Review of RedShifttm 5

Software Review written for Eastbourne Astronomical Society
and published in their monthly newsletter Orbit, January 2004.
By Brian Walker


Introduction

I have used RedShift 2 in the past, and have been using RedShift 4 for about 18 months successfully on a 550 MHz PC running Windows 98. One problem I had was that the PC was a little slow to pan the sky maps on screen. I recently upgraded to a 2.4 GHz PC running Windows XP, then wondered if RedShift 4 would run on this system. Fortunately, it did and the problem disappeared. Then came the opportunity to review the next incarnation of the software, RedShift 5. The manufacturers' literature promised many improvements including a larger object database, revised maps of planets from the latest space missions, Night Vision option when using a PC near your telescope, Flip View to orientate the image correctly as seen through your telescope, an improved display mode, and updates obtained via the internet. The manufacturers price is £29.99 but I have seen it cheaper, £19.99 from Amazon plus postage. Having read through all the promotional literature, I was eager to try the program out. It is a single CD in a DVD style case with no users guidebook (the manufacturers Maris Technologies, and the distributors Focus Multimedia, never have supplied a guidebook to my knowledge). The user is left to fumble through the installation of the program (see later).


Minimum System Requirements

Operating system, Windows 98 / Me / 2000 / XP. CPU, Pentium 2 300 MHz. Graphics, 800 x 600 x 16 bit colour (OpenGL compatible recommended). Hard disk space, 105 Mb. RAM, 64 Mb. CD-ROM, 12x or faster. Audio, any 100% Windows compatible sound card. Printer, optional. Internet, required for product activation, upgrades, updates, plug-ins and downloads.


Installation.

There are three choices of installation offered;
Compact (104 Mb) - core program loaded, CD ROM required for databases
Full (690 Mb) - entire product installed on hard disk
Recommended (263 Mb) - most common elements loaded, CD required for dictionary, photo-gallery etc.

I chose a full installation, this took several minutes to complete. At the end I was told to install QuickTime 6.3 movie player, which is required to run RedShift 5 properly. This will not be needed if you have a higher version of QuickTime already. This enables the display of video, graphics, music, sound, sprites, text, animations etc. I chose the recommended option (7.2 Mb) and skipped the registration option. Installation was only a few seconds, then a settings wizard checks your PC for file associations and system settings. The ReadMe file states the minimum RAM requirement is 128 Mb, twice that RedShift 5 requires!

On starting the program for the first time a warning window tells you that the product is not yet activated, clicking on OK does nothing, the CD had to be re-inserted to start the program. A trumpeting fanfare announces the start, and then an introductory video takes you through the capabilities of RedShift 5. Pressing the Esc key or clicking on the X for close can skip this. The Activation Screen starts, giving you the option of completing now or later; this is required to enable all the functions. Enter the serial number from inside the CD case, click register and the program connects to the internet. Once connected, the process only takes a couple of seconds. You are asked to provide your home location and unless you know your exact latitude and longitude, you can pick from a general list of cities. To get me started, I chose London.


First Impressions.

The introduction is in American and is similar to RedShift 4, you are taken through a slide show which is quite informative but a little too quick to grasp "How can I do that again?" kept coming to mind. The introduction can be disabled from automatically starting by choosing Help, and un-tick the Introduction at Start-up, this is not explained how to do anywhere. The workspace screen (that is your view of the sky) is pictured in a more realistic way than in previous versions, not so stark and easier on the eye. Nebulae are represented as gaseous objects and open star clusters as a collection of small dots. This is an improvement over RedShift 4 where they were shown as circles filled with colour. The Pointer, Skydrag, Zoom and Measuring Tools are on the top menu bar now which I prefer, instead of floating. The new night vision button dims the brightness of the display by about 50%, useful if you have the program on a portable PC by the telescope. Another new useful feature is the flip vertical and horizontal view to mimic the actual telescopic view. One major difference to RedShift 4, when in pointer mode any object that the arrow hovers over is identified in bright green text, no clicking of the mouse is required. This can seem a little odd when moving the mouse pointer across the screen, seeing all this green text popping up and disappearing, but you get used to it.


Using RedShift 5.

On starting the program, I have not been able to disable the fanfare introduction which has become irritating after a few times. Another annoyance is that if your viewing location has buildings or other objects that restricts it, you cannot introduce an object on the screen to mimic that. In another program, Starry Night Backyard, you can do this. Having said that these are minor against the overall package.

If you want to refine your home location this can be done through Tools and Preferences. Accessing the various selective controls is via Panels on the menu bar to enable or disable time, location, view and filters. The earliest date that can be set is 4713 BC and the latest is 9999 AD. Events can be set to run in real time or advance (or retard) by the second, minute, hour, day, month or even year. Any location can be set to view from, even other planets and their moons in the solar system. The filters can be set to show only the objects you want to see, if all were enabled, the display becomes quite cluttered. They can show the Sun, Planets, Moons, Asteroids, Comets, Spacecraft, Stars, Clusters, Nebulae, Galaxies and Quasars (which is new). Also, you can choose the limiting magnitude of the objects to mimic the conditions at your viewing site.

When in pointer mode, if you want to learn more about an object, then click on it and more information is presented in a small window. This all makes planning a viewing session an easy task, or if you just want to be an armchair astronomer it can be very informative. I planned a viewing for the 15th December 2003. Planetary objects available at the time were Venus, Neptune, Uranus, Mars and Saturn, but due to my viewing location I could only potentially see Uranus, Mars and Saturn. The others were either too close to the horizon or would be lost in the light pollution of Eastbourne. Printing out a sky chart is easy which has an information header and the objects appear as black on white paper, easily read with a red light at the telescope.

Further information available for any object is visual magnitude, right ascension, declination, azimuth, altitude, distance in A.U. (Astronomical Units) and dimension in arcseconds. Expanding the window gives more data about that object including a zoomable diagram of the current position in the Solar System (a new feature). A button marked Visibility opens a window showing a line graph of angle / time, or clicking on the Table tab gives a tabular breakdown of positional data and Moon phase, all these are printable.



A really great new feature is the Rise/Set button in the further information. This shows a 24-hour period on the X-axis from midnight to midnight with altitude on the Y-axis. The changes from night to dawn, to day, to dusk and night again are indicated in different shades of blue, and the object is shown as a red line rising and falling throughout this timeframe. This gives an instant visual representation of the best time to view.


Back in the Sky Workspace, when zooming in on an object the limiting magnitude is increased, just as you would experience when magnifying through a telescope. You can even select a viewing area represented by a circle the size of which can be chosen to match your viewing magnification. It's very easy to get sidetracked due to the volume of information that is available.

The program is capable of downloading updates from the internet for asteroids, comets, spacecraft, stars, clusters, nebulae, galaxies and quasars. These files range from 1 Kb up to 40 Mb(!) in size but the process was not immediately obvious on how to go about this. Under the Tools menu, selecting Download Updates takes you to the Maris website for the RedShift programs. You have to select version 5 and then what you want to download. The data is opened in a new browser window, which is no use to the likes of me; I expected an automatic download straight into the program. Instead, clicking on the menu item Objects, reveals Add / Edit Object. Then choose which type of object you want (asteroids, comets, spacecraft etc) from the pick list. I selected Spacecraft, and then I clicked on Import at the bottom and chose via 'Internet'. A word of warning though, some of the sites these take you to require the user to have a lot of knowledge about positional data, and can seem (as they were to me) quite scary. Once you have selected the information you require from the website, the information is downloaded automatically. A URL (internet address) is all that is required, and I quite successfully copied them from the Maris site and downloaded the data, that appeared in the open windows previously described. If you are up to it, you can also add objects yourself manually.

After the download, I selected the International Space Station (ISS). RedShift 5 was able to follow its path in real time by staying on the object. Incidentally, the orbital information for Spacecraft is only useful for about 10 days due to atmospheric drag/orbital decay and corrections, so this has to be updated frequently. At the time I tried this, the ISS was below the horizon in the constellation of Leo, just about to pass in front of Jupiter.



Included with RedShift 5 are 11 short movies, which in my opinion are not as good as the 10 that came with RedShift 4. They were more informative and much longer. Unfortunately, the RedShift 4 movies are not recognised by RedShift 5 and so cannot be transferred.

The Sky Diary will tell you what events are due during the coming month or year; the time frame can be entered in the search window. You can look up Events, Planet/Moon Positions, Eclipses and Conjunctions. Any of these can be printed off. I looked for Events in June 2004 and picked the transit of Venus on the 8th, clicked on Apply, and there it was on the screen. Magnifying the image gave me a full disk of the Sun with Venus in about the middle of its passage. Adjusting the time gave me the beginning of the transit which is approximately 05.20 UT, and the finish at about 11.20 UT, where Venus passes across the southern half of the Sun.


Summary.

It is not possible to go into every aspect of the program and it would be right not to, because it would make for very difficult reading. Those of you who have had experience of planetarium programs may appreciate more the depth of the explanations. I hope though, that those new to them will not be put off, because this is a product which is exciting to use and very informative. Yes, it has some failings like the movies could be better and longer, there could be some even basic written literature for setting up and it should be able to provide objects to restrict the field of view to mimic your viewing site. One other thing, if you want a program to interface with your whiz-bang up-to-date telescope to control it's position, RedShift 5 is not for you. There is no facility for this. What it does do, it does very well, and I particularly like the Download Updates facility and the Rise/Set function. Now the crunch question, would I buy it? I would have to say Yes, but not at £29.99. If you want it I recommend that you shop around to get it cheaper as I mentioned at the beginning. For someone new to this type of program it could seem quite daunting the first time you see it, but once you start to play with it you can begin to appreciate it's potential.

In a score out of 10, I would give it 8.

Distributor's website; Focus Multimedia


The Author would like to thank Maris Technologies, Focus Multimedia, and Eastbourne Astronomical Society for the opportunity to write this article.
All screen-shots courtesy of Maris Technologies. Redshift is a trademark of Maris Technologies.

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