Nightshade (astronomy software)

Nightshade is a simulation and visualization software for teaching and exploring astronomy, Earth science, and related topics. Its primary purpose is for use in digital planetarium systems with additional features to allow it to also be used on desktop or laptop computers. It operates on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

Nightshade Legacy is the current stable release and is open source. With the codebase completely rewritten in Nightshade NG (Next Generation), licensing has changed from the GPL to the Nightshade Public License.^[1] The new one is a non-free license with field of use restrictions.

History

Beginning in 2003, Digitalis Education Solutions began contributing directly to Stellarium in an effort to bring planetarium specific features into the application. These features were added in an effort to provide low-cost digital projection systems into the market. For many years, Stellarium and Digitalis developers worked hand-in-hand, but changes to the Stellarium code regularly conflicted with the planetarium-specific features.

In 2009, Digitalis Education Solutions officially forked Nightshade from the Stellarium code base ^[2] under the Gnu Public License. This provided the foundation for several more years of planetarium specific development including features like lens distortion profiles and web-based interactions.

Beginning in 2011, Digitalis began work to rewrite Nightshade from the ground up under the GPL. The intent of this rewrite was to shed the limitations of Stellarium and move toward a 3D-first development model utilizing several open source components including OpenSceneGraph and osgEarth. Originally designated Nightshade 12 (for an expected release year of 2012), Nightshade development proceeded much slower than anticipated.^[3]

After more than two years of development, the new Nightshade codebase underwent a major transition. The Stellarium-based code base was rebranded as Nightshade Legacy, while the new application became Nightshade Next Generation. With the parasitic nature of several low-cost planetarium manufacturers threatening the survival of Nightshade's primary developer, Digitalis, Nightshade NG was relicensed under a new public source license, the Nightshade Public License^[4] which restricted use in planetariums to customers of Digitalis.

Development continues in tandem between Nightshade Legacy and Nightshade NG, although the vast majority of all development is dedicated to Nightshade NG.

Features

• Sky features
  • The Hipparcos Catalogue with proper 3D positioning, proper motion and radial velocity
  • Extra catalogues with more than 12 million stars
  • Asterisms and illustrations of the constellations from many cultures
  • Images of nebulae (in-built and user added)
  • Realistic Milky Way
  • Physically-based atmosphere allowing for realistic sunrise and sunset from anywhere on or above the Earth or Mars
  • Planets of the solar system and their major moons
  • Ability to display stars and other celestial objects as seen from any reference point in the Milky Way galaxy
  • Ability to fast-forward or rewind time +/- 1,000,000 years
• Terrain features
  • Ability to add multiple image layers of a planet using Web Map Service or GDAL
  • Ability to display imagery over topography
  • Ultra-high resolution imagery for Earth, Mars, Mercury, Europa, and the Moon
• Interface
  • Zoom
  • Time control
  • Multilingual interface
  • Scripting to record and playback shows
  • Fisheye projection for planetarium domes
  • Graphical interface and extensive keyboard control
  • Text user interface for planetarium domes
  • Web-based graphical console for control from any Firefox or Mobile Safari device
• Visualization
  • Equatorial, azimuthal, J2000, and galactic grids
  • Star twinkling
  • Shooting stars
  • Eclipse simulation for any body
  • Skinnable landscapes
  • Spherical panorama projection
• Customisability
  • Deep sky objects, landscapes, constellation images, scripts etc. can be added.
  • Stratoscript command syntax to allow for easy macro-style programming
  • Ability to record and playback scripts

References

http://www.nightshadesoftware.org/projects/nightshade