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I've been looking for a tool like this: stellarium. I thought others on here may find it useful.

When you pick your location, you can then go and see where the sun/moon will rise/set. For example, you can figure out where you want to be in relation to a landmark and the sun to take that unique photo

Cheers, André

Thanks for this. I will check it out. I used to use Red Shift, which ran on a Win3.1x platform, but it never made the transition successfully to XP. If it is even close to that program in quality, it will be brilliant.

I just use Geoscience Australia.

ATJ wrote:I just use Geoscience Australia.

Maybe Andrew, but not as much fun to use

Greg, I'm not familiar with Red Shift but I found stellarium quite impressive in showing not just the sun/moon rise positions and times but also planets, stars, constellations and lots more. As a bonus it is open source and runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

André

Greg, I'm not familiar with Red Shift but I found stellarium quite impressive in showing not just the sun/moon rise positions and times but also planets, stars, constellations and lots more.

It's been a few years since I used it last as it hasn't run on my last few machines, but it not only did all of the above, but also showed known comets, and allowed for viewing from any viewpoint and time, including other planets. All the planets had photo images which scaled reasonably accurately as you zoomed in and out. I spent more than a few hours exploring the universe with it. I picked it up in a bargain bin in a now defunct IT store for $1.00 Probably the best bang for buck I have ever spent on computers.

Thanks Andre, will check this out, looks interesting.

Mr Darcy wrote:Thanks for this. I will check it out. I used to use Red Shift, which ran on a Win3.1x platform, but it never made the transition successfully to XP. If it is even close to that program in quality, it will be brilliant.

Greg,

FYI, there's a way that you can get legacy apps such as this running on more modern hardware.

Start with, on a PC, VMWare server (free) or on the Mac, VMWare Fusion. Create a new VM, and in this case, create it as a DOS 6.x (say DOS 6.1) image. Then install a legacy copy of Win 3.1 on it, and then install your legacy app.

You can totally isolate it from viruses etc (pretty much the default for 3.1) by not installing a TCP stack. I have and use images of DOS and Win98 for various reasons and needs.

And if you have an older PC that is pretty much dead, but have a need to want to use that system occassionally, there are tools that allow you to convert the bootable system disk into a VMWare image, and from there you just run the VM under VMWare Server (or Fusion).

Obviously you need to be aware of any licensing issues that doing this might entail, but it works, and can save a lot of hassle if/when you need to look at some legacy stuff from several years ago. I'm currently working on updating a project from three years ago (when I last looked at it) and I'm using a VM image of the old development system, with its installed but now obsolete toolset, in parallel with the current development environment, and all running on the one machine.