Astronomy Programs for your Pilot / PalmPilot / Palm III

This web page is a list of software mentioned in the January 1999 issue of Sky and Telescope magazine in the Astronomical Computing section. Most of these programs can be obtained from clicking on their title, or by visiting Pilot Gear. You can also pay for alot of the products shown here on Pilot Gear. Programs are listed Alphabetically in no special order. Program names with out links can be found on Pilot Gear, they do not seem to have their own web pages that I can find.

Infomation on the Palm III and Pilots can be found at their product home page at www.palm.com.

The Pilot mailing list can be found at sundog.ultraviolet.com.

The best prices on the Palm III and other PalmPilot's can be found at PDAPage.com.

Program Description Screen Shot

AstroNavigation A small program for the Pilot with features for the sun, the moon, 58 stars, venus, mars, jupiter and saturn. With course, destination and noon. Up to 20 sights. Runable with Palm OS 1.6. N/A

AstroPilot AstroPilot is a commercial package that contains a large electronic reference book containing detailed information about the 1,000 brightest stars, 12 pre-made star charts and 175 web links to astronomy related web pages. Usful in the Northern Hemisphere only and requries a PalmPilot Profressional or better. Requires AportisDoc or TealDoc as well as ImageViewer to see the star charts.

CASL Compact Application Solution Language Some of the programs listed here are written using CASL, this is a program interperater for the Pilot. You can download the lastest runtime program from here. (In the download section

JD-Calf for Russ Webb's RPN Julian Date Calculator (JD-Calc) is an add-on function set for the RPN 2.32 calculator by Russ Webb. JD-Calc adds the following functionality: Julian Date (JD) calculations from any date (+/-mm.ddyyyy); Modified Julian Date (mJD) calculation from any date (+/-mm.ddyyyy); Calculates the date +/- from any positive Julian Date; Difference-in-days (dd) between any two dates; Difference-in-week-days (dwd) between any two dates; Calculates a new date when any number of days (+/-) are added to a given date; Easter Sunday calculation for any given date; Day-of-the-week (d#) for a given date; Week-of-the-year (w#) for a given date; Day-of-the-year (y#) for a given date; Determines if a give date is in a leap year; and Provides the number of days (or week days) until the year 2000! Calculations are valid for both the Julian and Gregorian calendar (Gregorian calendar began on 15 Oct 1582). On line help is available through the RPN 2.32 "help" function. N/A

Just The Facts - The Planets JUST THE FACTS - Our Solar System/THE PLANETS - Lot of basic facts about the planets of our solar system.

J-Moons! J-Moons! displays the current configuration of the Jovian satellites around Jupiter.

Location Manager This is a utility program that handles setting your location into your pilot, it is used by a number of astronomy programs available for the pilot (including Star Pilot, Sol II!, Moon Info! ZMan III, etc.) N/A

MathLib This is the library that you need to run alot of these programs, it gives the Pilot basic trig functions and other normal math functions (sin, cos, tan, log, exp, etc). N/A

Moon Moon Phase Calender, displays a full month of moon phases, also gives julian day, day of the year, and days left in the year. N/A

Messier! Messier database program with location, magnitude, and type for each Messier object, also allows you to create logs of observations for each Messier object.

Moon! This program has been replaced by Moon Info! N/A

Moon Info! Moon! calculates Moon rise, set, and transit times for anyplace on Earth. It also displays the Moon's distance and parallax angle. Requires PalmOS v2.0 or higher.

MoonFN functions for Russ Webb's RPN Moon Functions for Russ Webb's RPN, version 1.1 This function set extension allows you to calculate the Age in Days, Percent Illumination and Phase of the Moon for any date and time. N/A

Moon Phase This application will graphically display the phase of the Moon for any day. This version is corrected to work with any version of the PalmPilot, to my knowledge. The older pilots won't have the full functionality, however.

MoonTool The Pilot MoonTool is an application program for the Pilot PDA to calculate and display the current phase of the moon and some other fun astronomical facts.

Navigate Navigation calculations including Great-Circles, Mid-Lat sailing's, Time and degree conversion, General sight reductions, Complete sun sight reductions without an almanac N/A

Planetarium Planetarium is a nice planetarium program showing the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars anywhere on Earth for any date from 1904 till 2031.

Pilot Navigator Navigation Calculator that includes a sun sight reduction program that does not require an almanac. Also included are Time to Arc conversions, Great Circle and Mid-Latitude course and distance calculations and dead reckoning to calculate final position from a given course and distance. N/A

PocketSat PocketSat is a program for calculating satellite passes for a given location. It'll predict passes, show you the pass on a horizon display, and tell you where a satellite is when its over your location.

SiderealTime Calculates your sidereal time for now, or any other time from any location on Earth.

Star Pilot
Star Pilot Plus Star Pilot is basically a scaled down version of your desktop astronomy software, it can show you where the stars and planets are for a given time and location on the Earth, set the limiting magnitude, zoom into areas, see constellation lines. Also has searching ability to find constelations and stars.

Sol! II Sol! calculates Sun rise, set, and day length, as well as the start and end of Civil, Nautical, and Astronomical Twilight. Very quick and very usful!
Sun! This Program has been replaced by Sol! II. N/A
Sun Compass Point the Pilot to the Sun and get NORTH,with Sunrise-Sunset. This is a newer Version and will work on Palm-Pilots with OS2 and OS3. Use Sun-Compass V2.4 for Palm Pilots with OS1.
SunFN functions for Russ Webb's RPN Sun rise and Sun set extension functions for Russ Webb's RPN calculator. Computes Sun Rise and Sun Set for all locations. N/A

Sun-Pal Sun-Pal is a CASL-based application for the Palm-Pilot PDA that calculates: position of the sun, hours of sunlight in the day, time of sunrise and sunset, position of the sunrise and position of the high sun. It requires OS 2.0, MathLib, and the CASL runtime. N/A

Tides Tide tables for your PalmPilot. No more checking the paper before you head to the beach. Includes both a Macintosh application and a Windows application for converting tide tables which can be downloaded from the web into PalmPilot databases.

ZMan! CASL application that calculates and displays the Halachic zmanim (times) for any location. Locations are user programmable.

Program	Description	Screen Shot
AstroNavigation	A small program for the Pilot with features for the sun, the moon, 58 stars, venus, mars, jupiter and saturn. With course, destination and noon. Up to 20 sights. Runable with Palm OS 1.6.	N/A
AstroPilot	AstroPilot is a commercial package that contains a large electronic reference book containing detailed information about the 1,000 brightest stars, 12 pre-made star charts and 175 web links to astronomy related web pages. Usful in the Northern Hemisphere only and requries a PalmPilot Profressional or better. Requires AportisDoc or TealDoc as well as ImageViewer to see the star charts.
CASL Compact Application Solution Language	Some of the programs listed here are written using CASL, this is a program interperater for the Pilot. You can download the lastest runtime program from here. (In the download section
JD-Calf for Russ Webb's RPN	Julian Date Calculator (JD-Calc) is an add-on function set for the RPN 2.32 calculator by Russ Webb. JD-Calc adds the following functionality: Julian Date (JD) calculations from any date (+/-mm.ddyyyy); Modified Julian Date (mJD) calculation from any date (+/-mm.ddyyyy); Calculates the date +/- from any positive Julian Date; Difference-in-days (dd) between any two dates; Difference-in-week-days (dwd) between any two dates; Calculates a new date when any number of days (+/-) are added to a given date; Easter Sunday calculation for any given date; Day-of-the-week (d#) for a given date; Week-of-the-year (w#) for a given date; Day-of-the-year (y#) for a given date; Determines if a give date is in a leap year; and Provides the number of days (or week days) until the year 2000! Calculations are valid for both the Julian and Gregorian calendar (Gregorian calendar began on 15 Oct 1582). On line help is available through the RPN 2.32 "help" function.	N/A
Just The Facts - The Planets	JUST THE FACTS - Our Solar System/THE PLANETS - Lot of basic facts about the planets of our solar system.
J-Moons!	J-Moons! displays the current configuration of the Jovian satellites around Jupiter.
Location Manager	This is a utility program that handles setting your location into your pilot, it is used by a number of astronomy programs available for the pilot (including Star Pilot, Sol II!, Moon Info! ZMan III, etc.)	N/A
MathLib	This is the library that you need to run alot of these programs, it gives the Pilot basic trig functions and other normal math functions (sin, cos, tan, log, exp, etc).	N/A
Moon	Moon Phase Calender, displays a full month of moon phases, also gives julian day, day of the year, and days left in the year.	N/A
Messier!	Messier database program with location, magnitude, and type for each Messier object, also allows you to create logs of observations for each Messier object.
Moon!	This program has been replaced by Moon Info!	N/A
Moon Info!	Moon! calculates Moon rise, set, and transit times for anyplace on Earth. It also displays the Moon's distance and parallax angle. Requires PalmOS v2.0 or higher.
MoonFN functions for Russ Webb's RPN	Moon Functions for Russ Webb's RPN, version 1.1 This function set extension allows you to calculate the Age in Days, Percent Illumination and Phase of the Moon for any date and time.	N/A
Moon Phase	This application will graphically display the phase of the Moon for any day. This version is corrected to work with any version of the PalmPilot, to my knowledge. The older pilots won't have the full functionality, however.
MoonTool	The Pilot MoonTool is an application program for the Pilot PDA to calculate and display the current phase of the moon and some other fun astronomical facts.
Navigate	Navigation calculations including Great-Circles, Mid-Lat sailing's, Time and degree conversion, General sight reductions, Complete sun sight reductions without an almanac	N/A
Planetarium	Planetarium is a nice planetarium program showing the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars anywhere on Earth for any date from 1904 till 2031.
Pilot Navigator	Navigation Calculator that includes a sun sight reduction program that does not require an almanac. Also included are Time to Arc conversions, Great Circle and Mid-Latitude course and distance calculations and dead reckoning to calculate final position from a given course and distance.	N/A
PocketSat	PocketSat is a program for calculating satellite passes for a given location. It'll predict passes, show you the pass on a horizon display, and tell you where a satellite is when its over your location.
SiderealTime	Calculates your sidereal time for now, or any other time from any location on Earth.
Star Pilot Star Pilot Plus	Star Pilot is basically a scaled down version of your desktop astronomy software, it can show you where the stars and planets are for a given time and location on the Earth, set the limiting magnitude, zoom into areas, see constellation lines. Also has searching ability to find constelations and stars.
Sol! II	Sol! calculates Sun rise, set, and day length, as well as the start and end of Civil, Nautical, and Astronomical Twilight. Very quick and very usful!
Sun!	This Program has been replaced by Sol! II.	N/A
Sun Compass	Point the Pilot to the Sun and get NORTH,with Sunrise-Sunset. This is a newer Version and will work on Palm-Pilots with OS2 and OS3. Use Sun-Compass V2.4 for Palm Pilots with OS1.
SunFN functions for Russ Webb's RPN	Sun rise and Sun set extension functions for Russ Webb's RPN calculator. Computes Sun Rise and Sun Set for all locations.	N/A
Sun-Pal	Sun-Pal is a CASL-based application for the Palm-Pilot PDA that calculates: position of the sun, hours of sunlight in the day, time of sunrise and sunset, position of the sunrise and position of the high sun. It requires OS 2.0, MathLib, and the CASL runtime.	N/A
Tides	Tide tables for your PalmPilot. No more checking the paper before you head to the beach. Includes both a Macintosh application and a Windows application for converting tide tables which can be downloaded from the web into PalmPilot databases.
ZMan!	CASL application that calculates and displays the Halachic zmanim (times) for any location. Locations are user programmable.

Other interesting pages:
Telescopic Satellite Tracking
LX200 Satellite Viewing
My Satellite Links page
The Transformers
My Personal Page (really out of date!)