WinStars
WinStars is an ASCOM standard-compliant shareware planetarium, ephemeris and solar system simulator developed by Richard Franck for the Android, iOS, Linux, OSX, and Microsoft Windows operating systems. WinStars functionality includes the ability to control computerized GoTo telescope mounts.History
WinStars version 1.0 was developed by Richard Franck in 2001 using the C++ programming language. WinStars version 2.0 was released as commercial software in 2004 but is now available as a free download from Franck's website. The alpha of WinStars version 3.0 debuted in late 2017, followed by the first stable version in May 2018. Franck remains the sole developer and maintainer of the application.Catalogs
WinStars 2 includes a database of 2,500,000 stars and catalogue of 10,000 nebulae, galaxies and star clusters, and can read several astrometric catalogs in their original formats.
The Bright Star Catalog, Digitized Sky Survey, Sky2000, and the Tycho 2 databases are also included. The USNO UCAC catalogs and ESA Gaia data are supported in Winstars 3.
WinStars 2 features integrated support for the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing system for use with the SETI@home project.
