RedShift 5

Rating:
Summary: Great Program.... Shop around, though.
Review: I think this is a really great program for the astronomy enthusiast. I own Starry Night Backyard and I think that RedShift 5 is vastly superior. However, I would go to http://www.viva-media.com and order it. It's $40.00 cheaper than Amazon's price!

Rating:
Summary: very good product overall
Review: I've only had it running for a couple of days, so I can't review features in detail. Instead, I will focus on installation and customer support. I had no trouble activating RS5. Installation was trouble-free as well, although I never saw any indication that the AIM engine was installed, but in communication with customer support I've decided that it *was* installed. Maybe the printed manual which shows a message box about AIM installation is out-of-date.

I did experience a few glitches. On my Toshiba laptop with NVIDIA geforce2 go chip, OpenGL causes RS5 to hang, so I had to reinstall RS5. Also, after I "customized" the navigation panel, the panel shrunk to an unusable size the next time I opened the workspace I was in, so I had to create a new workspace. Incidentally, I sent email to customer support about my problem with the navigation panel, and received a reply in a couple of hours. The gist of the reply was that it was a problem with my hardware, not the software. I disagreed with that, but in another email the same support person indicated that customizing navigation caused the resizing problem, and the problem hasn't recurred since I gave up on customizing. One other feature that doesn't work well is displaying comets graphically, which caused comet NEAT 2001 Q4 to fill up the entire sky, but displaying it as an icon works fine.

Rating:
Summary: Annoying and frustrating startup.
Review: If you expect to plug the CD in and be up and running some time soon you will become as angry as I was. The installation also involves the loading of a new version of Quick Time and a thing called AIMCtrls along with its setup routine. This is all okay except for the fact that the AIM program was not on the CD. An email to Viva Media sent on a Saturday was answered on Monday instructing me to go to a Red Shift website and download the new version of the AIM thing. What to do with AIM after downloading it was not clearly indicated, but after fooling around with it a while I got Red Shift running-- well, sort of running.

The 'Activation' process (the final step) was carried out in a simple and clear step-by-step manner until the final hurdle was reached, which stated that you must be online to do it-- sorta like giving a tourist directions to a desired destination by telling him to turn left seven miles this side of the dam. Really not a significant problem, but just another little annoyance.

After calming down enough to start running Redshift-5 through its paces, I was pleased to find it to be every bit as good as advertised. It's too bad that Viva Media chooses to make such a bad first impression by inflicting a frustrating start up routine on its customers.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Alternative to the More Costly Starry Night Pro
Review: Redshift 5 is a planetarium program with everything most will need, for less money than Starry Night Pro 4.5! Compare the two products, they are VERY similar, but Redshift is at least $50 cheaper. Sure, there are a few features in Starry Night that are not in Redshift (e.g., you can't control your Meade or Celestron telescope with it, and it doesn't have a database for your equipment to give you real-life FOVs, or a light pollution simulator). But these are the "bells and whistle" or Starry Night. If you want an equally powerful product for half the price, you should seriously onsider Redshift 5.

Two problems I encountered however: First you need to Activate the product before you can update the database, and I had a problem with my version accepting my serial number. Second, at times it loses Daylight Savings Time in the future (e.g., May 1, 2004 sunset time may be shown as 7:30 PM, but May 1, 2009 sunset time is shown at 6:30 PM). That really only affects you though in circumstances where you are looking to the future to see if a certain event will be visible in your sky. I noticed it when exploring the 2012 Venus transit--2004 occurs before dawn here :(

Other than those two minor problems, Redshift 5 is a great product capable of rivaling any planetarium program currently on the market.

Rating:
Summary: redshift 5
Review: redshift is seriously the top of the line for anyone who wants a space program.. i've tried out several others and none can compare! redshift has multitudes of features and a plethora of information that is near impossible to exhuast! before this i only owned redshift 3 and i doubt that i have even looked up everything on that cd by this point, some 4 years later!

redshift is the maximum.

Rating:
Summary: redshift 5
Review: redshift is seriously the top of the line for anyone who wants a space program.. i've tried out several others and none can compare! redshift has multitudes of features and a plethora of information that is near impossible to exhuast! before this i only owned redshift 3 and i doubt that i have even looked up everything on that cd by this point, some 4 years later!

redshift is the maximum.

Rating:
Summary: Your own superb planetarium ¿ Redshift 5
Review: Your own planetarium - Redshift 5

These days, it is difficult to keep up with other keen amateur astronomers without resorting to the Web, some discussion groups and planetarium software. One of the most successful and versatile software programmes available is Redshift and at a price of less than £30 it is amazing value.

Redshift was first launched 11 years ago and has been developed over the years into the current Version 5 which is a very versatile and stylish and well organised on screen: the overall impression it conveys bears comparison with Encarta, for example.

It is, above all, focused on being a planetarium programme to enable users to study aspects of visual astronomy and it is invaluable for learning about the heavens and for planning and carrying out observing sessions. There are orrery views and guided tours and tutorials and other aids for beginners.

The scope of Redshift is mind-boggling - it covers 20 million stars, 100 moons, 50,000 minor planets, 1500 comets, ... and provides access to the Hipparchus, Hubble and Tycho2 catalogues, amongst others. It can also be updated online, although it remains to be seen how much after-sales support can be provided by the software house, given the low price of the product.

It runs extremely well on my Pentium III, 600MHz PC and Windows 98 and I have only encountered one or two random glitches but these have been minor irritations and have not repeated themselves anyway. It is also a bit irritating to have to run the programme with the CD in the drive. One other drawback is a rather specialised one; users of robotic telescopes will find they cannot link them to Redshift. On the other hand packages, such as "The Sky" cost much more.

The great thing about planetarium programmes, such as Redshift, is that you can set them up so that you view the sky, or objects from wherever in space you want to site your mind's eye. Thus you can look at Saturn's rings from Saturn or the Solar sustem from Vega or Andromeda, .... More typically you set up the software for the location of your back garden, including altitude, and pan around the sky in a virtually limitless choice of space and time; zooming into great detail where required.

From my point of view, now Version 5 of Redshift is available it is an excellent programme. I like the way in which it has been enhanced to make observing sessions much more productive. The sky diary warns you of upcoming events such as meteor showers, eclipses, etc and you can access charts which pinpoint the best possible times to observe and, say, on what day and at what time is Saturn going to be at its highest elevation this year.

To help you find objects in the real sky, you can print out sky charts to virtually any degree of zoom and scale. If you have a laptop, (I got a Dell Latitude 500MHz PIII for £350 recently), you can use it to great effect alongside your scope. To make things easier, Redshift have now provided a "night observing mode" which dulls the screen to preserve night vision and you can flip the screen to whatever angle that matches your telescope setup.

Overall, I regard this as probably the best all-round "buy" - in short a "must-have" astronomy package - and one which provides wonderful scope for armchair and field observing and fascinating opportunities for leisure and education.

Mike Whitecross