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 This screen dump shows the eclipse of the sun on 11 August 1999 as would have been seen from Leeds UK. The "zoom window" on the eclipse is brought up by simply dragging the mouse pointer over the area of interest in one of the star maps.
Unfortunately for those of us who live in Leeds the eclipse was not total, but telling Copernicus to draw the map from a suitable south of England location results in a total eclipse being shown.
The software is accurate enough to tell whether an eclipse is annular, partial, total or a near miss when viewed from any point on the globe.
The same zoom window can also be used to study occulations of stars by the moon or transits of the sun by mercury or venus. If you look closely you will see that the name of the star that the mouse pointer is pointing to is displayed in the zoom window's title bar.
The "Guidebook", bottom left of the screen dump, has been greatly improved behaves rather like a mini web browser. It explains all aspects of the software, contains a tutorial section, and includes more explanations of the astronomical terms used in Copernicus.
You will also be able to see the "button bar" which saves having to plough through menus to find the facility you want. Help is continuously available in the button bar's title bar.
Copernicus contains several thousands of stars and a large range of star maps including views of your local horizon and the ability to draw any part of the sky given the appropriate coordinates by the user.
The magazine "Archimedes World" gave Copernicus full marks in every category:
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PERFORMANCE
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FEATURES
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VALUE
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OVERALL
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That was when the program cost £30.00
Since then many new features have been added and now it is FREE.
DOWNLOAD
IMPORTANT:
Copernicus will not run on an ordinary PC - it needs either an Acorn RISC OS computer or a PC running a RISC OS emulator.
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