"The Return of Megastar: Megastar 5.0"

What was the first thing I thought when 5.0’s display appeared on my monitor? “Geez, look at ALL THE TOOLBARS! WHERE THE HECK IS THE SKY WINDOW?” When you run Megastar for the first time, it defaults to “all toolbars on.” 5.0 features ten toolbars, each with numerous buttons, and with all of ‘em on, the sky display is limited to about 1/3rd of your screen on a smaller display! Not a very desirable configuration if you’re using a 12 inch monitor like I am! Easy enough to cure, however. Clicking the “View” menu open and choosing “select toolbars” enabled me to clean up my screen by choosing only the toolbars I thought I’d really use. You can drag and drop toolbars for a pleasing display as well. I probably chose fewer of these toolbars than many of you will. They are a nice option, but I’ve been using the program for so many years that I’m content to do most things via menus like I always have.

And how about Megastar’s Menus? They look a lot better. And so does the menu bar. 4.0 had the appearance of a DOS program running on the Win system, but 5.0 looks reassuringly Windows like. I do wish that the menu system adhered a little more to the Windows standard (file, edit, format, tools, etc.) instead of continuing the Megastar system (file, view, stars, DSOs, Solar System, field, etc.). But the system is easy enough to learn, and the fact that it’s still basically the same meant that I didn’t have to relearn the program.

How about the display? On boot up, it looks much as Megastar’s sky always has. This is a Good Thing, as Megastar’s display has always been one of its strong points (onscreen or on printout—Megastar’s printed charts are about as close as any computer atlas gets to “typeset quality”). It is easily decipherable, not just by my tired eyes at 3 am, but by my beginning university astronomy students, so I know it’s good. Other than the new option to alter field orientation by rotating it freely, the major change to the display is that you can choose to have the stars shown in colors based on their spectral classes. I don’t know that this adds much to the usefulness of the program (except for astronomy educators), but it does make it look much better and more “modern.”

But what’s the one thing that’s got Megastar users really excited? The images. As mentioned, the CD now includes 78,000 images, “thumbnail images” as the documentation calls ‘em. How does this work? The images are overlaid on your onscreen chart, meaning that you see a “real” picture of M104, for example, superimposed on your chart. There are two ways that these images can be displayed. You can set the program to “auto thumbnails” by choosing that selection from the Overlays menu, or you can bring up thumbnails as desired by right clicking on an object’s description window. With Auto Thumbnails on, the image of your object will be placed on the chart when you’re zoomed-in to a maxiumum field size of 6 degrees. If you zoom in tighter than 3 arc minutes the image will be removed. In other words, your image will be displayed on a field sized from 6 degrees to 3 minutes. You can’t access the images manually unless you’re within this field size range either.

How do these images look? Surprisingly good considering the fact that they are relatively small, low-resolution pictures. Pat Rochford and I are currently doing a Supernova search using Megastar and an LX200 (Megastar 5’s goto scope control is simple and effective), and we found the images MORE than adequate for comparison to the CCD images we acquire. One thing that disturbed us initially was that we found that when we displayed an image everything except the image turned red. We determined that this was actually a “feature” to allow you to determine which stars are part of the image and which are plotted by Megastar in the event that the image star/computer star registration is not exactly perfect. If this disturbs you, there’s an option to leave the computer-plotted stars white, or change them to any color you wish.

And “options” is really this program’s main strength. It’s nice to have images and the incredible, huge, accurate object catalogs, but the true value of Megastar 5.0 is that it allows you to move things around, change things, and set things up the way YOU want ‘em. Pat and I found that the object symbols weren’t the way we wanted them and interfered, we felt, with the process Pat has developed for evaluating images. But, guess what? A little looking at the manual and we found we could make Megastar do exactly what we wanted. And that ability is rare for any program, boys and girls. Despite Megastar 5’s multitudinous options (no wonder it took Emil a while to get this one out the door), it is still easy to use, too. Sure, you can change almost everything, but a novice use can still use the program as soon as it’s installed on her computer.

Is there anything to complain about with 5.0? Well, y’all know I’m rarely satisfied with any program, but there’s not too much in the way of nits to pick with Megastar. One thing that disappointed me was that the images on the CD, the thumbnails, are, with a few exceptions, all galaxies. I understand the space limitations imposed by the CD format, and that images of galaxies are probably more useful to observers than pretty nebulae and star cluster pictures. But it would have been nice to have a good selection of everything (maybe this will come soon if the program goes DVD). Solar System functions are much improved, with the planets showing realistic disks (See FIGURE 2). Unfortunately, these are just static images. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is always in the same spot. This is not a huge deal, but many programs now feature animated planets (Jupiter’s spot, Mars’ surface features, the tilt of Saturn’s rings, etc.), and it would have been nice to have this in Megastar. If you bring up Jupiter or Saturn you’ll notice something else funny. No moons. But don’t despair—the moons will come. The animated planetary satellites were not quite ready to go at program release time, but we’re assured they’ll be supplied in a program update “soon” (I understand that Emil is also working on an enhancement that allows users to manually reposition object labels in crowded areas—that will be really nice). Anything else? It would be nice if Megastar could download DSS images automatically and display ‘em. Currently you have to download an image first, manually, and place it in a directory before Megastar can use it.

If it sounds like Megastar does a lot, you’re right. If you’d guess that 5.0 requires a fancy new computer to run, you’re wrong. Megastar is still one of the most forgiving astro-ware programs out there when it comes to computing hardware. Megastar 5.0 requires a Pentium processor, Windows 95 or better (or NT 4.0 or better), 32 Mb RAM, a 2x CD, 40 Mb of hard drive space, and an 800x 600 display. Obviously, like any program, the better your computer, the faster it will run, but these modest requirements mean that Megastar 5 is well suited for older “observatory” computers.

I’ve enjoyed using Megastar for the last 7 years. It’s allowed me to accomplish observing goals that I’d have thought would be far beyond my capabilities. That’s as good as an endorsement as I think anyone can make. If I had to express my feelings about Megastar 5 in a few words, I’d just echo Richard Berry in the last sentence of his introduction to the manual:

“Emil—thank you!”

Upgrade Price: $39.95
Full Version: $129.95

Added:  Friday, August 01, 2003
Reviewer:  Rod Mollise
Score:
Related Link:  William Bell (program's homepage)
Hits: 4164
Language: eng
Page: 2/2