Nov
24
World Wide Telescope Project
Filed Under Astronomy, Software | 4 Comments
The World Wide Telescope project is software that allows your computer to act as a telescope, presenting you with the best images from ground based and space based telescopes from around the world, where you are able to take guided tours from astronomers and educators, who happen to work out of the best observatories and planetariums in the nation.
At any point during the free guided tour of space, you are able to temporarily pause the program for exploration, where you can seamlessly pan across the night sky and zoom into stars and planets for a better view. While using World Wide Telescope project software, you can view the night sky in visible light, x-ray and hydrogen alpha wavelengths. After exploring the sky on your own, you can resume your guided tour from where you left off.
Download World Wide Telescope now!
Nov
10
NASA has released a 4D live model of the earth’s ionosphere, where you are able to virtually fly through the ionized gas layer that encircles the border between the earth and space.
The ionosphere is the last layer of the earth’s atmosphere before entering space and stretches from 50-miles to 500-miles above the earth’s surface; it forms the inner edge of the magnetosphere and is located in the thermosphere. The ionosphere is created by solar radiation ionizing, or breaking apart, molecules and atoms in the earth’s upper atmosphere, resulting in a layer of electrons and ions.
The ionosphere is important to modern day communication, as radio signals are often bounced off of the lowest level of the ionosphere and reflected back to earth in order to reach greater distances; also, GPS singles from satellites must pass through the ionosphere before reaching receivers on
the ground or in planes, and atmospheric disturbances, caused by the sun, can cause errors up to 100-meters in location determination.
Download NASA’s 4D Ionosphere Model now!
Oct
29
GPredict Satellite tracking software
Filed Under Software | 2 Comments
GPredict Satellite tracking software is great free software that tracks satellites and predicts their orbit in real-time. GPredict is able to track an unlimited number of satellites and displays their positions and additional information in lists, tables, maps and as polar plots. Beyond real-time tracking, GPredict is able to predict the time of future satellite passes and display information about upcoming passes.
A great feature of GPredict is that it allows the user to group satellites into modules, where each module can be configured independently from the rest. GPredict also allows the user to track satellites from different observation locations.
Notable features of the GPredict software include:
- Accurate real-time satellite tracking using the NORAD SGP4 / SDP4 algorithms
- Unlimited number of satellites or ground stations
- Graphical user interface utilizing maps, tables and polar plots
- Customizable satellite modules
- Future satellite path predictions
- Automatic Keplerian elements updates
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