What program produced this picture?

[paulcruice]

Some eight years ago in the Nov-Dec 2001 issue of Newton magazine (now defunct), an article, A Rare Glimpse of Mercury, was written by John Laven and Richard Weiss, both from a company called Stellar Insight. The article included the "heavens-above" picture displayed in the attachment.
I wish to find out the name of any computer program which can generate such overview type images.
Hoping someone can help. Thanks.

[Octane]

Paul,

I am pretty sure you can produce those sorts of maps using pretty much any planetarium software nowadays.

Try Starry Night Pro Plus, or The Sky. Freebies such as Cartes du Ciel and Stellarium may also be able to do these for you.

H

[paulcruice]

Thanks Octane. I will check them out.
Paul

[chrisp9au]

Interesting!
That would be a very useful display to show the grand kids!
I have several of the free planetarium programs, CDC, Stellarium, HNSKY, etc. I'm sure it didn't come from any of those.

Cheers :thumbsup:
Chris