Friday, February 1, 2008

What is StarMapStudio?

StarMapStudio calculates and prints sky charts on paper.

StarMapStudio is no planetarium software but it allows you to generate star maps up to A0 paper size using many different projection methods. The printed output offers high usability in the field. Feel free to download a PDF example.

If you are new to the use of star maps or if you have little astronomical experience, you should consider one of the excellent freeware planetarium programs such as HNSKY or Cartes Du Ciel.

Please note that the user interface doesn't satisfy today's software standards. This is because StarMapStudio's inventor stopped development a few years ago. He recently transferred all copyrights and source code allowing me to overtake the StarMapStudio project.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Star database

StarMapStudio ships with 79381 stars, binary stars and variable stars until 8^m5 derived from the Sky2000 catalogue from CDS (Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg)

Using this catalogue, you can create your own star database for StarMapStudio with 299.167 stars until 12^m0. Please refer to the help files for more information.

Astronomical Object databases

The object database contains 9681 records for galaxies, open clusters, globular clusters and nebula and is derived from the Saguarao SAC770 database

Object names are given with a certain priority. If an object has a Messier name, that name will be used. If no Messier name is available, StarMapStudio will display the Caldwell name if available and so on. The priority list is as follows:

1. Messier objects
2. Caldwell objects
3. Herschel objects
4. NGC /  IC
5. Other catalogues

The complete lists with cross references Messier / Caldwell / Herschel and NGC:

Messier - 110 objects (PDF file ca.35 KB)
Caldwell - 109 objects (PDF file ca. 35 KB)
NGC - 7379 objects (PDF file ca. 489 KB)
IC - 198 objects (PDF file ca. 40 KB)
Other objects (PDF file ca.143 KB)

Projection Methods

Geometrical

• Azimuthal equidistant
• Azimuthal equal-area
• Azimuthal stereographic
• Azimuthal gnomonic
• Azimuthal orthographic
• Conical equidistant (both tangent and secant)
• Conical equal-area (both tangent and secant)
• Conical conformal (both tangent and secant)
• Cylindrical equirectangular (both tangent and secant)
• Cylindrical equal-area (both tangent and secant)
• Cylindrical Mercator (both tangent and secant)

Non-Geometrical Projections

• Aitoff
• Hammer
• Mercator-Sanson
• Mollweide
• Eckert nr. 2 / nr. 4 and nr. 6
• Winkel

An in-depth discussion on projection methods and cartographical functions can be found in the help files of StarMapStudio.

Sunday, November 30, 2014

StarMapStudio runs on all current Windows versions (including XP, 7 and 8).

• Klick the download link below and save the file on your hard disk.
• Unzip that file into a directory of your choice.
• Then just run sms.exe. If you need help, press F1.
• StarMapStudio will also run fineas a portable application from USB sticks or removable drives.

StarMapStudio 1.3b (ZIP file ca. 10 MB)