Akkana's Java Star Chart

You can show other areas of the sky by editing the coordinates or scale, then hitting return. Click on an object to display more information about that object. The database contains stars down to about magnitude 7 (but it takes quite a while to download all those stars over the net).

Source tarball. It's all written by me, and you're welcome to look at it, but not to remove the copyright notices or to use it commercially without permission. The algorithms come primarily from Peter Duffett-Smith, Practical Astronomy with your Calculator, available from Willman-Bell. The current star database used is the Yale Bright Star Catalog; I've also used the Skymap database, both courtesy of the Astronomical Data Center, parsed via a CGI script of my own. Currently I'm showing only stars down to 8th magnitude, for space reasons.
Coming soon:

• Constellations lines and names (I'd add this sooner if I could find an online database -- if you know of one, I'd love to hear about it)
  Update: Swimming Elk Software, creators of Coeli - Electric Planisphere has been nice enough to offer a database of constellation lines, which will be added as soon as I can make time.
• Easier printing -- since Netscape won't print a Java applet, for now you'll have to use your OS's ability to print a window. Under Unix/X, I use xwd/xwpr; under Windows 95, you can save the window to the clipboard via the print screen key, then paste it into a drawing app and print it from there. I wish I knew of an easier way! I'm working on a solution.
• Comet Brewington -- has an eccentricity of 1.0, and I'm not sure how to deal with that mathematically.
• Requests?

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