“Alcyone Ephemeris” is a complex, fast and accurate astronomical ephemeris calculator covering the period 3000 BC to AD 3000. I like the fact that it has many useful functions and features that help the user find the information that he or she needs. Among all these, the features that deal with visuals are of great importance, at least as far as I am concerned. Thus, I like the star charts as well as the 3D-visualization of heliocentric and planetocentric orbits. The graphs and the charts are full of specific data and values and the user has the possibility to search among these (using the “Find” function). Calculating is also possible thanks to the date/time calculator regarding the equinoxes and solstices, the start of the Besselian years, the lunar phases (new moon, first quarter, full moon, last quarter), the planetary configurations (oppositions, stations, conjunctions, and greatest elongations), the passages of perihelion (perigee), aphelion (apogee), and the nodes, and many other. Of course, there are many other features that are worth mentioning, like “XY diagram”, “parametric diagram”, “angular separation”, “difference mode” and “additional information”. “Alcyone Ephemeris” also has printing and report generation functions. It can export data to HTML, Excel, Text, XML, or CSV files, and it can even be expanded greatly by writing scripts in BASIC or Pascal. There are 4 versions available for “Alcyone Ephemeris”. Each of them comes up with new and improved features, but all versions are of good quality and I can only recommend them all.
