Distant Suns is a program that will turn your screen into a planetarium. This astronomy tool will let you watch on your monitor a representation of the sky as seen from your current location, or from any other place. The sky will change as time passes, like in real life. Distant Suns includes every known planet, moon and star.
You will get a lot of information about any object you point at with your mouse, such as its distance from the viewer, its position, and its heliocentric coordinates. It is possible to navigate through the entire sky, zooming in or out to appreciate the details or the whole picture. You can even follow the journey of a comet, or look behind a stellar body. You will also find extensive reading material about each planet, which you can save as a separate text or print for your convenience. This program even installs an astronomy screensaver.
The demo version of Distant Suns has limited access to some of the more sophisticated features in the program. In the registered version, you can set the date from thousands of years in the past to thousands of years in the future, and you will be able to create your own astronomical movies. In brief, Distant Suns is a very good program for the casual stargazer.
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