[AJames]

Originally Posted by h0ughy

yeah mate thats better than the actual sky view - what did you generate the image on?

Houghy,
The image was made from Stellarium 0.9.1, and was copied using Preview in the MAC OSX "Grab" function. This allows images in tiff format, which I simply convert and compress to a jpg using a Japanese freeware MAC only program called ToyViewer 4.92. (See http://homepage.mac.com/t_ogihara/so...OSX/index.html)

Stellarium has pretty good planetary images, which are fairly realistic - probably just as good as other expensive astronomical software versions I have used. On the quality iMac screen the images look crisp and clean on a translucent black background.
As for nebulosity, even these look realistic, though I wish there were more southern information. For example, the LMC and SMC can't be searched for nor is the Eta Carinae nebula is portrayed. The northern objects, however, look as they do in the telescope.
I have not seen the PC version of Stellarium, so I can't comment of the realism of the images presented - though they should be as good.

Regards,
Andrew