My guide to the visible night sky?

July 16, 2006 9:40 PM

Observational astronomy aids in Palm OS 3 format? "Current viewable at this location and time" information about satellites a huge plus.

Are there any extant programs that will run on a PalmOS3(?) Sony CLIE that will allow one to;

- select lat/long
- let the program query the internal clock instead of punching in the time
- filter 'viewable objects' by magnitude (I'm a victim of light pollution)
- have (updated/updateable?) information on satellites (esp. the ISS and the Iridium comsats)

posted by porpoise to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (7 answers total)

Best answer: Dunno if it can do all you ask, but the absolutely incredible Planetarium runs on OS 3.5 and up with 500K or more of memory. It's relatively expensive for a Palm app (about US$32) but worth it if you need it. You can read the manual online at the website to see if it works for you before downloading or buying.
posted by lhauser at 10:16 PM on July 16, 2006

Except the satellites, you might check out Stellarium and see if that might be useful. It's open source and there is source code available.

Disclaimer: I don't know anything about OS or palm PC's of any flavour.
posted by ninazer0 at 2:19 AM on July 17, 2006

I used to have a few shareware and freeware apps on my Palm IIIx which offered lunar, solar, and Jovian data. Some of this was definitely from astro-metrics.com, which offers a number of tools including a Jupiter app which is actually named Jovian, a lunar phase program, an orrery, and an astronomical clock. These are all supposed to work in OS 3.0 (most of them even in OS 2.0). I have no affiliation with this company, I just remember trying their stuff out.
posted by Songdog at 5:51 AM on July 17, 2006

[more searching]

Some of the other apps I remember are David Bray's RiseSet and Earth&Sun (among others). And hey, what the heck, here's a whole list of astronomical applications for PalmOS. The list dates to 2002.

You didn't specify a version of OS 3. In addition to Planetarium, mentioned by lhauser above, there's a tool called Starparty which runs on 3.1. And technically astronomical, though not quite what you're looking for, is this tide application, which also offers the relevant lunar data.

None of these tools predict satellite passes, so far as I know (though I can recommend the Heavens-Above website) but they're worth a look in general.
posted by Songdog at 6:03 AM on July 17, 2006

Best answer: Here you go: BigFatTail Productions offers PocketSat and PocketSat+, both of which do at least some of what you're looking for. I'm not sure what PalmOS version is required for PocketSat, but it's pictured running on a very old emulator in the documentation. PocketSat+ requires OS 3.1 for black and white operation and OS 3.5 for grayscale or color. BigFatTail also offers LookAngles, for finding geostationary satellites.
posted by Songdog at 6:17 AM on July 17, 2006

Jessamyn or Matt: could you please close the anchor tag I left open above? I meant to leave it at "pictured."
posted by Songdog at 6:21 AM on July 17, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks guys!

(Songdog - that was above and beyond =) I guess I'll give a combination of Planetarium and Pocketsat a try.)
posted by porpoise at 5:11 PM on July 17, 2006