Got a new astronomy CD, huh? Deepsky ‘98? Oh, it’s a planetarium program, right? No? A deep sky charting program? It’s not? Well...is it a logbook like NGP? Uh-uh? A database like SAC 6.0? Nope? Well what IS it?!

Deepsky ‘98 is something genuinely new under the Sun! Dilbert will kill me for saying this, but this program really is a WHOLE NEW PARADIGM where astronomy software is concerned! It’s a huge database containing over 300,000 deep sky objects (so say the authors...I haven’t counted ‘em all--yet!). But it is also an accomplished charting program which uses the Hubble Guide Star Catalog to produce excellent maps. And it is a superior observing logbook; it’s very flexible and has features I haven’t seen before, like the ability to append images to your observation records. It also contains enough ‘Solar System functions’ to allow you to keep track of what’s going on with the Sun, Moon and Planets. Oh, and it even features a fairly powerful image processor! Not enough? OK...it can control your LX-200! This is a whole lot to ask of any single astronomy program! How well did Deepsky ‘98 implement all these features? Very well, for the most part! But that’s getting ahead of the story!

Deepsky ‘98 comes on a single CD ROM. Documentation is included on the CD, but I didn’t need to refer to it to get the program up and running (I didn’t think I needed it anyway--as you’ll see, it would probably have been a good idea to read the manual before getting started!). The computer requirements for DS ‘98 are surprisingly minimal: a 486 PC running Windows ‘95 and 30-150 megabytes of hard disk space. 30 megabytes gets you a minimal installation, while 150 mb allows you to run the program’s big catalogs from your hard drive for maximum performance. I was able to install the software on a 166mhz mmx PC with no problems whatsoever, and soon had Deepsky ‘98 onscreen. I entered my ‘unlock’ code to make the program fully operational (DS ‘98 can be used as a shareware application for 30 days, but you only have access to a limited database--the NGC catalog).

After playing around with the application for a little while I ran into the only major ‘problem’ I’ve yet to experience. Though my copy was ‘registered’, I quickly found out that I still ‘only’ had access to the NGC catalog (how can any self-respecting deep sky nut put up with only 8,000 or so objects?!). I had chosen to leave the massive deep sky database on the CD, so I decided to copy it onto the hard drive to see if that would fix the problem. Indeed it did. As soon as I moved the database to the hard drive, I was able to read DS ‘98's many deep sky and star catalogs! It was then that I realized what the problem was: the program had not only not read the CD database, it hadn’t even tried to access the CD ROM. There was a copy of the ‘shareware (NGC) catalog’ on the hard drive, and the program was defaulting to this! I erased the full database from the hard drive, made sure that the shareware database was gone, and rebooted the program. Sure enough, it asked me for a drive letter for the location of the database. I told it ‘D:’, it read the CD database, and I was on my way. This may be all spelled out in the documentation somewhere...but you know how I loathe ‘reading the instructions!’

What is Deepsky ‘98 like? The closest thing I can compare it to is David Chandler’s Deep Space. Like Deep Space, Deepsky ‘98 is an observing system; also like Deep Space, while it produces fine charts, it makes no claims to being a planetarium. Your ‘home base’ in Deep Space is a star chart; Deepsky ‘98, however, takes a different tack, starting you out from a SQL database displayed in spreadsheet format. This is different, but it didn’t take me long to get comfortable with it. I’ve come to be convinced that working from a spreadsheet is, for many tasks, much more efficient and faster than working from a chart! While it would be helpful to have had some experience with database programs, the user interface is very intuitive, and the documentation explains exactly how to proceed. To select the objects to be displayed on your spreadsheet, you have two basic options: use a combination of preference settings and pull-down menus OR format your own SQL queries. This database is very powerful, and I found it a breeze to display exactly the range of Deepsky objects I wanted. It is possible to use more than one spreadsheet at a time by using the program’s ‘tabbed’ multispreadsheet feature. But no user interface is worth a flip if there isn’t sufficient good data to work with! Rest assured that Deepsky ‘98 doesn’t stint there!

Deepsky ‘98 really offers enough catalogs to last you a lifetime! I won’t list them all here, but some of the more familiar and useful ones include (in addition to the NGC/IC, natch): the UGC, the Washington Double Star Catalog, the Morphological Catalog of Galaxies, the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, the Abell Clusters of Galaxies catalog, The Third Reference Catalog, and the Catalog of HII Regions (and on, and on!). If, for some reason, this wealth of data just isn’t enough for you, DS ‘98 includes a ‘database import’ option which allows you to use virtually any ascii format catalog.

OK, what do you do with all this data? One thing you may want to do is develop an observing list (‘Plan’) for your next deep-sky-safari. This is easily accomplished. Just click on the first object you want to add to your list. The program asks you if you want to start an observing plan. Click ‘yes,’ and you’re on your way, adding objects of your choice to the list. When you’re done, just stop ‘recording,’ and print and/or save your list as necessary. I found this planning facility easy to use, and had no trouble creating customized lists to suit my tastes.

How about charts? I was quite surprised that DS ‘98 has become such an ‘advanced’ chart making application! I thought I knew that it could print some small, simple charts, but I had no idea that it could produce output to rival Megastar! The easiest way to produce a chart with this program is to right click your mouse on your spreadsheet; this brings up a menu which includes a choice to ‘chart selected objects.’ Select this, and DS ‘98 proceeds to draw a detailed (the program does, after all, use the Hubble GSC) chart looking about a good as many ‘printed’ atlases! Most of the familiar options are here, and I found the charts useful and accurate.

You’re back from a long and successful evening of observing. Time to record your evening’s work. It’s now that you find one of the areas where DS ‘98 really shines--as a logbook. The screens are attractive, data entry is easy (especially if you use the observing list you created and saved earlier to help you make your entries). One feature of the logbook really intrigues me: it has the ability to append images to logbook entries. I’d sure like to scan-in a lot of my sketches and include them in my logs!

And that’s not all. If you’re an LX-200 owner who’s lucky enough to also have a laptop computer to use in the field, DS ‘98 can control your scope, allowing you to click on an object on a spreadsheet or chart and ‘go there!’ You can even use your observing list to put the LX into ‘slide show mode’ (automatically slewing from one object to the next)! And Deepsky ‘98 will help you create logbook entries while running a ‘slide show’!

Finally, Deepsky ‘98 even has a rudimentary image processor to use with your scanned photos or CCD images. No, it ain’t Adobe Photoshop, but it is usable! And for many folks, this may be all the image processing horsepower they ever need.

But no program has ever been (or ever will be) perfect. What didn’t I like about Deepsky ‘98? There wasn’t too much to complain about actually; especially, when you consider that DS ‘98 is ‘young’ and still obviously a work in progress. I do have a few nits to pick, though. All the catalog data is nice...but, as time permits, I think a bit of editorial intervention is necessary. I’d like to see, especially, some cross referencing of the data--for the NGC at least. For example, I’d like to know what NGC umptysquat’s UGC or PGC numbers are. Judicious cross-referencing can cut-down on the number of catalogs you have to have present on your hard drive. The more data that can be added to catalog fields, the better...it’s not always enough just to dump massive catalogs into an application. On the other hand, I realize that even going through the NGC and adding data is a monumental task. Also, while I know you can add additional catalogs, I would have made some different choices for the initial group included here. I would, certainly, for instance, have preferred the familiar PK catalog of planetary nebulae to the planetary nebulae catalog on this CD. The chart drawing engine was great, but I would like to see just a few additional functions added. It is possible to overlay a Telrad sight on the star maps, but I would also like to see the ability to overlay various-sized finder and eyepiece field circles added. A more flexible zoom tool would also be nice--one which allows you to zoom or unzoom by a user-specified amount. Performance-wise, the program works quite well, but when the authors say that copying the GSC to your hard drive will help with charting they’re not kidding! With the GSC enabled and left on the CD drive, you’re going to wait a long while for just about any charting function to finish. I know it would be simple to copy the GSC to the hard drive, but some folks still m ay not have that kind of disk space available--even in this day of multi-gigabyte monsters, and I believe CD performance could be improved.

What’s the bottom line? Don’t expect me to stop using Megastar for charting, but I’ll be using it in conjunction with Deepsky ‘98, which will be my observing planner from here on out, and I don’t doubt that DS ‘98 may take over at least some charting tasks from Megastar! I’ll not mince words, I love this program, and insist you give it a try! If you’re a deep sky fanatic you just can’t go wrong for $42.99 (no, that’s NOT a mistake: $42.99 for a CD!)!

--Rod