Software

Astronomical image processing software.

To go from a spectrum to scientific data and measurements, line identification or spectral type comparison, use Visual Spec.

Subaru Image Processor: Makali'i is software which can analyse FITS images. If it is for non-commercial educational/out-reach/research purposes, anyone can use Makali'i freely.

PROJECT CLEA (Contemporary Laboratory Experiences in Astronomy) develops laboratory exercises that illustrate modern astronomical techniques using digital data and colour images. They are suitable for high school classes.

This free software plug-in provides access to a treasure trove of archival astronomical images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and many other famous telescopes accessible to home astronomy enthusiasts.

The FITSview family consists of viewers for astronomical images in FITS format. Viewers are available for MS-Windows, Macintosh and Unix systems and offer a wide variety of image display features. The FITSview programs are distributed free of charge by the (USA) National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

This program enables you to draw sky charts, making use of the data in 16 catalogs of stars and nebulae. In addition the position of planets, asteroids and comets are shown. The purpose of this program is to prepare different sky maps for a particular observation. A large number of parameters help you to choose specifically or automatically which catalogs to use, the colour and the dimension of stars and nebulae, the representation of planets, the display of labels and coordinate grids, the superposition of pictures, the condition of visibility and more. All these features make this celestial atlas more complete than a conventional planetarium.

The free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Celestia runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy.

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.

SAOImage DS9 is an astronomical imaging and data visualization application. DS9 supports FITS images and binary tables, multiple frame buffers, region manipulation, and many scale algorithms and colourmaps. It provides for easy communication with external analysis tasks and is highly configurable and extensible.

Astrometrica is an interactive software tool for scientific grade astrometric data reduction of CCD images. The current version for the Windows 32bit operating system family is the successor of a DOS based software that was used for astrometric data reduction of photographic films (1990), and later CCDs (1993).