Test reports

3. Software test: Astronomy program 'Digital Almanac' (by Uwe Pannecke)

»Do you know how many stars there are... (remark of the translator:A German folk song)

The astronomy program DIGITAL ALMANAC by Achim Stegeman

Sometimes an Amiga has to share the attention of its master (or mistress) with another favorite hobby. And sometimes this hobby is astronomy. If the hobby astronomist wants to use both - Amiga and astronomy - together, there aren't many choices.

In addition to the prgoram DISTANT SUNS by Virtual Reality Laboratories, Inc., which is available for years and isn't under further development for some time and DIGITAL UNIVERSE by Syzygy Research & amp; Technology Ltd. a new and since then under further development program entered the Amiga stage in 1997. The program author named it DIGITAL ALMANAC.

1. Program requirements

• OS 3.0 + AGA
• MC68020/68881
• 6 MB FastRAM (absolute minimum)
• hard disk (minimum 20 MB free disk space)
• MUI 3.8

• OS 3.1
• MC68040 or MC68060
• 16 MB FastRAM or more
• CyberGraphX 2.25+ or 3.x.

But Digital Almanac offers a lot for that:

• Star database with approx. 500,000 stars up to 16 meters (approx. 17.054 yds).


• Cross index fuer SAO, PPM, HD, YBS and GC catalogues.


• Approx. 40,000 Deep-Sky objects (Messier, NGC, IC, UGC, Abell, Zwicky and various different objects).


• More thanr 40,000 small planets and asteroids as well as the comets Halley, Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp.


• Extremely exact moon and planet computing using JPL integration tables (DE404). Precision is partly <0.1 seconds in a period of multiple thousand years!!


• Moons of Jupiter and Saturn.


• Textures for the planets Venus to Pluto, Moon and the Galileiic moons.


• Milky way structure.


• View of the star heaven from any object of the solar system.


• Animation mode (also saving in IFF-ANIM format!!).


• Loading and saving of configuration files.


• Highly optimized routines for maximum speed, mostly written in pure assembler.


• Many different configuration possibilities.


• Online- and menu help with HELP key as well as MUIs bubble help.


• Complete drag&drop support.


• Creation and export of ephemeride tables.


• CyberGraphX high- and truecolour support.


• Creation of an own picture gallery.


• Creation of an own database using track elements.


• Automatic recognition of the CPU for maximum speed.

2. Installation

The installation is done easily and without problems using the help of the Installer. Before that you have to download resp. copy the required files from the Aminet or the Aminet-CDs. When the main program archive with just 450 KByte can be handled esasily the necessary additional files with at least 11 MByte cost quite a lot telephone charges. But the patient user will be rewarded with a letter of the Internet provider ;) and a really powerful astronomy program.

In the DAlmanac_Exe package you will find two installation scripts, which copy the main program as well as the necessary data files in a drawer on the hard disk of your Amiga.

If Digital Almanac has been installed you should select the flag for a smart refresh of the windows in the MUI settings. So it is ensured, that Digital Almanac processes selected menu points. On the other hand you avoid the time consuming redrawing of the windows, whenever MUI means to replace the content of the window.

3. Program description

Before starting the program it might be useful to give some parameters to the program using the Tool types of the Digital Almanac icon. So you can set the coordinates of the preferred location or the size of the cache memory to be used, switch on/off Deep-Sky catalogues, prevent loading of asteroid and Deep-Sky objects (if you have little RAM), avoid showing the Intro picture, if your Amiga has no graphics board etc., close the Workbench to save as many Chip-RAM as possible.

After double clicking the program icon the imaginary star heaven is shown on the screen of the computer monitor. Depending on the hardware requirements (built-in graphics or graphics board) the display resolution can be used freely within wide borders. Digital Almanac is mostly self-explaining. If you ever used other astronomy software you will understand Digital Almanac quite fast. In addition many gadgets feature a bubble help and an online and menu help can be used at any time.

In addition to the use of program internal informations Digital Almanac offers an easy solution to integrate the desired picture based file to any object, no matter if it's a galaxy, star, planet, asteroid, ... The integrated pictures can be selected via the menu point "Extras/Bilder" or with double clicking the desired object and then selecting the desired object in the popping up window. For displaying the picutres Digital Almanac uses the Datatypes, the picture.datatype 43.x is supported, too.

Since October 1997 I use Digital Almanac in the registered version. During this period the program author Achim Stegemann answered all the questions, ideas and wishes with much commitment. An excellent support.

Digital Almanac is shareware. For a fee of 30,- DEM (approx. 15.31 Euros) the user gets a key file, which enables the locked functions. In addition any further updte can be used as full version with this key file. The unregistered version has these limitations:

• Assess to Deep-Sky catalogues is limited to the Messier catalogue.


• All saving functions are disabled.


• No hardcopy.


• No changing of the location, only Earth.


• No detailled run of darkness.


• No picture gallery.


• Drawing of the stars only up to 6 meters (approx. 6.564 yds).


• Drawing of other objects only up to 10 meters (approx. 10.94 yds).


• No changing of the pixel size.


• No month events in the calendar.


• Ephemeride export only in one window.


• The program quits after approx. 20 mins and every 5 mins there is a nerving requester.

4. Conclusion

Digital Almanac is a top class astronomy program. For an unrivalled good price the program offers an enormous number of functions and power. But the Amiga should be equipped with the corresponding hardware, to have really fun when working with Digital Almanac.

For any Amiga user having fun with astronomy there can be only one recommendation: Download it at once! (Or maybe you better wait for 9 p.m. ...) Digital Almanac is absolutely worth its registration fee.

Digital Almanac can be found with its current revision 39.30 e.g. in Aminet under

misc/sci/DAlmanac_Exe.lha
misc/sci/DAlmanac_Data.lha

Contacting the program author:

Uwe Pannecke <Uwe.Pannecke@t-online.de>«