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Speaking as a lapsed amateur astronomer I really love having a good sky program on the PPC when camping or doing some "backyard" observing.
Just found this over on TK-Blog (a Japanese enthusiast's site). It looks really interesting; like a combination between Taikyoukei (a ephemeris and sky database... but it's QVGA only and written in VB) and PocketStars (a field program...sorta).
It's called Tachyon and it's an early beta, ver 0.10. But man, it's loaded with all kinds of goodies. Real time solar observation data, sky charts, planetary positions, space news feeds and updated images, loads of cosmological links, all sorts of observation data for amateurs and pros alike, telescope controls for serious amateurs, a field book and log, ... I'm seriously excited about this. Go here for a quick overview of features or here for a buttload of screenshots.
Haven't got a chance to load it on the Toshiba yet.... It claims to work in VGA; I really hope it does. I'm downloading right now.
Hey, cool find!
Do you have a telescope? My son has taken a liking to astronomy and we are considering possibly getting one down the road. He is helping with landscaping and other stuff to earn some money for one.
One thing I decided was to not let him get a wal-mart or kmart one. Those are the types I had as a kid and even though they claim you can see the rings of Saturn and moons of Jupiter, I never could get one to stop shaking long enough to see the craters of the Earth's moon. :P Kidding! but you know what I mean.
On the other hand, a PRO telescope wouldn't be good either. I have heard some of the $400 ones from Edmunds Scientific are good, but I haven't really spent enough time researching to know.
Fun hobby though
Brad-
OT! - No, I couldn't bring a scope over here and I would probably have to abandon anything of any size when I come back to the states. But I may go ahead and get a small Schmidt Cassegrain for hobby use. (This might be a good choice for your son if you think he's serious. Go here for more info.)
When my parents got me my first real telescope (in the late 70s), a 6" reflector housed in a 1.3 meter tube with base and a small set of eyepieces, it set them back about $400. That'd be about $750 in today's dollars I guess.
It was a huge investment for a blue-collar paper mill employee but I never could thank my parents enough. Having that scope and going out with the local astronomy groups on overnight sessions and doing public exhibitions went a long way to convincing me of the value of being a smart kid and a good student. Being in that group exposed me to grad students, professors, businessmen, and a whole group of successful and intelligent people.
If your kid has an interest in astronomy... nurture it! Let him buy books and catalogs (real paper ones that he can look at and read for hours). Encourage him to teach you about what he's learning.
About those cheap K-Mart scopes. Funny you should mention that. It was a cheap, K-Mart scope that I remember seeing Jupiter and its moons with for the first time. The thrill of finding them on my own and suddenly realizing what I was looking at... it was glimpsing a celebrity in real life (hey, I was 8 at the time). But I remember the sight like it was yesterday. Cosmological fever... Catch It!
Now, back to our regularly scheduled topic:
Tachyon?
In one word? Wow.
There are some bugs in it, but in VGA? This thing is gorgeous. I had a bit of a problem getting installed. The installer choked on Japanese WinXP and I had to hand install all the files to their proper folders - but it works. Pretty much.
I've already run into a couple of unmanaged exception errors (you know all about those, don't ya, Brad?? 8-) ) I'll see tomorrow if they are reproducible. But this app is seriously a work of art / labor of love / result of otaku with too much time on their hands. Seriously, I've got a new distraction for the next few days.
UPDATE - Did some quick pricing. Man, back in the day scopes didn't cost anything like that. Geez. Maybe you should go old school and stick with the Newtonian reflector. Here's one at a reasonable cost. (Glad to see that the company that made mine is still in business. Make sure that whatever you get has a real base with Right Ascension/Declination and NOT Left/Right Up/Down positioning. Trying to understand where things are and how astronavigation works is a lot easier if you learn how to point your scope properly from the get-go.
/$0.02
Hiya Kamikun,
This is definitely something that looks very powerful. Thanks for sharing. My kids (and their parents) love geo science! Way cool. Love those planets. Don't imagine it would install to a card too well though. Between, pocket breeze, contact breeze, PI, WA2, and Weather Panel....my poor baby can't take any more memory consumption.
Have you joined the yahoo group for latest bug fixes yet?
Well, I have tried to install this four times and it won't run on my device. I have open Netcf already installed on my device so I know I have all the required libraries. I tried installing the app itself to storage as it indicates that you can in the readme file since it is rather large. I, just for grins, installed to the main memory to see if that would work any better and still get errors. When I tried to tap details on the error dialogue the dialogue disappears briefly and another error dialogue appears and this proceeds for about 12 times. The installation takes forever but appeared to work since the program icon is appearing in my program menu. Not sure what is wrong. Would like to get this working...looks fabulous.
Well day two and still can't get it working on the Dell Axim X30. Developer thinks the installation file is screwed up. He had me free up some memory too. He doesn't feel memory is causing the error message I get. If anyone else wants to try this out on the Axim X30, I would be appreciative to see if you have the same problem. 8-)
:P Kidding! but you know what I mean.
Linear Mode
