"THE DIGITAL UNIVERSE" Astronomy Software for the Amiga Computer 1996/02/26 PRODUCT DESCRIPTION ------------------- "The Digital Universe" is a complete astronomy program for the amateur or professional observer. It combines the advantages of traditional "planetarium" programs with a massive hypertext multimedia encyclopedia to create an effective tool which assists the user in observing and learning about the heavens. 50,000 lines of code, more than 700 pages of hypertext, and thousands of man-hours have gone into this product to make it the most complete program of its class. The software would not have been possible without the generous assistance of countless individuals from the Canadian Space Agency, the National Research Council of Canada, NASA, JPL, NORAD, the European Space Agency, the Bureau des Longitudes, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and several other organizations worldwide. We are proud to have received the coveted "Blue Chip" and "Gold" awards for software excellence from Amiga Computing and Amiga Format magazines. Reviews of the package appear in their January 1996 and March 1996 issues respectively. PRODUCT UNVEILING ----------------- "The Digital Universe" was first unveiled at the September 20, 1995 meeting of the Amiga Users of Calgary (AMUC) to an overwhelming response. More than 1/3 of the attendees purchased a copy of the software immediately after the presentation. Some of the unsolicited comments made by members include: "This is the best piece of Amiga software which has come out in a long time" "This program 'blows away' all other astronomy programs I've ever seen - not just on the Amiga, but on the IBM and Macintosh as well" There are actually two packages available - "The Digital Universe" software and user manual, as well as a printed version of the hypertext encyclopedia. See "Ordering Information" below for pricing information. PRODUCT FEATURES ---------------- The following features by no means summarize all the things which the software is capable of. Due to space considerations, only the major features can be summarized here. - The following databases are integrated into the software: 1. Yale Bright Star (YBS) Catalogue of 9110 stars. 2. Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) Catalogue of over 250,000 stars. 3. Messier's Catalogue of 110 deep sky objects (galaxies, nebulae, and clusters). 4. Sky & Telescope's NGC 2000.0 Catalogue of 13,226 deep sky objects. 5. Tom Lorenzin's "1000+" database of observing comments for over 2000 objects. 6. Jost Jahn's comet database containing 2298 cometary orbits. 7. Jost Jahn's minor planet database containing orbital information for thousands of asteroids. 8. Ted Molczan's and T. S. Kelso's orbital information for approximately 900 Earth-orbiting satellites. - The software can generate accurate views of the night sky for any date from 100,000 BC to 100,000 AD. - The package includes over 700 pages of hypertext, including an introduction to astronomy, dictionary of terms, biographies of famous people, celestial object descriptions, and summaries of every interplanetary spacecraft launched to date. - More than 250 pictures are linked into the hypertext encyclopedia. They include images of all the planets, most of their satellites, all of the Messier objects, some NGC objects, and many miscellaneous images. A few audio clips are incorporated as well. - A context-sensitive help system, linked into the online encyclopedia, is integrated into the software. - The user can select whether or not they want to consider effects such as precession, proper motion, nutation, aberration, or refraction. - "The Digital Universe" uses the latest analytic theories of motion for the planets (VSOP87) and their satellites, resulting in typical accuracies of better than 1 arcsecond (1/3600th of a degree). - The current analytic theory of motion for the moon (ELP2000-85) has been extended to improve its accuracy even further for times within a few hundred years of the present. The extension was done specifically for "The Digital Universe". - NORAD's SGP4 model of orbital motion is used to accurately predict the apparent positions and movement of Earth-orbiting satellites. "The Digital Universe" can work with standard "2-line" orbit files. Hundreds of satellites are included with the software, and information is provided to explain how to obtain future data sets as new satellites are launched and older orbits decay. - Unlike many other astronomy programs which only consider the four brightest satellites of Jupiter, "The Digital Universe" accurately computes orbits for the moons of: Earth: Our Moon Mars: Phobos and Deimos Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Amalthea, and Thebe Saturn: Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Titan, Hyperion, Iapetus, Phoebe, Telesto, Calypso, and Helene Uranus: Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon Neptune: Triton and Nereid Pluto: Charon When the software is zoomed in sufficiently to the planet of interest, the moons are rendered in their proper positions. - When zoomed in to most planets and satellites, the object's orientation and phase is determined and a latitude/longitude grid superimposed if the user desires. Maps of Venus, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are incorporated into the software to generate accurate renditions of the appearance of these objects. The ring systems of Saturn and Uranus are rendered. - Supports the Amiga preferences printer. Plots of star charts, etc. are far more than a simple screen dump. The maximum resolution of the printer is used for outstanding clarity. - The user can enter his or her own horizon, if desired. Horizons for multiple observing sites can be configured. - The user can select their location from a list of over 1000 cities, or enter their latitude, longitude, and altitude above sea level manually if higher accuracy is desired. - Completely configurable IFF animations can be generated. To mention just two examples from the infinite number of possibilities, you can see how stars move and constellations distort over centuries, or view how Saturn's rings change their orientation and appearance over time. "The Digital Universe" can also save screen snapshots as ILBMs. - A report generation feature lets you choose between a wide variety of data and customize tabular reports. They may either be printed or saved to disk. - Provided that you have sufficient chip memory, the screen upon which "The Digital Universe" runs can be of any size. If the screen is larger that can fit on the monitor, you can scroll around simply by moving your mouse to the edge of the visible area. A screenmode requester is provided to allow users to specify their particular monitor. - All development was done entirely on Amiga. It is not a port from the IBM or Macintosh world. As a result, the software closely adheres to the Amiga style guidelines and behaves in the manner you would expect from Amiga software. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ------------------- The software will run on any Amiga with Workbench 2.04 or greater, at least 3 megabytes of memory, and a minimum of 11 megabytes of hard drive space (17 megabytes of hard drive space is required for a full installation). Due to the calculation-intensive nature of this software, an accelerated Amiga and math chip (FPU) is strongly recommended, though not required.