Chris L Peterson wrote:

I have long considered TheSky to be the best planetarium program, but I
don't anymore. It is badly in need of updating. It seriously needs its
user interface cleaned up, and its lack of support for ASCOM telescope
drivers limits its ability to take full advantage of the features of
many mounts. The properties and methods it exposes are also quite
limited compared with the most recent Starry Night. I'd love to see the
next release of TheSky address these issues, but I'm not optimistic (the
same problems existed when V6 was released). The Bisques are hostile to
ASCOM, and nowhere near as responsive to user requests as the folks
responsible for Starry Night. I'm afraid that the changes will be more
cosmetic than fundamental (as in V5 to V6).


Hi Chris:

But...I believe 6 _will_ allow you to use ASCOM to interface a scope
rahter than the built-in interface. Also, with the progession of
"hotfixes," I find the user interface via the Toolbar pretty good.

I've tried Starry Night on numerous occasions, but I just have not
every been able to get friendly with it. It's both too much and too
little for me. ;-)

In my opinon, The Sky 6 Pro is as good as planetarium software gets.
With the addendum, that, as I said earlier, I've turned away from
planetariums for much of what I do. Instead...Skytools and the other
planners (Astroplanner, Deep Sky), seem to fit my needs better much of
the time.

The thing is, though, if you need integration with T-point, CCDsoft,
Orchestrate or any of the other good and very useful Bisque programs,
you need The Sky 6 Professional. For most "advanced" (whatever that
means) amateurs, it's still _The Sky_. And when you consider the fact
that many people regularly pay more for an eyepiece, it's not an overly
painful buy. IMHO, The Sky 6 Pro probably belongs on every serious
amateur's hard drive. It's till the gold standard. ;-)

Peace,
Rod Mollise
Author of _Choosing and Using a Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope_
http://skywatch.brainiac.com/astroland/index.htm

Like SCTs and MCTs?
Check-out sct-user, the mailing list for CAT fanciers:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sct-user

See: http://journals.aol.com/rmollise/UncleRodsAstroBlog/
For Uncle Rod's Astro Blog.