SourceForge.net LogoUranograph - make your atlas of the sky!>>>project overview

Short summary of the project

Uranograph is a set of classes and methods written in Java for generating printable and viewable star charts based on different data sources. Currently the Lambert azimuthal equal-area projection is implemented. Output in SVG and PDF (with iText library).

The Name of the Game: Uranograph

The Uranograph is an ancient chart of the heavens. Similar to a geographer who draws maps of the Earth, an uranographer draws maps of the skies...

Motivation

Although there already are many software tools for astronomers, I did not find yet a configurable software tool that is dedicated to producing printable (static) charts and star maps.

So why on earth did I start this project? Basically for fun!

Preliminary results

Although I did not yet migrate all preliminary code, you will find below a set of early examples that illustrate the capabilities of Uranograph.

To Do List

The following things still have to be done (although some work has already been done):

  1. Move all pre-Uranograph code to SF.net (ongoing).
  2. Move specific content-related code to dedicated packages (e.g., star and DSO databases, constellation outline data, labels...).
  3. Better ‘separation of concerns’ for the different output types (PDF, SVG, maybe again PS). The code with which I generated the example charts has all output types mixed, which is messy.
  4. Position the labels.
  5. Add a legend.
  6. Provide ‘hooks’ for overriding default output symbols for the different objects plotted.
  7. Document the usage.
  8. ...

This document: $Id: index.html 21 2006-06-19 22:20:17Z obiot $