Developer(s) Richard Franck License shareware | Operating system | |
Stable release 2.079 R3 / July 6, 2011 (2011-07-06) Type Amateur astronomy/observational astronomy Website www.winstars.net/english/index.html | ||
WinStars is an ASCOM standard-compliant shareware planetarium, ephemeris and solar system simulator developed by Richard Franck for the Microsoft Windows operating system. WinStars includes the ability to control computerized GoTo telescope mounts.
Contents
History
WinStars version 1.0 was developed by Richard Franck in 2001 using the C++ programming language. WinStars version 2.0 was released in 2004, with WinStars version 2.5 due for release in mid-2013, and version 3.0 with expanded capabilities is scheduled for release in 2014. Franck remains the sole developer and maintainer of the application.
Catalogs
WinStars 2 includes a database of 2,500,000 stars and (SAC) catalogue of 10,000 nebulae, galaxies and star clusters, and can read several astrometric catalogs in their original formats.
The Bright Star Catalog, Digitized Sky Survey, Sky2000, and the Tycho 2 databases are also included, although the USNO UCAC catalogs will not be supported until the release of WinStars version 2.5 in mid-2013.
WinStars 2 features integrated support for the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) system for use with the SETI@home project.