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XEphem
  http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/

There's a lot of free software out there that will give better skymaps than most books can. After all, the sky changes from minute to minute, not just day to day.

XEphem is my choice. The interface is pretty old-school, but the maps it prints out are perfect for my uses.

KStars has more bells and whistles but, in my experience, doesn't print as well.

As for advice on buying scopes, etc., check these places too.

Stelarium and Celestia are great programs, but you forgot Xephem. IMHO *the* most powerful astronomy tool, but it needs a beautiful gtk interface instead of the ugly motif. Heh, you can tell xephem was written by astronomers. :-D

Or, if you want, you can try XEphem a program written for X-windows (and hence will run on Linux!). It is free (as in beer) for non-commercial use. The license isn't GPL or anything like that, for you purists, however, when it comes to ephemeris software, I don't think there are enough options out there to be too picky about the license.

The main KDE app I probably use is kstars, because there isn't much available in the way of open source astronomy software.

Have you looked at XEphem? It's certainly open source; I haven't looked at kstars in a while so I don't know how the current features list/ease of use/etc. compares between the two. See http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/

My favorite for a long time has been Sky Charts, though: http://www.stargazing.net/astropc/index.html. This is the stable, free-but-not-Open-Source version for Windows only. There's a development version that's GPLd that also runs on Linux; see http://www.ap-i.net/skychart/index.php

According to xephem, for Magadan, Russia at Lat 59o57'N, 150o48'E on August 8 the twilight only just ends at 10PM (Sun 10 degrees below the horizon)! Why do they have the streetlights on at all before 10PM, when there's still daylight, but not after 10PM, during the few dark hours that you get there?

I'll bet after they go out the stars are incredible, though. . .

Stellarium is an impressive piece of free software for Linux and Windoze that renders the sky at any given time given your coordinates.

As for a more general star-browsing program, XEphem is great (free for personal use, sources available). It takes a little getting used to, but is very versatile with lots of nifty features, and it allows you to load star catalogs to increase the number of objects it knows.

Any other astronomy programs somebody would recommend?

Since there's not exactly been an abundance of actual observations, I'll throw my own: I saw the comet for first time at the beginning of the month (5.3.) with binoculars. Back then XEphem(a really nice program) estimated its brightness as 5.42 magnitudes; my own estimate was somewhat less, somewhere between 5.5 and 6.0 magnitudes but it's of course difficult to do this for nebulous patches of light compared to stars. ;)

Since that I've seen it three times (it's been horribly cloudy in Finland during this month!), and only at last week I managed to see the tail faintly. Today weather has been nice, so maybe now I can make another observation.

I'm a bit pessimistic as far as seeing it without binoculars goes for myself; living at the edge of city means some light pollution and its nebulous appearance definitely does not make things easier. (For comparison, persons with good eyesight should be able to see stars of magnitude 6 with naked eye under good conditions and the brightness of comet should be now around magnitude 4.)

Use Xephem -- you download and compile the source 'cuz it was developed for Unix systems, hence its Linux & FreeBSD friendly. Its also a FreeBSD port, which makes it trivial for you to install should you be so fortunate as to be running that OS.

The orbital elements are available for download into many popular astronomy programs, including xephem, the open source x-windows program.

if you need something to help identify just what the heck you're looking at....

Try xephem

It's a part of debian and (used to be) red hat I know.... it's helped me to figure out what a particular bright object is at times.

You'll want to use XEphem to plan your Leonid observing. It is freely available software for GNU/Linux that produces great printable star charts and much more. If for some reason you can't get XEphem for your OS you might find Heavens Above to be useful.

XEphem author Elwood Downey says, "I am frequently asked (often with stunning rudeness) why I use Motif and not some other GUI toolkit such as tcl/tk or gtk. Here are my reasons..."

XEphem author Elwood Downey says, "I am frequently asked (often with stunning rudeness) why I use Motif and not some other GUI toolkit such as tcl/tk or gtk. Here are my reasons..."

XEphem is a pretty neat program for this sort of thing too. It is also included on the Red Hat 7.1 Power-Tools disc.

• Mead LX200 telescope ~$2500US
• WM-918 weather station
• both run with linux using wx200d and xephem
  then you just need a CCD camera and an internet connection for remote viewing :)

Why not just use xephem? It will do the exact same thing as you describe Terraserver does, and will show up data in optical, where this is in infrared. Unless you have a *really* nice backyard setup or whatnot, you're not going to see too much useful in these pictures. Ie) you won't see what you see in the pictures.

Better yet, just learn your Dec and RA, and you can just do it yourself. Zenith dec at your home is just your latitude and RA is the sidreal time of your area.

i think even if you spend 1 billion $ for a 100m aperture telescope on earth, that a e.g. 20m telescope in orbit will be better. Also i think that there's too much "competition" in the huge telescope market, we've got the GTC, the LBT, the SALT, the VISTA, the LAMOST, the DMT, the CELT, the XLT, the OWL, the LSST, the GSMT, the MAXAT, the ELT. Why? why not make only one bigger/better on earth, or even in space? the 2.4m HST proved the bettest scope is in space.
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