Cartes du Ciel

Cartes du Ciel is a comprehensive software application that you can use to prepare sky maps for observation, according to a set of user-defined rules.
At startup, you can set up the observatory by assigning a location from the database (e.g. location code, vicinity, coordinates, country name, time zone).
In addition, you can fill the local horizon with color and display the horizon line, track an object before it rises, as well as establish atmospheric refraction (pressure, temperature, humidity, troposphere temperature lapse rate).
The interface is comfortable to work with, as you can navigate the sky and zoom in and out using the mouse cursor.
You can change observatory details, date and time settings, run simulations (e.g. planets, comets, asteroids) and enable animations while having the possibility to record them to file.
Furthermore, you can jump to equatorial, ecliptic or galactic coordinates, mirror the image horizontally or vertically, as well as rotate it left, right or by 180 degrees.
Other options of Cartes du Ciel let you view a calendar on the given location, identify variable stars, save an image to file (PNG, JPEG or BMP format), perform an advanced search (e.g. deep sky object, solar system, constellation), enable night vision mode and switch to full screen, as well as generate charts, among others.
The application has a fair response time and does not put a strain on computer performance, since it uses a very low amount of CPU and RAM. No errors were shown in our tests, and the tool did not freeze or pop up error messages. All in all, Cartes du Ciel offers a bunch of interesting options to all astronomy fans.