# Recommend some star mapping software

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-star-mapping-software/314719>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [July 29, 2005, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-star-mapping-software/314719 "2005-07-29T11:04:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\
**Post date:** [July 29, 2005, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-star-mapping-software/314719/1 "2005-07-29T11:04:01Z")

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G’day,

A friend of mine was using Starry Night on her laptop the other day and I thought it looked pretty cool.

I’m not sure if Starry Night will run on my laptop as it says the graphics card must be OpenGL compatible. I have an SiS Mirage 2 card and the SiS website doesn’t mention OpenGL (I have no idea what OpenGL is), I do know that the card is DirectX 8.1 compatible.

Can any of you fine people please recommend some similar software.

I’m looking at anything from freeware up to around $100 US.

If it helps, my laptop is as follows:

AMD Athlon 64 2400+  
1Gig Ram (128Mb shared with graphics)  
SiS Mirage 2 graphics (on motherboard) DirectX 8.1 compatible  
Windows XP Home

Thanks in advance.

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**Author:** ![Kaotic\_Newtral](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/71e660/32.png) [@Kaotic\_Newtral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaotic_Newtral)\
**Post date:** [July 29, 2005, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-star-mapping-software/314719/2 "2005-07-29T13:59:02Z")

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Hi… [Celestia](http://www.shatters.net/celestia/) is a BLAST! I’m not sure how good it is at mapping though. I just like flying through the universe! 😃

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**Author:** ![Kaotic\_Newtral](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/71e660/32.png) [@Kaotic\_Newtral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaotic_Newtral)\
**Post date:** [July 29, 2005, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-star-mapping-software/314719/3 "2005-07-29T15:31:48Z")

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Oh, and I did a quick search through the forums for Celestia and it seems that quite a few users are running on integrated SiS video cards.

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**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\
**Post date:** [July 29, 2005, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-star-mapping-software/314719/4 "2005-07-29T15:41:09Z")

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[Here you go.](http://www.bconnex.net/~gmcdonal/)

🙂  
What?.. Oh… those kinds of stars…

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**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\
**Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-some-star-mapping-software/314719/5 "2005-07-30T01:55:32Z")

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> [@Kaotic Newtral](#):
>
> Hi… [Celestia](http://www.shatters.net/celestia/) is a BLAST! I’m not sure how good it is at mapping though. I just like flying through the universe! 😃

Thanks. I actually don’t need it to do a star map (I just couldn’t think of a better way of describing this kind of software), I’m more interested in being able to input my latitude and longitude and have it show me the stars I can see, then I can go outside and stargaze.

I’ll have a look at Celestia.

I’ve downloaded the trial version of Starry Night to my old steam driven desktop and it works ok with OpenGL turned off so it should work fine on the laptop anyway.

**QuickSilver** , 😃