Review: KStars 0.9

Product: KStars 0.9
OS X: Yes
Classic: No
Publisher: KDE
URL: http://edu.kde.org/kstars
Category: Planetarium
Price: GNU General Public License
Requirements: Power Macintosh G3 or G4 running OS X, X11 and an X Windows serve
Rating: 2.5 bounces, Short of Lustworthy

The K Desktop Environment project, usually known by its acronym KDE, is an Open Source graphical user interface for UNIX operating systems. Among the many applications available for use with KDE is KStars, a planetarium program produced by the KDE KStars team led by Jason Harris. KStars is designed primarily as a teaching tool, and its development is paralleled by the AstroInfo project, an astronomy encyclopaedia put together by a whole community of volunteers. Amateur astronomers running MacOS X will also find KStars an interesting proposition. Thanks to the Fink project it is easy enough to download and install KStars, and then run the application within a UNIX window manager such as OroborOSX or X11. Better yet, it's free.

Installation

KStars is a UNIX application not an Aqua application, and so it needs an X Windows manager to run. This can be something like Adrian Umpleby's OroborOSX or Apple's own X11 beta. I've written about X Windows on Mac OS X in an earlier article for AppleLust, so if you don't know what this is all about you might want to read that first. KStars itself is most easily installed using Fink, either directly through the Terminal or alternatively using an Aqua application called FinkCommander that gives Fink a more friendly graphical user interface. There is plenty more about both of these here.

The requirements are modest: a Mac capable of running OS X, a sufficiently fast Internet connection to download the files, and 10 MB or so of hard disk space. Once installed it can be launched through a terminal such as xterm, first by changing directory to where the KStars application resides (usually /sw/bin) and then typing in "kstars" and hitting return. If you use OroborOSX it is probably much easier to define a launch menu shortcut, while Apple X11 users could write an AppleScript like this:

tell application "Finder"
launch application "X11"
end tell
set results to do shell script "cd ~; DISPLAY=:0.0; export DISPLAY; PATH=$PATH:/sw/bin; export PATH ; /sw/bin/kstars> /dev/null 2>&1 &"

(Note, the last two lines, from "set results" to "2>&a &" should be a single line in your script making this script 4 lines total.)

With a simple AppleScript like this, launching KStars is no more difficult that launching any other Mac application, making it relatively straightforward for users who don’t care to explore the UNIX half of their Mac to run the program with minimal effort.

Performance & User Interface

KStars takes a while to launch (almost a minute on my 1 GHz PowerBook), and if set to advance forward in time automatically, such as if it set to follow real time, then things like using menus and toggling the various settings can be painfully slow. On the other hand, with time advancement switched off (i.e., the simulation being used essentially as a static star chart) the program is fast and responds quickly to commands.

As with other UNIX applications, KStars is designed for a three-button mouse, but users of the regular single-button Macintosh mice need not despair. Additional keys emulate the missing mouse buttons. Depressing the option key while mouse clicking is used to emulate the middle mouse button, and the command key for the right mouse button. Normal mouse clicks correspond to the left mouse button of three-button mice, and these can be used to centre the simulation on a desired point or target (with double clicks) or to drag the focus of the simulation about (click and drag). Right button clicks are used to bring up information and option boxes. The information is fairly basic but useful, offering things like spectral classes of stars, rising and setting times and so on. The middle button is used to zoom into the simulation. Click and hold the desired target are or object with the middle button, and then scroll upwards. Okay, this sounds a little odd, but what it is doing is simulating a scroll wheel (which, if you happen to have one, will do the same thing). Conversely, scrolling downwards scrolls out. This takes a little getting used to, but it works fine.

The options are interesting and potentially useful, including things like links to SEDS information pages and Deep Sky Survey images, but unless you have a correctly configured and compatible X Windows browser installed, they won’t work. Right now there isn’t this level of integration between X Windows applications and Aqua applications (such as the usual Mac OS browsers like Explorer or Safari). To get these aspects of KStars to work, you are going to need to run it in KDE. The same holds for the KStars help file, which requires the KDE help viewer. Installing KDE is certainly possible on the Mac using Fink, though it is a fairly time consuming business as a lot of files need to be downloaded and installed. It also means getting used yet another interface and set of rules (on top of Aqua, Classic, X Windows and the UNIX command line). In other words, this isn’t for the faint hearted and not something you might want to do on a whim or just to run this single application.

Features

For a free application aimed at educators and students rather than amateur astronomers, KStars is surprisingly well appointed. The basics are all there: natural colour sky simulation, night vision and star charting modes; SAO star, Messier, NGC and IC catalogues by default plus the potential to add additional ones; equatorial and alt-azimuthal coordinates; and realistic tilts of Saturn’s rings and shadowing of planetary discs. There is some eye candy as well. The planets, and some of the Messier objects as well, come with nice photographic images. Stars can be realistically coloured, and constellation diagrams and labels can be toggled on and off. Basically KStars has the core set of features required by amateur astronomers.

A nice addition to the feature set is a calculator for converting between different forms of data or working out specific coordinates. You can for example revise equatorial coordinates to account for precession or determine day length. Now, I have to say that at first I didn’t have much success with the calculator: the results I got just seemed to be plain wrong for some things, as shown below. The trick seems to be to make sure settings like the geographical location and Universal Time offset are right to begin with -- whatever you type into the fields seems to be affected by these as well.

There are a few odd things that should be there but aren’t such as symbols for double and variable stars, catalogues of comets and asteroids, as well as the more involved features for planning and organising observing sessions. As noted earlier, simple integration of web resources are lacking too, although this isn’t a fault of the program but rather an issue with how X Windows applications behave in OS X.

Conclusion

KStars can be said to be more or less at the level of applications like Equinox or Starry Night Backyard. It has a reasonably comprehensive deep sky and star catalogues plus the potential to add more catalogues should the user wish to do so. KStars has a fairly intuitive and attractive user interface, performance is good with time advancement switched off, and it comes with a decent set of extra tools such as night vision mode tailor-made for amateur astronomers. With the addition of KTelescope, KStars should be a balanced and sophisticated package for the Mac OS X user looking for a zero-cost planetarium and star-charting package. If your demands are for a program that will allow you to identify stars and planets, produce charts for use on screen and so on, then KStars is indeed a useful program that could fit the bill.

The problem with KStars for more general users looking for the same depth of features as offered by the commercial applications stem mostly from the incomplete integration between this application and OS X generally. The inability to read the online help or use the Internet links deals something not far short of a body blow to the application when stacked against the fluid relations between something like Starry Night and Internet astronomy resources such as LiveSky or XEphem and the Digital Sky Survey. Hopefully many of these flaws will be worked out, and indeed if you care to install KDE you can avoid them altogether. As a straightforward X Windows application running alongside Aqua, had these features worked in KStars would have earned a comfortable three-bounce rating, and could be warmly recommended for budget conscious amateurs.

But too many of the important features that KStars does provide, such as the Internet links, don't work this way, making the commercial and shareware Mac OS alternatives much more attractive. In a sense though, KStars is having to fight the competition with one arm tied behind its back. In my next article I'll follow up this review of KStars by trying out two KDE options for the Mac user, an OS X port of KDE via Fink, and a full LINUX and KDE installation from Yellow Dog. In doing so, we'll offer KStars a second bite of the Apple.

- Dr. Neale Monks

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