The Earth Centered Universe Pro 5.0
Contents
1. RA DEC AZ ALT field size magnitude limits sky darkness sidereal time and Julian date e Deep sky objects are drawn in correct sizes shapes and orientations when this information is available e Ability to add observing notes about any object e Sync program time and or location using a GPS receiver e Clicking on an object brings up an extensive information display e Easy to make and place field of view targets finder eyepiece CCD etc e Search and filter comet and asteroid elements by brightness sky position visibility Earth distance etc e Create detailed reports on plotted objects e Extensive Internet online features Comet and Asteroid orbital elements are online updatable Advanced web searching is included as part of ECU s internal search engine Search professional databases like GCVS NED and SIMBAD Display the Clear Sky Clock nearest to the currently selected site Retrieve weather data for your observing site Of course you have to install this thing on your puter before you can start enjoying all these benefits Just how much PC will you need Not much ECU Pro s system requirements are surprisingly modest OS wise you ll need Windows 95 yes I said 95 98 2000 NT or XP Wanna put it on your brand new Vista box I d email Nova Astronomics before trying that Memory A spartan 12mb Your Palm Pilot prob ly has more n that While the docs don t spell out exactly how much space an everyth2. than dazzling me
3. OPi o k er e 3 oe SN a 1 bd hy Ar ec k e oa gt w le 65 P e fe e s Gemini eo pr a a 10 0 t NGC23M4 2 PK 149419 z 6 1 PK 1494 191 Par e e e ee bd a 5 e 8 339 ox s A e 0i ec va 1 p 3 51 a a fs e J Paim e 88 NECI ee e t s e ex e 9 s a EE 420 7 d H a 80 g3 NGCI395 ee 2 182 PR MSM i s ECU Pro V5 0A Local Horizon Mode from Mobile Alabama nS doneO6 S138 Deckination 24 39 53 13 Universal Right Ascensi Local Stan Field Height 25 47 Azimuth 069 L0 Altitude Another big use for any planetarium What s up right now or next week or next year As far as what s up right now you can save the program s parameters with the display zoomed out enough that when you start next time you ll get a nice overall look at the sky for the current date and time you ll be asked if you want to save program status every time you exit Just make sure you go to the Animation menu and check lock on current azim and alt or the horizon will move around as time progresses either in real time or in animation This has me stymied for a while but again J shoulda read the manual The animation buttons on the toolbar allow you to advance or regress time in user selectable increments and work easily and well and smoothly Onc
4. good looking chart of a constellation without messin around with a lot of parameters Yes sometimes simple is good Thankfully there s still some of that out there for the computer wielding amateur astronomer and that s most of us these days There s Cartes du Ciel of course Hallo Northern Sky is another one So these programs are the ideal Yes and no I ve gotten a lot of mileage out of CdC especially but it like HNS is shareware It s always a work in progress a hobby project for its author What if I were to want a simple clear capable program that s a finished commercial product Oh and one that doesn t cost too much I ain t gonna lie to y all I ain t gonna give up The Sky but I would be willing to spend a few dollars on something to supplement that monster program something a little simpler That my friends brings us round to Earth Centered Universe This program has been on the street for quite a few years but had mostly escaped my notice I think its name had something to do with that In my Rebel Yell saturated cerebellum Earth Centered meant the program must have to do with the Earth not the sky Maybe it was a satellite trackin application Bzzzzzt Wrong ECU is a full featured planetarium style program that strays into what we used to call the deep sky program arena think Guide and Megastar and Skymap That is plenty of planetarium style horizon oriented features and ani
5. to do things this way Pd guess it s a product of the time ECU was born I don t know exactly when the program was first released but I m pretty sure it must have been around during Win 95 days If you think back to those antique times yov ll remember the GSC was a hard pill for many of our PCs to swallow The first program I owned that included the GSC was Megastar and it was just barely able to fit on the 300mb disk Doublespaced of my 25mhz 486 Allowing installation of pieces of the GSC enabled way back when users to save disk space I reckon Which brings us to the basic look of Earth Centered Universe Retro and simple are the words that come to mind You will not find any fancy dan XP look 3 D menus and windows here You get that good old plain vanilla Win 95 98 look Which doesn t bother me The sky itself Nothing could be farther from the how pretty can we make it virtual skies of The Sky 6 Starry Night and Stellarium NO what you have with ECU is a basic representation of the night sky as seen in the image below Black skies Dots for Stars Standard constellation stick figure lines Forget simulated sunsets random meteors and passing clouds Planets Satellite less dots no matter how much zoom you pour on And you know what J like it I like returning to a simple uncluttered layout that won t annoy the you know what out of me at 3am on a chilly observing field Yes Virginia sometimes The Only En
6. The Earth Centered Universe Pro 5 0 Uncle Rod Nova Astronomics For Windows PCs 59 95 69 95 with printed manual software it seems he has It all started with that Little Old Astronomy Program from Colorado The Sky 6 Professional From there Unk Rod went on to AstroPlanner which hails from even farther north way up yonder in Canada And then there s the program I m a gonna bend your ears about today Earth Centered Universe Pro also from the Frozen Canadian North as we reckon things down here in Possum Swamp from a little outfit called Nova Astronomics http www nova astro com We re gonna examine this one in detail but I ll tell you upfront and right now if you want simple cheap and effective you could do a whole lot worse than ECU l as Your Old Uncle Rod deserted his southern roots When it comes to astronomy What s the current trend in astronomy software More Better Gooder More features zillions more features including things you didn t know you needed or wanted like the ability to superimpose images of the horizons of your favorite observing site onto the computer generated horizon Miss TSP Now you can feel like you re back at Prude Ranch every time you boot your astronomy program Don t like those weird little symbols for deep sky objects Hows about real pictures tens of thousands of real pictures And the rest of the sky Why settle for a symbolic representation of the heavens when it s possi
7. a toolbar hint text appear at the bottom of the screen on the status display These hints more than adequately describe the functions of toolbar buttons and once I d discovered this I had no more toolbar problems Frankly if d read the manual d have known about this feature from the beginning But who wants to read a manual OK ECU is up and working What can you do with this program One of the things you ll most want to do is print charts ve been eschewing print atlases and using computer generated charts since the days of Skyglobe 3 6 and I will tell you right now ECUs charts are some of the best I have ever seen I rate its hardcopy output as superior to that of The Sky much more legible than that of Starry Night better even than Megastar s printouts and surprisingly nicer lookin than the charts generated by what I used to consider the best in the business at printing that wonderful old DOS program Deep Space 3 D You don t have to twiddle around with settings to produce great looking charts either the example below was basically click and go enx LEGEND f J oF os k 2 N STARS g m Mag Limi 7 0 e ee oe G es K ry ie 8 ee y 2 20 6 ee Variables cable gt d 5 e Doubles e e DEEP Sky 6 _s9rtNGC2169 Mag Limit 12 1 ev e e 5 e en e gt sd gt Hochumie a e gt 2513 nacre e s 9 be ee 255e NGC 5 a ae 118
8. ble to have a photorealistic sky to admire in virtual fashion Starry Night for example now incorporates a complete CCD generated sky inherited from the not so successful Desktop Universe Yeah if you want to know the direction planetarium programs are goin take a look at Starry Night Or The Sky 6 And I understand the next The Sky currently being referred to as The Sky X goes even farther in the feature laden pretty direction and looks a lot like Starry Night Is that a good thing Well maybe Certainly Starry Night has many fans and The Sky 6 Professional is a very capable program it s what I normally use when I need the services of a planetarium style astronomy program There s no denying though that the prettiness comes at the price of performance While the publishers of these programs and others like them have done a good job of optimizing performance there s just no way Starry Night Pro Plus or The Sky 6 Professional will run as zippily as the comparatively simple Cartes du Ciel for example Sometimes I also find those beautiful displays confusing at 3am and long for the bygone days when Skyglobe 3 6 was state of the art At least that program s display was clear and decipherable All those tons of features That s good and bad Yes it s wonderful that I can change everything virtually everything in The Sky 6 But there are times when I really don t want that I just want to be able to print a
9. but rather under uo on gt 9 8 Field on the menu bar Makes sense I Use Advanced Limits as set below guess Best bet in the magnitude limits menu Leave auto stellar limit checked This will add or remove stars 4 gt as appropriate for your zoom level Advanced Deep Sky Limits p z Yov ll also want to tell the program how dim the dimmest deep sky object it will display will be This is done with a 4 Ej simple slider control Be careful here as the auto magnitude setting will not _ Cancel affect deep sky objects What I mean is if you re zoomed out and you jerk that slider over to 18 your screen will become that mess mentioned above a near solid mass of DSOs if you have the PGC turned on anyway I find a setting of 12 13 keeps my screen fairly uncluttered even with the PGC on and is suitable for my skies and my telescopes Epi eee Before leaving Field you ll also instruct the program as to the DSO catalogs you want it to use Be sure to check em all well maybe all except PGC unless you re a lot more ambitious an observer than Your Old Uncle Do be sure to tick other in the list of object types Not checking other will leave some of your faves undisplayed as in ECU s opinion other includes supernova remnants like the Veil and the Crab What else in Field One of the nicest features of the program is turned on in this menu aut
10. detached part of Orion Nebula Galactic Longitude 208 92 Copy Center Object Place Target How the h e c k do you find SSES objects if you want to read their vital stats or display their pictures though This is the area where many astronomy programs of all types fall flat on their you know whats It must be a Programmer 9 Search Object Recent Searches p Web Search Thing to devise fiendishly complex Web Search M lt GO Cancel search tools While some of these are probably very capable they are hopelessly obscure especially on a late night observing field Here again ECU is refreshingly simple Click the magnifying glass tool on the toolbar and you ll see the window shown here Use the buttons to type in your search request click ECU search and the program will find and center your desired object But that s not all cats n kittens If you want you can click Web Search instead Doing that will run a Google search or will search NED or Simbad if you so desire for the object you ve entered Purty clever Yes ECU may be plain but as mentioned above it does have a nice icon toolbar that duplicates many of the functions found in the menus While the pictures on the toolbar icons are pretty understandable I was at first really miffed that there s no balloon help After a while though I discovered that passing my mouse pointer over an icon made
11. e you re done animatin be sure to go back to the Set time menu and enable use pc time again as you ll find it off after using the animation functions How about udder stuff Starhoppin and printed charts are nice but many of you will want to use ECU with a go to or DSC equipped scope No problem there There s a telescope menu that provides a full set of features that will allow you to get your go to go toin ECU includes onboard interfaces for a number of telescopes and DSCs accessed in Telescope telescope type and general settings Most of these onboard drivers however are for Meade format scopes What if you re a Celestron fancier No problem Just select ASCOM and you ll be able to link up with almost any scope imaginable You must of course download the free ASCOM program from the ASCOM website and install it and any additional drivers required for your scope first ASCOM is a no brainer it just works but how about the onboard drivers Onn N I tested the built in interface using my Meade ETX 125PE and UNCLE ROD S am happy to report it worked very well No delays or weird behavior While the program offers quite a few telescope functions basic operation is very simple select an object and click the center telescope button on its information window Cool stuff ECU is definitely Internet aware In addition to searching for deep sky data via Google Simbad or NED you can bring up clear
12. egins a general menu by menu explanation of ECU s functions Ideally following the install directions we d have instructions for setting location time position and all those other finish em before you start playin around things The help submenu also features online functions that will allow you to check for program updates contact the publisher for support and visit the program s website via your Internet browser Anyhoo a look at the manual solved my GSC problem Seemed as the setup program had not installed the GSC Seemed in fact that this wasn t even an option Oh the Hubble Guide Star Catalog is on the CD there s just no option to install it until you get the program up and running Once you do have ECU running you go to the Miscellaneous menu and select read GSC regions from CD ROM The window that appears will have fields that will allow you to select the RA and Dec coordinates of the sections of the GSC you are interested in Like me you ll want to read the whole thing to your hard drive and will just leave the coordinates at Oh 24h and 90 90 This will put all them teeny stars on your hard drive where they will be ready for display at any time Yeah I know this seems like a funny way to get the GSC up and goin but it s really not hard or bad and once you ve done it zoomin in will show off those myriads of Guide Stars just as with any other program But why did the author choose
13. emy of Good Enough is More Better i fs NGC2331 oNGc2683 4 gt Selma Street LDT 2007 03 18 15 17 UTC 2007 03 18 20 17 RA 07 11 60 0 Dec 23 20 07 Field 29 19 Step 1 hour Mag 7 0 9 8 Daylight Moon is up 0 Yeah I know many of your are addicted to fancy schmantsy when it comes to planetarium programs though ECU really has more in common with deep sky programs like Megastar and Skymap than it does with planetariums like Starry Night and The Sky Even if you do like pretty you will appreciate what you get in return for giving up pulchritude speed Earth Centered Universe is fast Very fast You will never sit waiting for something to draw or update What s the user interface like Simple as you might expect This is a program that seems to hark back to the days when a mouse was a new tool You can use your mouse to draw zoom boxes and center objects and click objects for information but you will not find extensive right click menus and you will find your scroll wheel is dead Click and drag the sky You must be kiddin But just as with the program s non fancy look I found its simple interface refreshing I never had to guess about what a left click would do and the program s lineup of hot keys means that fumbling around for that silly mouse out in the pitch black dark of your deep sky observing site is not necessary anymore I did miss ll admit the ability to move the sky around with my mouse bu
14. ing installation including onboard images and the Hubble GSC takes I d estimate that a full install takes less than a gig which shouldn t be a problem for most folks these days As far as your processor goes a Pentium is recommended but no minimum speed is called out What this all means is that ECU should run just fine on the sleepiest old observatory computer you have Me I tested it on a modern but modest AMD 1 6 gig machine sie oreo ree pre you re used to Or used to be Afghanistan Kabul Place Name 5 Ae ai used to anyway You won t get Algeria Sidi bel Abbes an auto run after you insert the Andorra Andorra Latitude fa program s CD As in the old Angola Luanda z f Argentina Buenos Aires minoes days you ll have to click run Cael d Longitude 88 degrees on the start menu and browse Australia Alice Springs 4 0 minutes to the setup file on the CD Time Zone 6 0 hours Once the installation routine completes you can start the EREA program by clicking the attractive icon it will have placed on your desktop Once it cranks up you will as is usually the case with astro ware continue the install process Mainly in the fashion you re accustomed to setup location date time and other user position specific settings pos west neg east Your first stop is the Set menu which resides in the more or less standard Windows menu bar at the top of the
15. mation but an emphasis on charting and printing What brought ECU to my notice I recently happened to hear some folks raving about how nice and inexpensive and friendly the program is I also recalled that David Levy had recommended it to me a time or two Why not give it a spin Contacting the publisher resulted in a review copy coming my way in short order and I soon set about rediscovering The Simple Life astronomy software style I keep sayin simple in reference to ECU but by simple I shore don t mean lacking features as the program I reviewed ECU Pro 5 0 the latest and the greatest certainly doesn t lack for features A shortlist includes e Lightning fast speed e Extensive databases including the Hubble Guide Star Catalog the SAC Saguaro Astronomy Club deep sky database which incorporates the NGC and IC the Principle Galaxy Catalog PGC the General Catalog of Variable Stars the Washington Visual Double Star catalog and 300 000 plus asteroids and comets e Controls almost all computerized telescopes Interfaces with some telescopes natively with built in drivers but also supports ASCOM e Animation mode e Includes about 2500 astronomical images e Can be set to display the sky in an Atlas mode or in planetarium horizon oriented fashion e Easy printing of very high quality charts e Non interfering label mode e Status displays for local time universal time latitude and longitude
16. o place labels Clicking this menu selection to turn it on no submenu means the program does its derndest to keep labels from overlapping even in very crowded fields on both your screen display and your printouts It does a good job as is appropriate for a program that produces some of the very best printed charts I have ever seen Almost done y all Last stop in our set up campaign is stars You ll find this in the Field menu and it will allow to specify the stellar catalogs you want to use SAO check Tycho II check Hubble Guide Star Catalog Check Hey wait a minute What the hail Where are my bloomin GSC stars Despite setting the path C ECU gsc as I figgered would be appropriate no itty bitty GSC sparklers did I see no matter how much I zoomed in Well gull dern it reckon I ll have to read the dadgummed instructions Which is a good time to mention ECU s manual help system Help system What help system ECU Pro really doesn t have one What you can access from the help selection on the menu bar is the 91 page pdf format User s Manual that accompanies the program This manual is really very well done and should work well enough as a help resource in conjunction with Acrobat s search functions Still Id prefer a standard help engine And while the pdf is well written it could in my opinion stand some reorganization For example you re told how to install the program but then the document b
17. screen File and Edit are there anyway Choose location and you ll be able to select your observing site s position either by picking it from a list of countries and cities or by manually inputting your location name latitude longitude and UTC offset I was a bit miffed to discover Possum Swamp was not on the list of major cities but it was easy enough to enter my geographic data Next Get your time set up correctly from the time selection under the Set menu I chose to have the program follow system time and expected that was all Pd have to do time wise Not so While the program will follow the system clock once you click this option it doesn t get the word that you re on Daylight Savings Time unless you select that in the time menu Not a biggie but a little confusing for me anyway ee choices you can make under Set but you can leave these things like Solar Merial stars System computation parameters alone S lar erna 160 Hi 10 0 for now and proceed to set up your O Nannal Doubleistars objects The first thing you ll want to Brighter H N 2 6 0 do is set your magnitude limits This Brightest User Objects will prevent your screen from becoming Auto Stellar Limit gt 20 0 a solid white mess of stars when you re Comets Asteroids zoomed way out Strangely or maybe 4 1a 30 0 4 _ gt 30 0 not so strangely you won t find this Deep Sky setting under Set
18. sky clocks for your selected location You can even display your favorite weather report web page Run across a DSO for which there s no onboard picture You can get an image of that obscure galaxy via an automatic Digitized Sky Survey download Internet options are completely configurable via the directory file web setup choice under the Miscellaneous menu In keeping with the simple nature of Earth Centered Universe these web functions are not really integrated into the program per se whether you want a DSS picture or a Clear Sky Clock the program just opens your Internet browser in full screen fashion Last words The verdict This is a beautiful program I m not talking about its looks it s definitely a plain jane in that regard I m talkin about the way it works for the deep sky observer presenting clear accurate and uncluttered data to help you do what you really want to do view wondrous objects with your wonderful telescope I thought I d long outgrown this sort of PATENTED UPS AND DOWNS LP SIMPLE TO OPERATE CLEAR LEGIBLE DISPLAYS Le LS EXCELLENT HARD COPY OUTPUT gt 2 PICTURE DISPLAY SYSTEM NEEDS SOME IMPROVEMENT b TRANGE GSC INSTALL ROUTINE program Programs like Deep Space 3 D and Megastar are yesterday s astronomy software right NEGATORY GOOD BUDDY ECU showed me how wrong I was There is still room on my hard drive for a program that s more interested in helping me
19. t scroll bars which can be hidden if you desire made moving around the sky almost as easy as the click dragging of The Sky Bright Nebula M43 x RA 05 35 5 5 5915751 hours When you do click what do you get I mean when you click on an object ECU s info Dec 05 16 5 266484 degrees displays while Spartan do include all the Magnitude 9 0 Extinction 0 26 information I want magnitudes Hubble Cah er Rises at 12 54 types for galaxies Dreyer codes for NGCs Azimuth 114 44 Transits at 18 43 Altitude 26 48 Sets at 00 36 and more One nice feature is the program s Other Name NGC 1982 onboard images which are accessed from a button on the information windows These images taken with amateur scopes are large enough and detailed enough but not too detailed to give you a good idea of what DSOs will look like in your eyepiece or in your images One minor annoyance with this image display system Let s say you select Precess 1 Image Image Cancel f F j y an object and click the button to display the picture You dismiss the picture by closing its window Oops you want to take another look at it Alas you ll find the image display button is grayed out The only way to get the image back is to deselect the object and reselect it which will return the image display button to un grayed out status Size 20 0 x15 0 Class E Description vB vLR w tail mbM 8 Notes H Ill 1
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