How To Get Lost In Space, Without Leaving Home
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday July 27, 1994
CALL me a corkscrew short of a wine tasting if you wish, but given that my bum is closer to the ground than most, anything that can get my head above the clouds is heaven sent, astral even.
Drugs, drink, dates, even overdoses of bad metaphors compare miserably to the joy I can get from seeing things that are not on Earth, or anywhere near it. Somewhere out in space, I'm convinced, is the key to my knowing tonight's Lotto numbers.
Several years ago I came the closest I am ever going to come to a near-space experience - an eight-hour flight on NASA's flying observatory, a giant four-engined Starlifter aeroplane fitted with optical and other light-sensing telescopes. Its mission is to fly around the world, well above the clouds, to give scientists and astronomers, and hyperventilating journalists, the chance to see space freed from much of the atmospheric interference that mars earth-bound observations.
The flight took us down the better part of the east coast of Australia and well out into the Pacific Ocean. I saw the rings of Saturn unsullied by the tricks of light passing through our dense atmosphere. That was enthralling. Even though Uranus was nowhere to be seen, the moon was spectacular and Sydney at 39,000 feet was eerily like the Death Planet in Star Wars.
I did not have to be stoned to know how high I was.
And just recently I have been staring through the remarkably imperfect lens of a small discount-catalogue telescope - so the quality speaks for itself -at things like the moon's craters and the flashing colours of Venus, our nearest planetary neighbour (not counting rogue asteroids of obliterating size or invading alien spaceships carrying Lotto numbers). The point is, out there you don't have to worry about what's going on down here, which is mostly rotten.
I don't really care about (because I don't understand) the mathematics or science of astronomy. And with my limited attention span and dearth of extraterrestrial vocabulary, it's probably no surprise then to those gifted with 20/20 vision and an IQ at the smart end of the bell curve that I enjoyed Expert Software's Astronomer for the very reason that I could understand it. Astronomer is simple. And it has pictures.
Expert Software is what is quaintly known as a budget brand. In other words, cheap. But Astronomer is anything but a reflection of that reputation.
It's a Windows-based program and comes in two parts, both easily accessible from the other, Expert Astronomer Multimedia and Expert Astronomer. The first is an encyclopedia of space, the second a far more rigorously scientific and precise sky map.
In the multimedia section the main screen offers you a huge range of choices, from investigating the solar system, to deep-space astronomy, ground observations and space exploration.
I had a look at Jupiter to see what damage the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet could do, and came to the conclusion that Jupiter's a big place and could probably handle it. I had a quick look at Uranus, nothing flashy there, but felt exhilarated at a 3-D simulated flight over Uranus's Miranda. Will she ever forgive me? Using radar images taken by Voyager 2, the simulation is exciting, far better than boring text-book descriptions of dead moons.
This is just part of a huge variety of still photographs and video images that fill the program. I would have liked a little more clarity in some of the images, but looking at the price of the CD-ROM, I see I have no room for complaint.
TO HALF-BAKED sky observers like myself, the multimedia part of Astronomer is rewarding and engrossing. Something doesn't have to be complicated to be good or academically anally retentive to be worthwhile or enlightening.
The section on space exploration, and especially the Apollo missions culminating in the first person to walk on the moon, was where I spent most time. The selection of video clips and photos do a beautiful job of recreating that era. If you want to hear and see Neil Armstrong, his heart rate rocketing from 75 to 160 beats a minute, taking the first step on the moon and uttering those unforgettably orchestrated words, this is the program for you.
The quality of the images is generally good, if not pin sharp (remembering that the test PC has Media Vision's 1024 graphics accelerator card in it), and the information is just sufficient to whet the appetite for more.
The pointy end of the program, Expert Astronomer, is for those who want to mix science with staring. It produces sky maps from wherever to whenever, time-lapse controls so that you can see star and planet movements, and enough mathematics to make me acutely aware I'd be in terrible arithmetic trouble if ever I lost a finger or toe.
But now that I can produce stunning star maps showing things I don't understand of places I would like to visit, my only reaction is: for God's sake Scotty, beam me up. Please.
© 1994 Sydney Morning Herald
