John Perry wrote:
Hello Everyone and Welcome to the list!
We have about 15 subscribers now and the list is growing. I was
wondering if anyone would like to share their XEphem experiences? What
version are you running? Do you have any thoughts on how to improve
it? Does anyone want to just introduce themselves?
John,
I was very excited to find this software. I am new to astronomy and had
really hoped I could find good astronomy software for Unix. I downloaded
and built v3.2.3 to try it out on my Solaris boxes (I work for Sun
Microsystems) and Linux (on my laptop) - I was very impressed with what I
saw and ended up registering (buying a copy from Elwood).
I've run through several of the 'examples' (tutorials) as found under the
Help->Examples menu. I wish there were more because I found that doing
these exercises really helped me learn/understand how the software works.
From what I can gather, the software is very powerful -- but I have yet to
figure out how to tap into all it's features (example: How could you use
this software to forcast the next solar eclipse?)
I regularly use it create & print sky views to find where interesting
objects will be on a given night. I've used the 'examples' to create a
plot for comets (e.g. Comet 1999 LINEAR / S4).
I am interested in the new LX-200 command set feature of v3.4. I had
thought about writing my own filter for the previous version by creating a
named pipe (FIFO) in Unix to control my ETX-125 (which uses the LX-200
command set -- or at least a subset of it).
Regards
Tim
Dearborn, MI
