Putting the Universe at Your Fingertips
Voyager 4.5 Features
This page describes the major features of Voyager 4.5. Any feature described as "New" has been added or significantly updated since our previous version, Voyager 4.
The adjacent screen shots provide a sample of Voyager 4.5's interface on both Mac OS X and Windows XP - Vista. You can click on any of the preview images displayed here to obtain the full-resolution screen shot.
The summer milky way seen on a rare fog-free night
from San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
New Look and Feel
Voyager 4.5's windows and dialog boxes now contain native controls that better match the Aqua interface of Mac OS X and the Aero theme for Windows Vista.
New Horizons
Voyager 4.5 includes many new 360-degree horizon panoramas, including a Golden Gate Park meadow, Cathedral Rock in Arizona, a mirror-still lake in upstate New York, and a tropical beach in Hawaii. You can create your own digital horizon panorama, and show the sky as it appears from your back yard!
The surface of Saturn's moon Titan, unveiled by the
Cassini spacecraft's infrared camera.
New Planet Rendering
Voyager 4.5's planet, moon, ring, and shadow drawing code has been completely rewritten to include the effects of perspective and rotational flattening. See Saturn's moons cast their shadows across the planet's ellipsoidal face; get a proper "astronaut's-eye view" of the Earth from the International Space Station.
New Planet and Moon Maps
Voyager 4.5 has updated high-resolution maps of the Earth, Moon, and Mars; and adds new high resolution maps of Saturn's moons from the Cassini mission. Planets and moons are rendered realistically, using the latest imagery from NASA's Clementine, Magellan, Mars Global Surveyor, Galileo, and Cassini missions.
A view of the Milky Way in Cygnus, showing the
North America and Gamma Cygni nebulae.
New Deep Sky Object Images
Voyager 4.5 embeds high-resolution color images of hundreds of Messier, Caldwell, and other deep sky objects from the second-generation Digitized Sky Survey directly into its sky charts. This release includes 70 new DSS2 images. Thousands more star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies are displayed as detailed contours or outlined symbols.
Realistically Rendered Stars
Voyager 4.5 draws stars with photo quality using a model based on real CCD star images. You can adjust the size and intensity of star images - or you can choose to display stars simply as circles, to generate an "old fashioned" star chart.
A rare triple transit of Jupiter's moons Io, Ganymede, and Callisto
on March 28th, 2004, showing the moons and their shadow cones
magnified by 5x.
Panoramic Digital Milky Way
Voyager 4.5 renders the Milky Way in high detail using a digital 360-degree panorama generated from an actual photographic survey of the Milky Way. Milky way boundary areas can be shown using simple geometric outlines as well.
Wide-Field Chart Projections
Voyager 4.5 can unwrap a 360-degree panorama of the sky onto your computer screen, using the same Mercator, Elliptical, Gnomonic, and Sinusoidal projections that are used to show maps of the Earth.
Web-Friendly Sky Chart Export
Voyager 4.5 can export charts as JPEG or TIFF files as well, for easy display on web pages or import into other documents. The Mac OS X version can also export sky charts in PICT format as well.
The orbits of the global positioning system (GPS) satellites,
as seen from beyond the Moon.
New Data Updates
Voyager 4.5 can now download and import the latest orbit data for comets and asteroids directly from the Minor Planet Center. It can also download and import satellite orbit files in standard NORAD TLE (Two Line Element) format - all to ensure accurate position predictions. Bring your Solar System up to date with a single click of the mouse!
New Display Options
Voyager 4.5 lets you zoom in out on the sky using your mouse wheel, just like you can do with Google Maps. We've also added a number of display options, including the ability to show comets and asteroids separately, and to turn on/turn off the Sun, planets, and moons individually.
A highly magnified view of mars at opposition in 2005,
showing its path against the background stars.
New Planetary Ephemeris
Voyager 4.5 contains a high-performance implementation of JPL's state-of-the-art DE408 planetary ephemeris. It computes the positions of the planets even more accurately, and dozens of times faster, than any previous version. You can optionally include corrections for light time, aberration, dynamic time, and other effects to reproduce the ephemerides in the Astronomical Almanac to sub-arcsecond precision.
New Planetary Moons
Voyager 4.5 includes data for nearly a hundred new planetary moons that have been discovered in the 21st century. In addition, you can now customize the display options for every planet and moon in the Solar System individually. View Titan's surface as seen by Cassini's infrared camera; watch Saturn's "shepherd" moons orbiting outside the delicate F-ring; view the chaotic mix of Jupiter's "temporary" outer moons orbiting in retrograde round the planet.
The solar system's major asteroid groups -
Kuiper Belt (red), Centaurs (yellow), Main Belt (blue),
East/West trojans (magenta/cyan), and Near-Earth (green) -
in relation to the orbits of the planets.
New Asteroid Groups
Voyager 4.5 now lets you select and display the many new kinds of outer solar system asteroids, Kuiper Belt objects, and "dwarf planets" that have been discovered in the 21st century - including Neptune Trojans, Plutinos, Twotinos, and "Cubewanos".
Seen from Arizona in 447,000 B.C., Aldebaran and Capella
appeared as a double pole star due to precession
and stellar proper motion.
New Calendar Systems
Voyager 4.5 includes support for the Hebrew, Islamic, Persian, Indian, and Mayan calendars. Find the dates and times of new moons that mark the start of Islamic months, or determine the date that the Mayan calendar predicts the "end of the world".
A Million-Year Timespan
Voyager 4.5 accurately models the precession of the Earth's axis and the motions of the stars back to the dawn of humanity. Voyager 4.5 extrapolates lunar and planetary positions forward and backward realistically over 500,000 years from the present - and for times within 10,000 years of the present, Voyager 4.5's lunar and planetary positions will match JPL's precisely.
The Moon casts its shadow across China during the total solar eclipse
of July 22nd, 2009, as seen from space.
New Object Descriptions
In addition to their numerical data, Voyager 4.5 now includes textual, plain-English descriptions for hundreds of planets, moons, stars, clusters, nebulae, and galaxies, developed in conjunction with professor Jim Kaler of the University of Illinois. Learn the history and mythology of the constellations. Discover "fun facts" about the objects you can see in the night sky!
New Image Gallery
Voyager 4.5 contains an updated image gallery of over 1400 high-quality astronomical images. Nearly 1000 of these have never been included with any previous version of Voyager. Our solar system images include the best from NASA's MESSENGER, Cassini, Deep Impact, Spirit, Opportunity, NEAR, Galileo, Magellan, Voyager, Viking, Mariner, and Apollo missions. Our deep space image are licensed from the collections of world-renowned astrophotographers like David Malin, Tony Hallas, and Robert Gendler; as well as NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Each image includes the official NASA caption, and/or the accompanying notes from the original astrophotographer. Dazzle your friends at star parties; use them as wallpaper, screen savers; or simply enjoy them.
The orbit of Alpha Centauri A and B shown with data
from the latest Washington Double Star catalog.
New Stellar Data
Voyager 4.5's basic stellar database is derived from the latest version (v5) or NASA's SKY2000 Master Star Catalog, and the older Hipparcos, Tycho-1, and Tycho-2 catalogs. It is a complete and comprehensive compendium of data on more than 2.5 million stars brighter than magnitude 12. With Voyager 4.5.1, we expanded our basic stellar database to include every component of the 100 nearest star systems with data from the Research Consortium on Nearby Stars (RECONS).
New Double Star Database
Voyager 4.5 includes the latest version (August 2008) of the Washington Double Star catalog, with information on more than 104,000 multiple systems and over 2,000 binary stars. We have also included an improved interface for viewing and searching binary star orbits. View the components of binary stars such as Alpha Centauri, or the "Double Double" in Lyra - orbiting each other over hundreds of years! With Voyager 4.5.1, we've also updated our variable star data using the latest version (Dec 2007) of the General Catalog of Variable Stars, including data on more than 42,000 variables.
The Whirlpool Galaxy (M 51), with background stars plotted from the
Guide Star Catalog 2 (GSC2), and the Telescope control panel.
New "Go-To" Telescope Support
Voyager 4.5 now supports several new telescope types - including the iOptron SmartStar, Takahashi Temma, Orion Sirius/Atlas/Intelliscope, and ServoCAT Argo Navis. We also support the latest computer-controlled telescopes from Meade and Celestron - including the entire Meade LX-200, LX-200 GPS, and Autostar lines, and the Celestron NexStar, and NexStar GPS series. Many older models, including simple encoder systems, are also supported.
Please note that most telescopes will require a USB-to-Serial adapter for telescope communication.
The Lagoon Nebula (M 8), with background stars plotted from the
SKY2000, Hipparcos, and Tycho catalogs, but not the GSC2.
New Deep Sky Object Data
Voyager 4.5 includes a completely rebuilt database of star clusters, nebular, and galaxies, using 21st-century sources wherever possible. This includes the latest version of the Wilton Dias open cluster catalog (April 2008) and the latest Principal Galaxy Catalog (September 2008), all cross-referenced with Wolfgang Steinicke's latest Revised NGC and IC Catalogs (April 2008). A number of errors, omissions, and duplicate references in our previous deep sky object database have been fixed.
The Voyager 4.5 DVD version contains the 2008 version of the Principal Galaxy Catalog, containing data on more than 1.6 million galaxies.
The Lagoon Nebula again, including background stars
from the GSC2 - compare to image above!
Guide Star Catalog 2.3
Voyager 4.5's DVD version expands its basic stellar database by including all stars from the second-generation Guide Star Catalog brighter than magnitude 18 - a total of more than 155 million stars. The original GSC, still used by most other planetarium programs, contains one tenth as many stars. Unlike its predecessor, the GSC2.3 contains color and proper motion information in addition to just position and magnitude, and represents a much more complete and statistically-even sampling of the sky in both hemispheres.