displayed in a "tabular" form, making it easy to see the results at a glance. You can then select one or more passes from this table and display them as "tracks" on the star chart, allowing you to see the path of the satellite amongst the stars.
The program can also display the "ground track" of a satellite, showing its path over the Earth's surface in either a tabular form, or graphically on a world map.
The program uses the standard NORAD "SGP4" and "SDP4" mathematical models for predicting satellite positions, thus ensuring highly accurate results.
SkyMap Pro can predict local circumstances for any eclipse of the Sun or Moon occuring between 2000 BC and 3000 AD. For solar eclipses, the program can also display the track of the eclipse on a highly-detailed world map; just like a star chart window, the map window can be scrolled, zoomed in and out, printed, etc.
SkyMap Pro can "talk" to a variety of different telescopes and "digital setting circles" using a serial cable between the computer and the telescope or DSC (cables are not supplied with the program). This is done using plug-in "device drivers", making it easy to add support for new devices to the program. Drivers are supplied with the program to control the following devices:
| Astro-Physics "GTO" range of computer-controlled telescope mounts. |
| Celestron NexStar 5/8. |
| Celestron NexStar GPS. |
| Celestron Ultima 2000. |
| Meade AutoStar controller. |
| Meade LX200. |
| Meade Magellan I and II digital setting circles. |
| Sky Engineering "Sky Commander". |
| Sky Tracker GOTO system |
| Takahashi NJP digital setting circles. |
| Vixen SkySensor 2000 PC. |
In addition to the above devices which SkyMap has its own "native" telescope drivers for, the program is also supplied with an ASCOM telescope driver allowing it to control any telescope supported by the ASCOM standard. Visit http://www.ascom-standards.org to find out more information about ASCOM, and http://www.ascom-standards.org/drivers.html to see a list of the telescopes and mounts which ASCOM currently supports. Note that, in order to use the ASCOM telescope driver from within SkyMap it is first necessary to download and install a 5MB "runtime" package from the ASCOM web site.
When computer control is activated, a cross-hair cursor on the map marks the point in the sky at which the telescope is aimed. On devices which support "slewing" under computer control, the telescope can be aimed at any object simply by clicking the desired object on the SkyMap Pro map.
SkyMap Pro is supplied with many complete data catalogs, including:
| European Space Agency Tycho 2 catalog, containing very accurate position, magnitude and colour index information for 2.5 million stars. This is the primary catalog used by SkyMap Pro for creating star maps, and is complete down to roughly magnitude 11.5, with a limiting magnitude of about 12.5. SkyMap displays stars from the Tycho catalog in (approximately) their true colours. |
| European Space Agency Hipparcos catalog, containing extremely accurate position, magnitude, and distance information for 118,218 stars. |
| Yale Bright Star Catalog, containing extensive information and notes for 9,100 stars brighter than magnitude 6.5. |
| Hubble Guide Star Catalog (GSC) containing 25 million records for 19 million objects, of which about 14 million are stars. The GSC covers the entire sky to between magnitude 13 and 15, and is used by SkyMap Pro as the main source of star mapping information for stars fainter than the limit of the Tycho 2 catalog. |
| General Catalog of Variable Stars (GCVS) containing information on all known variable stars in our galaxy. |
| Washington Visual Double Star Catalog (WDS) containing information on all known double or multiple stars. |
| Sixth Catalog of Orbits of Visual Binary Stars. This catalog contains orbital information for over 1800 pairs of stars. When information for such a star is displayed in SkyMap, the position angle and separation are the star are calculated from the orbital elements. |
| Wolfgang Steinicke's Revised NGC and IC Catalogs. These are new revisions of the NGC and IC catalogs and together contain over 13,000 objects. Each object has been individually checked on photographic images of the sky, and its basic type, position, magnitude, size, and position angle corrected. These catalogs form are SkyMap's primary "deep sky" catalogs. |
| Saguaro Astronomy Club (SAC) catalog, containing detailed information, descriptions, and notes on over 10,000 assorted deep sky objects easily seen in amateur telescopes. This is SkyMap's main deep sky catalog for objects not contained in the NGC or IC catalogs. |
| Lyon-Meudon Extragalactic Database (LEDA), containing detailed information on 161,000 galaxies. |
| Harris' Catalog of Globular Clusters in the Milky Way containing extensive information on all known globular clusters in this galaxy. |
| Strasbourg Catalogue of Galactic Planetary Nebulae, containing detailed
information on all known planetary nebulae in this galaxy.
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Although SkyMap Pro is supplied with a huge amount of information, there are situations in which it's very useful to be able to add your own data to the program. SkyMap Pro is supplied with an easy-to-use data preparation tool which makes it straightforward to add to the program virtually any catalog which is available as an ASCII text file. Once added to SkyMap Pro, such catalogs are fully integrated with the program - the objects they contain are displayed on the map and can be searched for and have information about them displayed in just the same way as can be done for the built-in data catalogs.
A library of additional data catalogs is available free of charge on this web site.
In the same way that external data catalogs can be used to add additional "objects" to a star chart, map overlays provide a method of displaying additional lines or text on the chart. They can be used for such purposes as displaying page boundaries from a star atlas, drawing "artistic" constellation figures on a star chart, or showing the motion of a meteor shower radiant over time. Map overlays are simple text files with "keywords" telling SkyMap what to do; the SkyMap Pro manual contains detailed instructions about writing your own overlay files.
A library of freely downloadable map overlays is available on this web site.
Last Modified May 10, 2006