Review: Equinox

Product Name: MPj Equinox 1.2.0
Company: Darryl Robertson, Microprojects
URL: http://www.microprojects.ca/
Category: Planetarium
Price/Options: Limited demo is free, full version $25
Requirements:
- Power Macintosh (G3, G4 recommended)
- Mac OS 8.6 and better. or OS X
- 15 MB free RAM
- 20 MB HD Space
Rating: 3 bounces - Lustworthy

Planetarium programs can be divided into three levels: heavyweight, middleweight and lightweight applications. Heavyweight applications like TheSky [reviewed elsewhere] are able to map millions of stars and thousands of deep sky objects, asteroids, comets and even artificial satellites. These are the applications aimed at amateur astronomers with large aperture telescope who enjoy the hunt for the faint and obscure. At the other end are the lightweight applications like Stargazer's Delight [reviewed elsewhere]. These are for naked-eye and binocular astronomers, and map only the planets and the brighter stars and deep sky objects. Lying somewhere in between are the middleweight applications which that try to combine the relatively low cost of the lightweight applications with a much fuller list of features. MPj Equinox is one such application.

Installation & Requirements

Equinox requires a PowerMac running System 8.6 and better, including OS X. Equinox is a Carbon application and will run in either OS X or Classic as required; I only used it in OS X. Installation is very simple using the standard Aladdin Stuffit Installer. A PDF instruction manual is provided.

Equinox is shareware, and although the installer can be downloaded freely from the Microprojects website, only a limited set of functions are available before registration. The Find function, for example, is disabled until Equinox has been registered. Even so, there is more than enough working to give the prospective user a good flavour of what the application can do and how it works. Once the shareware fee has been paid, a special registration file is sent by Microprojects and the user places this in the Equinox application folder, 'unlocking' the complete set of functions.

Performance

Equinox launches quickly and runs smoothly on my iBook (500 MHz, running Mac OS X 10.2). One nice feature is that when switching between Equinox and another application or the Finder, Equinox 'hides' itself automatically, and then re-appears when brought back. If you shuffle between applications a great deal, you'll appreciate the tidying effect that this imparts.

The sky simulation occupies one large window, alongside which are palettes containing various switches and sliders that control the simulation. The simulation itself is similar to that of Starry Night Beginner, with natural sky colours and a realistic display of stars, although the Milky Way is a rather approximate polygon with a peppered fill. Equinox displays stars down to 8th magnitude, and deep sky objects down to 13th magnitude, although the provided deep sky catalogues are nowhere near that comprehensive.

User Interface

Using Equinox is quite different to other applications of this sort in the arrow keys on the keyboard are the main tools for moving around the screen instead of the mouse. Indeed, their is no way to point-and-click at an object and have the simulation centre on it, something that sets this application apart even from its predecessor, MPj Astro. Instead, Equinox gives the user sliders to change altitude, azimuth and the angle of sky on view. Two are altitude and azimuth controls to change the orientation of the simulation, and a third slider increases or decreases the amount of sky displayed. These sliders provide a usable but relatively clumsy way to home in on an object. Inevitably as you zoom in using the angle slider (or its keyboard shortcut) the object drifts away from the centre demanding you use the altitude and azimuth sliders (or their keyboard shortcuts) repeatedly to compensate. So while these sliders work, they aren't much fun.

As an alternative, Equinox allows the user to locate something not on the screen by entering its name into a Find Object dialogue box. This works well, provided it is listed by the name you're looking for. So while NGC 457 can be found as the Kachina Doll Cluster (a name I'd never heard) it can't be found under its alternative name of the Owl Cluster. Something that caught me out at first was the Deep Sky: Best Only settings in the Filter menu option. This screens out things from the night sky simulation that don't look good in a small telescope (a subjective issue perhaps, but the intention is reasonable). This makes things clearer and simple for beginners, and allows them to focus on the easier targets instead of getting disappointed by trying to find faint or diffuse deep sky objects. If you have Best Only selected, the find feature won't locate a lot of objects, including many of the Messier Objects. To the programmer's credit, if the Find feature returns empty handed, it does tell you to check the filters. More seriously, stars cannot be found using their Bayer or Flamsteed designations, though the strange hybrid NexStar names, sometimes in preference to their common names. So for example Gamma Orionis can be found by searching for 24Gam Ori, but not for Bellatrix.

Another bit of the interface I wasn't wild about was the time control. The basic approach is fine: a palette bearing row of buttons allows the user to step forwards and backwards in time by different amounts. There are a pair of buttons for steps backwards or forwards of one day, another pair for one hour, and so on down to the one minute intervals. Using the Option and Arrow keys allows the user quick access to one of these intervals. Alternatively, the user can choose to have the simulation advance continually by some preset amount: real time, one minute per second, five minutes per second up to one day per second. The problem is that the lack of integration between the continual progression of time chosen this way and the buttons for making incremental steps backwards and forwards. If you have the simulation set to the computer's real time clock, which most users will want to do, the buttons of advancing time forwards and backwards by steps are dimmed. You can't use them until the simulation is taken off real time by clicking the appropriate option in the menu bar with the mouse. If you decide to revert to real time, you need to choose the real time continual progression option, either using the mouse again or via a keyboard shortcut. Once you've done that you need to de-select real time again to be able to use the time advancement buttons. There are no keyboard shortcuts for quickly resetting the time while retaining the function of the time advancement buttons, or for setting continual time advancement to anything other than real time.

Telescope Control & Tours

Equinox can control Celestron NexStar and Meade Autostar go-to telescopes, which should make it popular with owners of these popular computerized telescopes. I tested Equinox using the Keyspan Serial Port adapter and my Meade LX 90 Schmidt Cassegrain telescope. Equinox recognized the telescope at once and using the telescopes own alignment instead of demanding the user. Command-clicking on an object brings up a new window, the Scope Window, and centres the telescope on that object (assuming the telescope has been aligned beforehand). In the Scope Window is a simulation of what you should see through the telescope. There are presets for ten different eyepieces and three different telescopes. A slider gives quick access to alternative magnifications, and along the bottom of the window is given the field of view and the magnification. If the object isn't perfectly centered through the telescope though it should be according to Equinox, adjust the telescope using the buttons on the Scope Window (Meade telescopes only) or by the telescopes own handset, and then press the Sync button. Equinox updates itself to take into account the new telescope pointing position, and tries better next time. Obviously there are limits to what this will achieve, since discrepancies between where a telescope thinks its pointing and where it is actually pointing are usually down to poor alignment or untrained drives, but it is a nice feature.

In contrast to using the application in planetarium mode, using Equinox to control a telescope is a sheer pleasure. There is zero fuss, and while supporting only NexStar and Autostar telescopes and lacking the in-depth features of the high-end applications, for the average user the system is, frankly, perfect.

Tours are another great aspect of Equinox. Though not a substitute for the serious observation and logging applications like AstroPlanner [reviewed elsewhere], for casual observers these are great. They don't allow you store notes on your observations, for example. What they are is an alternative to using things like the Guided Tours provided by Meade's Autostar handsets. Before you go out to observe, you switch on Build Tours in the Database menu, and the point and click at a series of object that take your fancy. Switch off the Build Tours setting when you're done, and save the tour file. By advancing through the tour via a small floating Tours palette, Equinox will make a go-to telescope jump from object to object. Best of all, these tours are plain text files, and provided you are careful about invisible characters like carriage returns, it is simple to add to them by adding names of objects (provided Equinox is 'knows' these names). Once again, Equinox has simplified a feature advanced amateurs use and enjoy and brought it down to a level where even beginners will feel comfortable.

Object Catalogues & Other Features

The Equinox planetarium window has a number of worthwhile extra features. Angular distances can be measured, and regions of sky marqueed off and copied to the clipboard. Stars can be marked as double, variable, and even whether or not they have planets. Besides the planetarium, extra windows provide a simple Solar System view and a projection of the Earth as a globe with simulated day and night.

The supplied databases used are tab-delimited text files that can be edited easily in spreadsheet software like Excel. This makes it relatively straightforward to add extra stars, comets or whatever to the original databases or for that matter changing some of the names of objects to ones you prefer. A nice surprise are the dynamic meteor showers. As I write this, on the best evening to see the Leonids, meteors are streaking away from the constellation Leo in Equinox's night sky simulation.

Conclusion

By any standards, MPj Equinox is good value. It is an attractive application with top-notch performance and a strong suite of 'power user' features normally the preserve of much more expensive applications. Unlike other planetarium programs at this price point, Equinox has full go-to telescope integration, and running in tandem with this feature is the wonderful Scope Window. The Tours and databases are useful and well thought out, and accessible to even casual amateur astronomers. If you have a go-to telescope that you'd like to connect to your iBook or PowerBook, this package of features makes choosing Equinox over Starry Night Beginner a no-brainer. In fact I'd go further: for a beginner or intermediate level amateur astronomer with a Meade or Celestron go-to telescope, this would be my number one recommendation over any planetarium program, including TheSky!

So why three bounces and not four? I simply can't get past the awkward planetarium interface. There doesn't seem to be any logic to not being point-and-click aware as far as centering objects is concerned, and arrow keys simply don't provide a responsive enough alternative. Likewise, without a comprehensive or consistent listing of star names, numbers or designations, using the Find Object feature is a bit frustrating. As a straightforward star atlas, I just find the alternatives easier to use.

- Neale Monks

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