Filed under: Fun, Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Freeware, Open Source
Your Windows to the heavens
by Ryan Carter Jul 12th 2006
If you are an Astronomy buff like me, you've probably wished that you could see a better view of the night sky, besides the one from your kid's binoculars that don't really make anything look great. Perhaps you have trouble finding things in the night sky, like me. I have found three great apps that let you do just that. First is Meade's TeleStar software (click on TeleStar software on the page). This is made to work with many of Meade's telescopes, and works as a great stand-alone viewer for those without a telescope. It even sports a night-vision mode so you don't have to be blinded by your screen while you are trying to look at fuzzy objects light years away. Next is a really stellar (pun not very much intended) app called Celestia. Celestia has many downloadable modules that make it the most extensible of the sky-viewing applications I have seen, not to mention its ability to let you view anything from any viewpoint. Celestia is probably the best of the three, but can be difficult to learn how to use. Last is a program called Stellarium. This program is very slick looking and has a nice interface for helping you get your bearings in the night-sky. All three programs are free downloads (code for "happy geek"). Celestia and Stellarium both run on Windows, Mac, and Linux, but it isn't clear if Meade's software runs on either Mac or Linux. I use all three on Windows XP whenever I am trying to find Jupiter or catch a glimpse of those ever elusive globular star clusters.Update: Image fixed to display the correct one. Thanks Robert for pointing this out!
One of these days I expect Google to come out with "Google Galaxy" or some similar outward-looking companion Google Earth. But we don't need to wait for Google, as there's some good free offerings out there for people wanting to stargaze from the comfort of their computer. Among them is 
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
