Best planetarium program

[Davros]

Ive had stellarium on the macbook for the past few years and it works fine for what i have needed in the past (push to dob with setting circles). Now that i have a goto, tracking mount as well (Sirius HEQ5) i was wondering if there was a more recommended program for scope control etc.

[Bassnut]

Starry night rocks, and can do scope contol (the pro version). The Sky stinks, but its more powerfull ( and usually required for automation).

[mtodman]

I have used both Starry Night Pro & The Sky v6. They're both feature rich and can do pretty well all you need them to. However more & more often, when i'm out under the stars planning my night's imaging session or just working out which star is which, I keep reverting back to Stellarium. It places much less load on my notebook so it happily runs MaximDL for image capture & PHD for guiding at the same time.
Oh, & it has no problems controlling my scope as well.

[troypiggo]

Cartes du Ciel is free and work great as planetarium and scope control/goto. I'm using the newer version 3.

[White Rabbit]

I use Starry Night, It rocks. I use the compressed version for my astro laptop and it flies, no all sky images to load.

[Astrobserver99]

I use SkyMap Pro, great program, works with eqmod and goto scopes.

[scopemankit]

I use an old version of Starry Nights Backyard, which came as a free disk with an old computer magazine. It is great stuff.

[danielsun]

I have pretty much tried most of the leading planetarium programs and find Starry night pro plus 6 at the top.
Very user friendly runs my scope plus via EQ MOD.



Cheers Daniel.

[Ian Robinson]

I like Guide.

[Kevnool]

So theres your answer.
Starry night seems to be the norm.
Cheers Kev.