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Product: Astronomy software

Developer: Imaginova

Minimum Requirements: Mac OS X v10.3, 450MHz G3, 128MB RAM, 1GB hard disk space, 32MB OpenGL capable graphics card, 1024x768 monitor resolution

Retail Price: $79.95

Availability: Out now

I cannot recall a time when I wasn't interested in astronomy. Since I first learned what the lyrics to "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" were all about, I've been looking towards the sky at night. That's where Monster Zero came from, after all. That's where I would one day be recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada."

That never happened, of course—at least...not yet (ready when you are, Centauri)—but the heavens never lost their appeal with me. In high school, my friends and I would invade the local public golf course for some night putting, then gaze up at the sky as we contemplated the meaning of it all or hit on the girls foolish enough to go with us. At church camp in southeastern Ohio, we'd climb to the top of a hill off Piedmont Lake—countless miles from city lights and car exhaust—and stare up at a sky so dark and clear we could see the Milky Way...and I'm fairly certain the approach of a giant, three-headed monster.

These days, my interest in astronomy is more academic. And although the purpose of the stars is no longer to fuel my dreams of space battles or provide me with a romantic setting for hitting on girls, there's still a sense of wonder. This wonder is obviously shared by the developers of Starry Night Enthusiast 5. They're not content to just answer your questions with encyclopedic software, they want you to get excited about it; to share their enthusiasm and desire to learn and discover more. For the most part, they succeed. However, I wish some people passionate about a decent graphic user interface would share their enthusiasm with the developers of Starry Night.

Right off the bat, Starry Night Enthusiast can be confusing and a bit intimidating to use, especially for those just getting into astronomy. The software asks for your geographic location, but doesn't get very precise; I was forced to select a city about thirty miles away from me. You'll be given the option to enter your precise longitude and latitude, but Starry Night does nothing to help you figure this out. I found my location on the Internet, but it was apparently in a format Starry Night didn't understand, as it dropped me on the other side of the world. Surely, the developers could tie in exact locations with zip codes to make it easier for users if they were so inclined, but perhaps it's not worth the programming time that would require; my resident astronomy expert tells me that a location 30 miles away is probably good enough.

You're then presented with a horizon around which you can scan 360° and, of course, straight up. This was also a bit confusing, as the landscape is a mountain rising up from a lake...and there's not a whole lot of that in northeast Ohio. If there's a way to change this vista, I couldn't find it.

You can set the date and time in Starry Night Enthusiast to see what constellations will be visible at that time (whether it's tonight or any reasonable reasonable date in the past or future). There's even a light pollution option that's not quite so blindly optimistic about what you'll actually be able to see. You can view the night sky as you'd actually see it, or you can have Starry Night show illustrate the constellations with simple lines or ornate drawings. You can then print out star charts to help you locate the constellations when you're actually, you know, outside.

Of course, the night sky's not just about stars. Starry NIght covers planets, moons, nebulas, satellites and countless other celestial objects you may or (most likely) may not be able to pick up with your telescope. By rolling your mouse over the objects, you can pull up helpful information on most of them. But, you don't have to settle for viewing them from Earth. Starry Night allows you to travel through space to get a close up view of some objects, and you can even land on the planets, for example, to see what the night sky looks like across their horizon. Ever wondered what Earth would look like from the surface of Mars? Well, now you kind of know.

The space travel isn't perfect, however. It can get pretty jumpy on slower machines (it was mostly pretty good on my 2HGz iMac, but not nearly as smooth on the 1.5GHz Intel Core Solo Mac mini on which I also tested it. Also, on both systems, the space travel feature seemed to get confused when traveling to other planets, and would actually drop me inside the planet, turning the screen completely black. When all of this does work, though, it can provide some very cool visuals, and that's pretty important. I can see better photos of these objects in encyclopedias and books, after all, but I can't see them in motion.

Another cool feature is the ability to set a time flow by which to view the constellations, causing stars and planets to flow across your monitor as they would across the night sky. Along with helping you learn the seasonal progression of the constellations, it turns your computer into a sort of mini-planetarium, only without the ethereal new-age music.

The documentation is a bit of a puzzle. A great 192 page printed book, Starry Night Companion, is included. If you're new to astronomy, this book explains plenty, and although it's written at a fairly high level, it shouldn't be too hard for to follow by those interested in messing around with Starry Night Enthusiast to begin with. It also has a good sense of humor about it (you'll be surprised at how long you'll have to wait for the Age of Aquarius to actually dawn). Starry Night Enthusiast also comes with a nearly two-hour DVD, SkyTheater, which provides more great visuals and explanations of what you can see in the night sky. It's very informative, and very helpful.

And yet, there's no printed manual to speak of for the actual program. Instead you have to print off a 119 page PDF (switching between the PDF on screen and the Starry Night application gets annoying). Although it's written well, the relative lack of screen captures and figures makes it feel more like a science textbook than a computer program manual. There's a fold-out QuickStart guide, but it doesn't actually help you start anything quickly. It shows what the different interface items are, but it doesn't show what they actually do or explain when/why you'd want to use them. You end up spending as much time exploring the user interface as you do exploring the solar system.

There's no doubt that the developers at Imaginova are passionate about astronomy and about the program. There's a lot of power packed into Starry Night Enthusiast, and there are a lot of cool features. The program strikes a good balance between education and entertainment, and that'll make it useful to both the casual stargazer and to teachers or those who plan to do more with the night sky than use it to simply contemplate their existence or woo women. Unfortunately, it's also sorely in need of someone who's not used to navigating through star charts to navigate through the interface and make sense of it for the rest of us.

I'm giving Starry Night Enthusiast a 4 out of 5 for what it can do once you're able to use it to its full potential, but it may be a slow road from 2 or 3 out of 5 before you get there. I mean, it shouldn't be more complicated than using "Death Blossom" in my Gunstar, should it?