Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

win2000 · Joined: 26 Jan 2008 Posts: 6

Cloudy Skies Live
astronomy CD uses the entire Puppy 3.01 Linux as it's core and consists of over 2 dozen programs. In addition to these, there are also 4 JAVA applications and several smaller JAVA applets in 6 categories. Almost all of the astronomy software can be run just by a single click on its associated desktop icon. Documentation for each program is just two mouse clicks away from the desktop, accessed by clicking on the "START HERE" icon.

Compiz-Fusion wizard by Tombh was added to provide 3d accelerated graphics for the following video cards: nVidia (from GeForce2 onwards), ATI (from Radeon 7000 onwards), Intel (from i810 onwards) and Possibly newer SIS cards (but untested so far). The following programs require the use of these drivers for best performance: Celestia, coords, OpenUniverse, Planets3d, Skydome and Stellarium. A 3d graphics card is NOT a requirement to run these 6 programs but the frame rates might be very low. Wine has been installed to run three of the included Windows applications (Iris, Registax and Jupiter2). If you live in the USA, you may find the spreadsheet file "Zipcode 2 longitude" helpful since it includes over 33,000 zipcodes and gives the latitude and longitude for each, in both decimal degrees and degree, minutes and seconds.

There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of stars included in the installed star catalogs for the seven planetarium programs. Integrated into the "Sky Charts" planetarium program are over 9,800 images (pictures) of the deep sky. All of this and much much more is included on Cloudy Skies Live and NO internet connection is required to use this software.

Humble system requirements:
Minimum usable would be about a PII 333Mhz with 256 MB ram and NO hard drive. For better results a 650 MHz (or higher) processer and a 3d graphics card is suggested.
If you have 900 MB of ram or more, the CD will load entirely into ram, freeing the CD drive for other uses and allowing programs to start much faster.

A special note to astronomy club members:
Cloudy Skies Live is very easy to customize for your clubs planetarium or meeting location. You can easily change the geographic locations in the program/s you wish (You could even change the background or add your clubs newsletter if you desired.)and then save those changes back to the CD! You could then make copies of it for all your astronomy club members.

Download location:
Thanks to forum member Caneri, Cloudy Skies Live can be downloaded from
http://www.puppylinux.ca/members/CSL/index.html
(446 MB download)
The MD5 can also be obtained here.

Download mirror:
Thanks to forum member Dingo
http://puppylover.netsons.org/dokupuppy/pupplets:cloudyskieslive
(446 MB download)

Edited for URL download change.

raffy · Joined: 25 May 2005 Posts: 4636 Location: Manila

You mean that this can be used as simulated observatory? (Pardon the noobie question.) Smile

For what minimum school level should this be useful?

This is great - thanks!

Lobster · Posted: Mon 26 May 2008, 12:01 Post subject:

This is wonderful.
Now where is that telescope . . .
Last year I was looking at some of the events . . . planets (some could be seen with the naked eye) eg Venus - the Morning Star

What a great asset. Another specialist science based Puppy. How long have you been working on it? Smile

Dingo · Posted: Mon 26 May 2008, 16:08 Post subject:

added download mirror on Dokupuppy:
http://puppylover.netsons.org/dokupuppy/pupplets:cloudyskieslive

erikson · Joined: 27 Feb 2008 Posts: 735 Location: Ghent, Belgium

Great job, win2000. (huh, what a funny handle !? Wink

I have posted a link to this thread to the VVS mailing list (VVS is the Flemish Amateur Astronomy Association).

I hope Eric Caneri and mirrors have bandwidth... Wink

win2000 · Joined: 26 Jan 2008 Posts: 6

raffy:

Dingo · Posted: Mon 26 May 2008, 16:49 Post subject:

Fossil · Posted: Mon 26 May 2008, 17:08 Post subject:

win2000,
Well timed. The astronomy release coincides very nicely with Phoenix landing on Mars as yet unexplored far northern region. Is there ice and, if so, life?
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7411113.stm
Spaceweather: http://www.spaceweather.com/

Lobster · Posted: Tue 27 May 2008, 00:50 Post subject:

Have added a news item (remember you can too)
http://www.puppylinux.org/home/latest-news

also started a page here
(hope that URL works)
http://www.puppylinux.org/%5Bcategoryfirstpath%5D-1

zigbert · Joined: 29 Mar 2006 Posts: 5245 Location: Valåmoen, Norway

I think many other puplets can learn from win2000. If you give your puplet a special target, it would attract users. I don't mind have astronomny apps on my main Puppy, but to boot up an astronomy environment now and then. Yeah.....I really like that. Smile

Sigmund

muggins · Joined: 20 Jan 2006 Posts: 6660 Location: lisbon

Puppy's going scientific! With Asprakash's BioPuppy, and now with win2000's CloudySkies. I remember someone was talking about either producing a mathematics version, or maybe an .sfs, about 1.5 years ago.

Caneri · Joined: 04 Sep 2007 Posts: 1565 Location: Canada

Hi Muggins,

cb88 made a Math-Pup awhile ago...I don't know if he has done anymore work but it was based on 2.15.

Look here http://www.puppylinux.ca/members/

@win2000 congrats on the new release.

Best,
Eric

win2000 · Joined: 26 Jan 2008 Posts: 6

Thank you Lobster for the news item. I created a 'puplet' there also...
http://www.puppylinux.org/downloads/puplets/cloudy-skies-live

Both of your links work fine. Very clever and cute graphic of the moon/stars/space-puppy. Did you draw it Lobster?

Thank you Dingo for your post on DokuPuppy.

And erikson thank you for the info going to VVS (Flemish Amateur Astronomy Association) An astronomy organization - fantastic!

Dingo · Posted: Tue 27 May 2008, 11:44 Post subject:

Uikiat · Joined: 30 Dec 2005 Posts: 5 Location: Formosa

What an excellent application of Puppy. This has made me remember about that telescope I have up in the attic! Can't wait to boot it up and check out the dog star. Smile