It was difficult to make a low-bandwidth in-line screenshot so you'll need to
click on the image to see the full-res version to see what it really looks like.
click on the image to see the full-res version to see what it really looks like.
ROCchart is a star chart generator for RISC OS designed to complement my Robotic Observatory Controller program, ROC. It is not really meant to work by itself as it is designed to draw on the resources of Project Pluto's excellent Guide CD. However it still functions reasonably well with only its internal resources.
Guide is intended for PCs as it comes with Windows and DOS software (which is actually very good in itself and I recommend it if you use either of these OS's) but the author very generously makes available information about the data sets on the CD. ROCchart makes use of the Tycho data to plot down to mag 10.5 then draws on the Guide Star Catalogue (GSC) for even deeper views.
Having said that ROCchart will work to some extent using only its internal resources. Those being:
The dependency on Guide is, of course, because that's the CD ROM I happen to have. Incidentally, it's the only one I've encountered so far that freely allows use of its data in this manner. Since the tiled nature of Tycho and GSC is ideal for plotting star charts ROCchart could conceivably work with versions stored on other CD ROMs. If you have access to the format of any other versions of these databases I can attempt to provide support for them. I have no intention of doing any of the work required to get hold of other formats so if you don't want to buy Guide then you at least need to do this preliminary work yourself.
Note that Tycho and (I think) GSC are freely available on-line from one of NASA's ftp sites (albeit in original super-huge ascii form!) but it's somewhat impractical to support these directly. However if anyone wants to convert these to a suitable indexed binary form then you should visit the Project Pluto web site to get the required information on the database formats (you may have to figure it out from decompressor source code) since they must be 100% compatible with Guide's. If you want to do this with other catalogues like the PPM or even the SAO (!) then that should be similarly possible although they will have to be resorted to be compatible with the GSC tiling scheme upon which ROCchart depends. Quite frankly, the easiest solution is just to buy Guide!
Guide is intended for PCs as it comes with Windows and DOS software (which is actually very good in itself and I recommend it if you use either of these OS's) but the author very generously makes available information about the data sets on the CD. ROCchart makes use of the Tycho data to plot down to mag 10.5 then draws on the Guide Star Catalogue (GSC) for even deeper views.
Having said that ROCchart will work to some extent using only its internal resources. Those being:
- All stars based on Tycho data down to 7th magnitude (about 15000 stars)
- Common star names, Bayer and Flamsteed references
- All NGC and IC objects including many common names
- Constellation boundary and figure lines
- Major solar system objects
- Stars down to 10th magnitude using the full Tycho catalogue
- Stars beyond 10th (typically to 14th) magnitude using the Guide Star Catalogue
- More cross references and lookup options
The dependency on Guide is, of course, because that's the CD ROM I happen to have. Incidentally, it's the only one I've encountered so far that freely allows use of its data in this manner. Since the tiled nature of Tycho and GSC is ideal for plotting star charts ROCchart could conceivably work with versions stored on other CD ROMs. If you have access to the format of any other versions of these databases I can attempt to provide support for them. I have no intention of doing any of the work required to get hold of other formats so if you don't want to buy Guide then you at least need to do this preliminary work yourself.
Note that Tycho and (I think) GSC are freely available on-line from one of NASA's ftp sites (albeit in original super-huge ascii form!) but it's somewhat impractical to support these directly. However if anyone wants to convert these to a suitable indexed binary form then you should visit the Project Pluto web site to get the required information on the database formats (you may have to figure it out from decompressor source code) since they must be 100% compatible with Guide's. If you want to do this with other catalogues like the PPM or even the SAO (!) then that should be similarly possible although they will have to be resorted to be compatible with the GSC tiling scheme upon which ROCchart depends. Quite frankly, the easiest solution is just to buy Guide!
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7 Nov 2004
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31 Oct 2004
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11 Jun 2003
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ROCchart is split into two archives; the regularly updated stuff (mainly the software itself) and the largely static data resources. You only need to download the resources for a new installation of ROCchart or if they ever get updated. Be sure to get the resources archive appropriate for the version of software.
A StrongHelp astronomical glossary is also available for download [10K] into which the ROCchart manual has numerous links.
A StrongHelp astronomical glossary is also available for download [10K] into which the ROCchart manual has numerous links.
