Thursday, March 02, 2017

explored with Noctua Sky

I tried the browser-based planetarium Noctua Sky. After setting it for a local city, I toured the sky. I found the chart display pleasing. The menu or toolbar can be used to change the display.

screen snapshot of Noctua Sky running in Chrome

Zooming is easily accomplished with the mouse roller wheel. It exhibits smart scaling, i.e. dim objects disappear when you zoom out.

Selecting an object yields a lot of details. Stars are listed with their proper name and Bayer and HD designations; deep sky objects with their name, Messier, and/or NGC identifiers. The magnitude and distance (planets and stars) is shown along with the rise and set time.

The online tool does not appear to support permanent or preferred settings. For example, it does not store your viewing location. Still this beta version, using Web Graphics Library (webgl) technology, shows a lot of promise.

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Update: On 8 Mar an ephemeris chart was added. It shows Moon and planet details visually.

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Tested on Chrome in Android on the ASUS tablet. It works.

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