Starry Night Enthusiast 4.5 Astronomy Software Win/Mac

by Imaginova

Product Features

• View the sky from anywhere on Earth or blast off and visit locations 20,000 light years away
• Learn how to identify planets, stars, and constellations; new weekly sky-gazing suggestions
• LiveSky panel lets you see up-to-date images of the Sun and Earth
• Locate objects easily with 'Find' command; create your own movies and images
• More than 2.5 hours of movies, on both CD-ROM and bonus DVD

Product Details

Product Manual [2.93mb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000C7FSF
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 25, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,278 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #33 in Software > Education & Reference > Science
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Starry Night Enthusiast is brilliantly realistic and designed for anyone with an interest in the night sky. See the sky from anywhere on Earth or lift off and visit any solar system body or any location up to 20,000 light years away. View 2,500,000 stars along with 170+ deep-space objects like galaxies, star clusters and nebulae. Travel 15,000 years in time. Check out the view from the International Space Station. See planets up close from one of any of their moons. Starry Night Enthusiast has stunning OpenGL graphics. Now with more than 2.5 hours of video multimedia on CD-ROM and new bonus DVD featuring dramatic visualizations of astronomical objects and phenomena hosted by guest experts. Print handy star charts to explore outside. Learn about the movement of the planets, watch the phases of the moon and see what the stars looked like on the day you were born!

Features:

• View the sky from anywhere on Earth
• New weekly sky-gazing suggestions
• Blast off and visit any solar system body, or any location up to 20,000 light years away
• Learn how to identify planets, stars and constellations such as The Big Dipper
• LiveSky panel lets you see up-to-date images of the Sun and Earth from ground and space-based observatories
• Locate objects easily with Find command
• Create your own movies and images
• Print detailed star charts for your next outing under the stars
• Multiple views lets you watch an eclipse from a planet, its moon and the Sun, all at the same time
• More than 2.5 hours of movies, on both CD-ROM and bonus DVD, on the solar system and beyond

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible program!, December 31, 2003

By 

Ann "Ann" (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Starry Night Enthusiast 4.5 Astronomy Software Win/Mac (CD-ROM)

My husband and my two sons have been hunched over the computer for days, leaping up to go outside and look at the sky. Each time they come in, one of them says, "What a cool program!" before going back to the computer. My 12 year old, who is grounded at the moment, hasn't even complained about being limited to "smart games" on the computer because this is one of the programs he's allowed to use. They're all Astronomy enthusiasts anyway - the sort who will set the alarm for 3am to go out and see a comet. I couldn't say if the software would only appeal to that type. But I wish you could see these guys! They're competing with each other to see if they can come up with yet another fact or software functionality that will out-do what the others have found. They're already talking about getting the advanced version of the program - but this one will take them quite a ways, so there isn't any hurry. I just wish I could rate it more than five stars!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best introduction to astronomy, December 30, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Starry Night Enthusiast 4.5 Astronomy Software Win/Mac (CD-ROM)

Starry Night makes the sky look so real that its almost like being outside. By far the most realistic astronomy program i have used. All the planets have high resolution images and there are over 100 color images of deepsky objects. If you want more objects you can get their PlusPak #2 which adds 11 000 more images to the sky. You also get a DVD with about 2 hours of movies, an astronomy book! and users guide. Its so much fun to use this software! Now i need a telescope...

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I'm satisfied... totally., January 24, 2004

By 

jbzoller (Manitowoc, WI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Starry Night Enthusiast 4.5 Astronomy Software Win/Mac (CD-ROM)

I know that some people seem to have had a bad experience with Space Holdings, but I have ordered both directly from them and also from Amazon before and was satisfied with both previous transactions. I will concur that they seem to have some internal communication issues and that the people you may talk to on the phone don't seem to have a very good handle on things... at least when you consider that they actually work for the company. It kind of feels like you've called someone's house and their 4yo kid picked up the phone. Trying to get Mommy or Daddy on the phone at that point can be tricky.

While I can't speak to the quality of other similar products (Red Shift, TheSky, etc.), I can say that I have been VERY happy with Starry Night. Having been a Starry Night Backyard user since version 3.0, I can say that it was worth my upgrade to 4.0 and then again to 4.5 (Enthusiast). I am now using 4.5.2 on my Apple TiBook running Mac OS X 10.3.2. The product is satisfactory to me in every way, and really lacks nothing that I use for amateur observation of the sky. I thoroughly enjoy it personally.

Additionally, I enjoy it professionally. I teach astronomy at a public high school with over 1400 students. I see about 130 of those students each year enrolled in astronomy. We use Starry Night Backyard (version 4.0.5) running on Mac OS X (10.2.8) as a part of the curriculum that I have developed. I have been totally satisfied with it as an educator.

Obviously I'm runnning all this on a Mac and the same was true with my version 3.0 (though that was on Mac OS 9). It could be that this product does not run as well on a Windows machine, but that can be said of a great many things. If you decide to get it, though, I would recommend is getting it from Amazon or some other source than directly from Space Holdings. Not only do they charge full retail price for the product, but because they're in Canada, the shipping is outrageous.