Free Astronomy Software For Mac


  • World's leading manufacturer of astronomical telescopes for the serious amateur astronomer. Products include astronomical telescopes and accessories, eyepieces, CCD imaging equipment, astronomical software, spotting scopes, binoculars, and microscopes.
  • Among educational programs, Starry Night Backyard ESD is one of the best in its class for astronomy software. It offers more than 1,000,000 stars and 110 deep-space objects for your viewing pleasure.
  • A free, open-source software called Stellarium is probably a good place to start. Another free planetarium software is Celestia. It runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. This software not only shows you the sky from Earth, but also allows you to 'fly' to other locations and view the sky from there.
  • Stellarium is a free GPL software program which renders realistic skies in real time with openGL. It is available for Linux/Unix, Windows and MacOSX. With Stellarium, you really see what you can see with your eyes, binoculars or a small telescope. Loaded with advanced features, this incredible software will turn your PC into a virtual planetarium!
iPhemeris ® © 2008-2020 Clifford Ribaudo. All rights reserved.
B-Wheel
Editing / Creating Horoscopes
Tri-wheel

Graphic Ephemeris
Ephemeris
Astrological Calendars

PHD2 Guiding: Free community driven and developed guiding software. Open Astro Project: Free planetary imaging application. OaLive: The Open Astro Project live stacking program for EAA observations. Lynkeos: Free planetary stacking and processing application. Keith's Image Stacker: Planetary and astronomical image processing. Not in development.

Another free planetarium software is Celestia. It runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. This software not only shows you the sky from Earth, but also allows you to 'fly' to other locations and view the sky from there. Stellarium is a free GPL software program which renders realistic skies in real time with openGL. A free space simulation that lets you travel throughout the solar system, and explore over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy. The software has a number of catalogs of stars, galaxies, planets, moons, asteroids, etc. You can easily navigate and zoom in to the objects you like.

Developer's Description. 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.

iPhemeris is the best Astrology Software for Mac (MacOS). It does all types of Astrology charting and includes: Ephemeris Tables; Astrological Calendars; Moon & Eclipse tables; 'Sky Now' real-time chart of the Sky, and can function in either Tropical or Sidereal mode.

iPhemeris is the only Astrology software for Mac that includes traditional Tabular Ephemerides with tables of longitude, declination & latitude, moon phases, eclipses, void of course moon and lunar ingress and the ephemeris can be set to display tables for any time and time zone you like. Need a 9:30am ET Ephemeris for the New York stock market open, no problem!

Vedic Astrologers love iPhemeris because everything can display Tropical or Sidereal positions for any of 17 pre-defined Ayanamsa, or set your own.

Free

iPhemeris for Mac was first released in 2014 and has been continuously updated, improved and supported since. If you're serious about Astrology and need the best, iPhemeris is what you've been looking for! Stop carrying all those books around and get iPhemeris for your iPhone, iPad & Mac OSX!

3.10.2 - Released Sep 18, 2020

Fixed: Issue with sidereal position of certain asteroids for some Ayanamsa.
Fixed: Issue with Graphic Ephemeris that caused crashes in rare situations.
Improved: Further improvements to spacing and position of points around the horoscope wheel.
New: Added In-App purchase for 8 Uranian Hypothetical bodies.

  • Natal Charts.
  • Transit Charts.
  • Progressed Charts.
  • Solar Return Charts.
  • Lunar Return Charts.
  • Re-location Charts.
  • Composite Charts (Mid-point).
  • Two Charts (Bi-Wheel).
  • Three Charts (Tri-Wheel).
  • Aspect lines drawn on charts.
  • Select the Planets, Asteroids & Points displayed on Charts.
  • Reports for all types of charts and chart combinations (see listing below).
  • Chart Notes - Write and store notes for each chart.
  • Rectification Tool - Step charts forward & back in time.
  • House Systems:Placidus, Equal, Koch, Regiomantanus, Campanus, Meridian, Morinus, Porphyry, Topocentric, Whole, Antique, Vedic, Alcabitius, Aries 0, Solar House.
  • Sky Now - A continuosly updating chart (every 5 seconds) for any location.
  • iCloud - Use iCloud to store and share charts between all your devices & computers running iPhemeris.
  • Aspects: 0°, 30°, 36°, 40°, 45°, 51.4°, 60°, 72°, 80°, 90°, 108°, 120°, 135°, 144°, 150°, 160°, 165°, 180°
  • Declination Aspects: Parallel, Contra-parallel.
  • Orbs: Separate Orb settings for Applying & Separating aspects; fractional Orbs (e.g. 1.5°).
  • Other Points: Ascendant, Descendant, Mid-Heaven, IC, Vertex, Earth, Part of Fortune, Black Moon.
  • Part of Fortune - Two calculations styles.
  • Wheel Styles - Customize horoscope wheel elements; French and European styles.
  • For Traditional Astrologers
    • Decanates shown on wheel can display Traditional or Modern Rulers.
    • Wheel can display the Bounds, Terms or Limits: Egyptian or Ptolemaic.
  • Synastry Grids - available for all types of single, bi-wheel and tri-wheel charts.
  • Aspect Report - for all above listed major and minor aspects. Applying and separating orbs are configurable, as are which aspects are included.
  • Points Report
    • Lists sign position of each element on report.
    • The house each point is in.
    • Dignity of each body (both modern and traditional).
    • Each points declination and latitude
  • Table of Houses showing sign and degree of house cusps.
  • Table of Elements and Cardinality.
  • Mid-Point Reports - can be sorted by sign or planet.
Ephemeris Table Features
  • Tables for Jan. 1700 to 2100 included. In-App purchase extends the ephemeris to 5000 years (2500 BC - 2500 AD).
  • iPhemeris uses the Swiss Ephemeris. Based on Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) DE 430/431 with sub-second precision.
  • Monthly tabular style Ephemeris (Longitude and Declination).
  • Graphic Ephemeris:
    • Display Longitude or Declination for any date range.
    • Display any harmonic degree range between 30° and 360°.
    • Overlay Astrological charts.
    • Display's data under cursor in sidebar.
  • Display as a traditional Midnight or NoonGMT Ephemeris, or for any custom time and time zone.
  • Display Tropical or Sidereal positions using one of the 17 pre-defined Ayanamsa, or your own.
  • Planets & Asteroids - All planets plus: Chiron, Vesta, Pallas, Juno, Ceres, Cupido, Hygiea, Astraea, Eris, Sedna, Vulcan (hypothetical).
  • Uranians - 8 Hypothetical (Hamburg) points: Cupido, Hades, Zeus, Kronos, Apollon, Admetos, Vulkanus, Poseidon.
  • Choose which Planets, Asteroids & Points are displayed.
  • Planetary directions.
  • Two Moon Columns: The position at Ephemeris time, and 12 hours later.
  • Moon Phases: Date, Time & Sign of Moon and Sun for both GMT and your local time zone.
  • Eclipses: Date, time and sign of Solar and Lunar eclipses.
  • Void of Course Moon Tables: Includes date/time of last aspect and date/time/sign of next Lunar Ingress.
  • North Node (True or Mean).
  • Black Moon (Lilith).
  • Includes Sidereal Time.
  • Page back and forward by month or jump to any date.
  • Monthly calendar style Aspectarian showing daily aspects in the sky.
  • Monthly Transit calendar showing daily transits to any of your astrological charts.
  • Select the Planets, Asteroids & Points displayed.
  • Set the Orbs used.
  • Planetary directions.
  • Tropical or Sidereal positions using one of the 17 pre-defined Ayanamsa, or your own.
  • Page back and forward by month, or jump to any date.
  • iPhemeris is a modern astrology tool that uses internet map technology to help you find latitude & longitude for your astrology charts. It's accurate to within feet and can be extremely helpful with cuspy charts:
    • Maps are in your native language.
    • Scroll, pinch and zoom to find any place on earth.
    • Search for places or addresses in your own language.
  • Uses the International Time Zone database used by computers around the world to lookup Time Zones for any place on earth.
  • iCloud - backup and sync all your Astrology Charts between your devices and computers.
  • Lots of Settings to let you customize most things.
  • Extensive documentation included for all versions.
  • iPhemeris can be set to operate in Sidereal mode.
  • When in Sidereal mode all calculations and displays throughout are adjusted for the selected Ayanamsa.
  • 17 Pre-defined Ayanamsa included:
    • D.K • Fagan Bradley • Lahiri • Krishnamurti • Galactic • Raman
    • Takra I • Takra II • Babylonian • Deluce • Larry Ely • Yukteshwar
    • Sassanian • Ushashashi • Hipparchus • Dhira • Krushna
  • User defined Ayanamsa - Provide your value for the year 2000 (Epoch) and iPhemeris will adjust for precession to the chart or ephemeris date.
  • Display Nakshatra divisions around tropical wheel.
Languages & Compatability
Free Astronomy Software For Mac
  • iPhemeris Menus & Preferences are translated into: English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Japanese, Korean & Chinese
  • iPhemeris for Mac works on MacOS 14.0 or later.


It's been a good three years now since I swapped my HP laptop for a Macbook Pro. In the mean time, I've started doing a bit more astrophotography and of course the change of operating system has affected the tools I use to obtain and process photos.

Amateur astronomers have traditionally mostly used Windows, so there are a lot of Windows tools, both freeware and payware, to help. I used to run the freeware ones in Wine on Ubuntu with varying levels of success.

When I first got the Mac, I had a lot of trouble getting Wine to run reliably and eventually ended up doing my alignment and processing manually in The Gimp. However, that's time consuming and rather fiddly and limited to stacking static exposures.

However, I've recently started finding quite a bit of Mac OS based astrophotography software. I don't know if that means it's all fairly new or whether my Google skills failed me over the past years :-)

Software

Software

I thought I'd document what I use, in the hope that I can save others who want to use their Macs some searching.

Free Astronomy Software For Mac

Some are Windows software, but run OK on Mac OS X. You can turn them into normal double click applications using a utility called WineSkin Winery.

Free Astronomy Software For Mac Windows 10

Obtaining data from video camera:

Free Astronomy Software For Mac Computers

  • oaCapture (MacOS X, free)
  • AstroImager (Mac OS X, payware, free trial)

Format-converting video data:

  • Handbrake (Mac OS X, free, open source)

Processing video data:

  • AutoStakkert! (Windows + Wine, free for non-commercial use, donationware)

Obtaining data from DSLR:

  • AstroDSLR (Mac OS X, payware, free trial)

Processing and stacking DSLR files and post-processing video stacks:

Free Astronomy Programs Windows 10

  • RegiStax (Windows + Wine, free)
  • Nebulosity (Mac OS X, payware, free trial)

Post-processing:

  • The Gimp (Max OS X, free, open source)

Free Astronomy Software For Macs

Telescope guiding:

  • AstroGuider (Mac OS X, payware, free trial)
  • PHD2 (Mac OS X, free, open source)

Free Astronomy Programs For Mac

Hardware

Free Astronomy Software For Mac Download

Free Astronomy Software For Mac Computer

A few weeks ago I bought a ZWO ASI120MC-S astro camera, as that was on sale and listed by Nebulosity as supported by OSX. Until then I'd messed around with a hacked up Logitech webcam, which seemed to only be supported by the Photo Booth app.

I've not done any guiding yet (I need a way to mount the guide scope on the main scope - d'oh) but the camera works well with Nebulosity 4 and oaCapture. I'm looking forward to being able to grab Jupiter with it in a month or so and Saturn and Mars later this year.

The image to the right is a stack of 24x5 second unguided exposures of the trapezium in M42. Not too bad for a quick test on a half-moon night.

Settings

I've been fiddling with Nebulosity abit, to try and get it to stack the RAW images from my Nikon D750 as colour. I found a conversion matrix that was supposed to be decent, but as it turns out that made all images far too blue.

The current matrix I use is listed below. If you find a better one, please let me know.

RGB
R0.500.001.00
G0.001.000.00
B1.000.000.50

Astronomy is a natural science that’s all about the earth and the universe. While it’s a broad research field driven by professional scientists around the world, it’s also a personal hobby of many who are interested in the study of celestial objects such as stars, moons, planets, nebulae and galaxies. Beside of using your naked eyes, binocular or telescope to obverse these fascinating sky objects, you can also make use of some astronomy software to help you access the mystery of space.

Today we’ve compiled a list of astronomy software and online applications that help your work and hobby become more effective and interesting. These softwares are suitable to both professional and amateur astronomers and the best part is that they are all free to use!

Aladin Sky Atlas
This sky atlas software enables users to view astronomical images, superimpose entries from astronomical database, and gain access to most of the astronomical servers worldwide such as VizieR service, Simbad database, Hubble images, etc.

C2A (Computer Aided Astronomy)
C2A is an easy-to-use planetarium software that allows you to create detailed views of stellar fields, suitable to both professional and amateur astronomers. The software provides most of the star catalogues including SAO, GCVS, Guide Star, USNO, etc. Also, the deep sky object catalogues such as Messier, NGC, PGC and IC.

Stellarium.org
Stellarium shows you a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with your own naked eyes or through telescope. The planetarium software has catalogues with millions of stars, illustrations of constellations, nebulae images, as well as planets and their satellites. Other features include fisheye projection, time control, equatorial and azimuthal grids, eclipse simulation, star twinkling, and many more.

Sky-Map.org or WikiSky.org
These sites are basically interactive sky maps that contain myriads of stars and celestial objects. Users can zoom out for the whole star sky viewing or zoom in for details. In addition, users can edit the star information by including links, writing articles, uploading relevant photos, and other editing tasks.

WWT
WWT (WorldWide Telescope) allows users to explore the space, combining both images from ground and space-based telescopes with 3D navigation. WWT comes with 2 versions: Windows Client and Web Client. Both enable you to pan the sky and to zoom in on celestial objects, including stars, nebulae, and planets.

Cartes du Ciel’s SkyChart
This is planetarium software that contains a number of catalogs ranging from stars, planets and nebulae to comets and asteroids. You can make use of their data to draw your own sky chart for particular observation. There are many options and features given in helping you to create a complete sky map such as changing space objects’ color and dimension, adding coordinate grids and labels, superimposing celestial images, and many more.

Free Astronomy Software For Mac Download

Celestia
A free space simulation that lets you travel throughout the solar system, and explore over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy. The software has a number of catalogs of stars, galaxies, planets, moons, asteroids, etc. You can easily navigate and zoom in to the objects you like.

Free Astronomy Software For Mac Computers

Orbiter
Orbiter is a free and realistic space flight simulation software that allows users to experience space flight missions from the pilot’s perspective. In addition, you can also recreate historic flights, plan interplanetary slingshots, design your own rockets and many more.

Free astronomy software for mac download

Home Planet
Home Planet’s Earth map displays day and night regions, moon location and phase, as well as earth satellite’s locations. The software also has sky map, based on SAO catalogue or Yale Bright Star catalogue which contain millions of stars, planets, asteroids, comets, Messier objects and NGC objects.

Winstars
Winstars enables users to view realistic 3D maps showing the celestial objects in our solar system. The software contains a database of over 2 millions stars and a catalogue of 10 thousands nebulae, star clusters and galaxies, with details information about each object. You can also view the outline of the planetary orbits, celestial equator, ecliptic, etc.

WinOrbit: Satellite Tracking
WinOrbit is a free software that computes and displays the position of artificial earth satellites, together with information like bearing, distance, and elevation above the observer’s horizon. The information can be updated in real-time, manual, or simulation modes.

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