SkySafari

SkySafari's interface has been redesigned from scratch for the Mac, using 100% native Cocoa OS X controls. SkySafari's iOS OpenGL astronomy engine soars on the Mac, and a full-sized monitor, mouse, and keyboard open up a universe of new possibilities.

Like the SkySafari iPhone apps, SkySafari for Mac OS X comes in three versions. This is the basic version. It shows you 46,000 stars, plus 220 of the best-known star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies in the sky. It displays the Solar System's major planets and moons using NASA spacecraft imagery, and includes the best-known asteroids and comets.

SkySafari accurately shows you the sky from any place on Earth, at any time up to one million years in the past or future. It includes encyclopedic descriptions of the constellations, stars, and planets written by professional astronomers. And it contains hundreds of images from NASA space missions, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the world's foremost astro-photographers.

SkySafari has a "Night" button to preserve your dark adaptation as you're exploring the night sky. The Time Flow feature lets you animate the night sky using simple VCR controls - follow the motion of the stars and planets as SkySafari compresses days, months, and years into a few seconds.

SkySafari takes advantage of Apple's latest Mac OS X features. It understands multitouch gestures on Macs with multitouch trackpads, and supports OS X 10.7 (Lion) full-screen mode. And its responsive, fluid interface borrows from the best aspects of SkySafari for iPhone. SkySafari for Mac OS X truly brings astronomy software into the 21st century. It's more than just a star chart - it's your celestial travel guide!

Whats New in Version 1.5
1) A new Moon map is based on imagery from NASA's 2009 Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The Moon is always shown as a disk with its correct phase. The Moon's dark side now shows faint earthshine, and appears sky-colored in daylight. The sky darkens when solar eclipses take place.

2) Venus - or any other planet - now always shows as a black dot when transiting the Sun. Planet surface grids are drawn more accurately.

3) Object Info descriptions for the planets and constellations have been rewritten. Learn about the mythology of the planets, the transit of Venus, and total solar eclipses! Object Info also shows opposition, conjunction, eclipse, and transit dates for solar system objects.

4) You can now search for objects by typing a number without any catalog prefix. Searching for "104" will now find Messier 104, NGC 104, star HR 104, and asteroid (104) Klymene.

5) Improved app icon and splash screen.

What's New in Version 1.6

1) Supports OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Added entire Hipparcos catalog of 120,000 stars. Some binary stars attached to wrong primary star have now been fixed.

2) Added the Night Sky Network to the Help menu. Find two months' worth of star parties and other astronomy events in your area, anywhere in the United States!

3) Updated constellation descriptions. New maps of Mercury, Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Umbriel. Added Curiosity (MSL) to Mars surface features.

4) Fixed problem that made the screen occasionally go blank, with a coordinate display of NaN, NaN in the upper left corner. When stepping time and the selected object is locked, the center coordinates label is now correct.

5) Fixed problem importing satellite orbit files containing corrupted lines. Julian Dates now saved to 1 second precision in Settings files.

6) When searching for an object, the text you type is no longer replaced with the name of the object you selected. When the mouse is clicked while panning to an object, the object is centered immediately.

7) Fixed crash that by entering non-ASCII characters into the Location Lon/Lat fields. Show Asterisms Names checkbox is no longer erroneously disabled when Show Asterisms is unchecked.

8) Fixed rare bug where the app would sometimes draw stars and constellations on top of an opaque horizon. Fixed problems displaying some Milky Way and Horizon panoramas on some MacBook Air models that can't support large OpenGL textures.

What's New in Version 1.7.2

1) Includes default solar system database with asteroid and comet data current as of mid-January, 2013.
2) Fixed failure to import data from asteroids and comets that are not already in the default solar system object database.
3) Corrected orbital motion for Saturn's moon Phoebe.
4) Fixes for drawing comet tails.
5) Corrected right ascension for Hipparcos stars without high-precision positions (like UY Draconis.) Removed extra Propus label from Iota Geminorum.
What's New in Version 1.7.3

1) Fixed many small accuracy problems in importing orbit data from the Minor Planet Center. Orbital elements are now stored to 64 bits of precision.

2) Fixed failure to draw many bright stars when the magnitude limit was set below 3.

3) Object Info for satellites now shows satellite latitude, longitude, altitude, and velocity.