Screen Snapshots

The Display

stars.gif

This image shows a view of the night sky, looking in a southerly direction. The stars and planets in the field of view are displayed, as is a user-configurable horizon at the bottom of the screen. A great deal of information is available for every object displayed by The Digital Universe, obtainable merely by clicking the mouse pointer on the object of interest. More than 250,000 stars are supplied with the package, becoming visible as you zoom in to smaller areas.

bayer.gif

This picture shows the same stars as above, but this time labelled with their "Bayer designations" (Greek letters)

flamsteed.gif

Again, the same stars are displayed. They are labelled with their "Flamsteed number" designations. In this picture, the concentration of labels is quite dense - but this can be remedied by either decreasing the "limiting magnitude" (showing only the brighter stars) or zooming in to a smaller region of the sky.

starnames.gif

Here, the stars are labelled with their proper names, if any.

radec.gif

A Right Ascension/Declination grid is superimposed on top of the stars. A grid such as this corresponds roughly to latitude and longitude on the Earth and is used by astronomers to numerically specify the position of celestial objects.

constfigures.gif

Here, the stars are connected together into some of their familiar constellation figures.

constboundaries.gif

Though constellations are usually depicted as figures made by connecting lines between various stars (as in the above image), they in fact consist of regions of the sky (much as countries, provinces, or territories on the Earth are delineated by boundaries). This image shows some of these constellation boundaries.

deepsky.gif

Deep Sky Objects (galaxies, nebulae, and clusters) appear as little x's in this image. 13,226 such objects are provided with the software. All of these objects (and every object displayed with The Digital Universe for that matter) have extended information about them.

messier.gif

This image shows deep sky objects labelled with their Messier designations, if any. Pictures of all such Messier objects are included with the package.

ngc.gif

Here, the deep sky objects are all labelled with their NGC designations. Again, some of the labels may appear a bit crowded, but you can always use the software to zoom into some of the more congested areas.

deepskynames.gif

In this image, deep sky objects are labelled with their proper names, if they have any.

moon.gif

To generate this image, we told The Digital Universe to zoom in so that the moon filled the screen. As you can see, the phase of the moon is properly calculated and displayed, and a map of lunar features is used to generate its current appearance. Maps of Venus, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are integrated into the package to produce accurate and realistic representations of their appearance. These maps can be used to create such stunning animations as the rotation of Mars about its axis. For this and some following images, non-Amiga users will note that the picture appears squashed - this is because the normal Amiga screen is 640 X 400 or 640 X 512 pixels, not the 640 X 480 pixels that most other computers use as a standard.

saturnmoons.gif

Unlike most other astronomy packages which tend to either ignore planetary moons or only consider the four brightest moons of Jupiter, The Digital Universe accurately calculates and displays the positions of 29 of these objects. This picture shows some of Saturn's moons in their proper locations.

saturn.gif

The orientation of Saturn's ring is accurately computed and rendered. We are currently observing the ring from nearly edge-on, so it is not as prominent in this image as it is at other times.

uranusmoons.gif

This image provides a glimpse of Uranus and some of its moons.

uranus.gif

Saturn is not the only planet with rings. In fact, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune all have ring systems. This picture shows Uranus and its ring system, correctly drawn in accordance with its orientation from our viewpoint here on Earth.

nightpalette.gif

In order to see dimmer objects, amateur or professional astronomers must allow some time for their eyes to become dark-adapted. As you sit under a dark sky, your eyes gradually become more sensitive to light. Scientists have discovered that our eyes do not become as desensitized when exposed to red light than light of different colors. With this in mind, The Digital Universe provides a special night palette for those individuals who wish to use the software as part of their observing session.

The Windows

environ.gif

This "Environment Parameters" window allows you to select your location on Earth, the time zone you are in, and which user-definable horizon (if any) that you want the software to render. You can choose from a list of over 1000 cities, or enter your latitude, longitude, and altitude directly into the boxes provided. In addition, for accurate calculations of refraction, you are able to specify the current temperature and atmospheric pressure.

display1.gif

This image shows the "Calculation & Display" section of the "Display Preferences" window. It allows you to configure which types of objects you wish the software to consider in generating its display.

display2.gif

This shows the "Object Preferences" section of the "Display Preferences" window. It allows you to configure how you want the various objects to appear on the screen.

display3.gif

This "Limiting Magnitudes" section of the "Display Preferences" window allows you to independently adjust the apparent brightness of stars & planets, deep sky objects, and miscellaneous objects.

control.gif

The "Control Panel" window allows you to perform many operations by simply clicking on an icon.

time1.gif

The "Set Time" portion of the "Time Control" window allows you to specify the time used by the software in generating a view of the sky. You can enter the time in any of ten different standard formats.

time2.gif

The "Time Advancement" portion of the "Time Control" window allows you specify the criteria of time advancement. You can configure the software to increment time by a user-definable amount automatically or manually, as well as tell the software what it should be locking onto between each time step.

miscobjs.gif

This image shows the "Miscellaneous Objects" selection window, allowing you to specify which comets, asteroids, or Earth-orbiting satellites that the software should consider when generating a view of the sky.

animation.gif

The "Animation Control" window allows you to completely specify the parameters used in making customized animations.

report.gif

User-definable reports of numerical values may be generated and saved to disk or printed. This window allows you to customize such a report.

betelgeuse.gif

When you click on any object with The Digital Universe, you are presented with a window containing information about the object. Here is a small portion of the information available for the star Betelgeuse.

sunmoreinfo.gif

For many objects, information is also available in the form of multimedia hypertext (more than 210,000 words of hypertext are provided with the package). This window contains the links to the hypertext documents available about the Sun. If you are unable to find the information you require by following normal links, The Digital Universe also allows you to search through all the hypertext for keywords.

astrointro.gif

For those individuals who are interested in astronomy but wish to learn more, a comprehensive introduction to astronomy is provided with the package, in hypertext form. This window shows links to the various chapters provided in the introduction.