AstroGrav is a full-featured, high precision solar system simulator that calculates the gravitational interactions between all astronomical bodies, so that the motions of asteroids and comets are simulated much more accurately than with planetarium applications. The effects of general relativity and radiation pressure can be taken into account, and superb interactive 3D viewing allows you to easily rotate and zoom your view while the solar system evolves.
The AstroGrav software has a huge range of features and viewing options, including views from space or any object, planetarium-style views from any location on Earth, multiple views animated simultaneously, dynamically calculated orbits and trajectories, comprehensive tabular data, and simulation time steps from a fraction of a second to thousands of years. Constellations and over 100,000 background stars are included, with comprehensive data for every star. Several different celestial coordinate grids and a wide range of physical units are available, and editing facilities allow you to create new objects manually, or import from hundreds of thousands of asteroids and comets.
Because it calculates the motions of bodies from their gravitational interactions, AstroGrav is not restricted to just the solar system. Any situation in which gravity is the only significant force can be simulated, and the illustrative sample files that are included with AstroGrav include many examples such as exoplanet systems, protoplanets that evolve into planetary systems, rubble piles and their interactions with massive bodies, complex star systems, and even projectiles and bouncing balls.
AstroGrav is ideal for astronomers, astrophysicists, researchers, teachers, educationalists, and students, and comes complete with a tutorial and full documentation.
v2.2 [Nov 28, 2013]
View Window Improvements
- The View / Show All / Data command has been added to display the distances, speeds, magnitudes, and phases of the objects when desired.
- The View / Show All / Nodes command has been added to display the ascending nodes and descending nodes of the objects when desired.
- The View / Show All / Apsides command has been added to display the pericenters and apocenters of the objects when desired.
- All three of the new commands in the View / Show All menu have had corresponding tool buttons added to the tool palette. The tool buttons for the little used View / Show All / Objects, View / Show All / Velocities, and View / Show All / Accelerations commands have been removed to make way for the three new tool buttons. These commands are still available in the menu if they are needed.
- The View / Show Selected menu has been modified in exactly the same way, with the addition of three new commands and their corresponding tool buttons.
- The View / Fix and View / View From commands have been added to provide alternative ways of fixing an object and viewing from an object. These two commands are primarily intended to make AstroGrav easier for beginners to use, and are unlikely to be of interest to experienced users.
Object Import Improvements
- It includes a significant improvement to the Edit / Import Objects... command. There is now a small button in the top-right corner of tables that makes it much easier to scroll to a particular part of a very large table. This button has an Row scroller icon icon and is positioned to the right of the column headers, immediately above the vertical scroll bar. When you click on this button, a small dialog is displayed in which you can type what you are looking for in the column that the table is currently sorted on. If you OK this dialog, AstroGrav will immediately scroll to the part of the table containing whatever you typed. While this is mainly intended for use in very large tables, it is also available in any other table that has a vertical scroll bar.
Other Improvements
- A bug has been fixed that caused the buttons in a tool palette to be left aligned instead of evenly spaced.
- The terms peri and ap have been changed to pericenter and apocenter, both in the user interface and the documentation.
- Several of the tool icons have been improved.
- The documentation and tutorial have been updated to cover the recent improvements.
