Gci-discuss Re: Kstars For Mac

• Gci-discuss Re Kstars For Mac

If you run Windows the question as to which free sky mapping software to install is trivial, install. If you run Linux, the question is equally as trivial, use.

KStars is free, open source, cross-platform Astronomy Software. It provides an accurate graphical simulation of the night sky, from any location on Earth, at any date and time. The display includes up to 100 million stars, 13,000 deep-sky objects,all 8 planets, the Sun and Moon, and thousands of comets, asteroids, supernovae, and satellites.

However, if you run Mac OS X things have traditionally not been so good. I have not found a single good free sky mapping program for OS X. So, instead I have switched my attention to getting either the Linux option or the Windows option working on the Mac. I had hopped that would run Cartes du Ciel but it does not. I tried both V2.7 and the version 3.0 beta but, although both installed, neither worked. 2.7 did run better than 3.0 but failed to render the actual maps so it was still useless! That leaves us with just KStars.

This does work on OS X but installing it is not as straightforward as one would hope. tagsAstronomy, OS X, Mac, KStars/tags WARNING This is not a procedure to start unless you have an afternoon or an evening to spare to baby-sit the process. There is very little you actually have to do but occasionally you'll have to give input. Bear in mind that KStars is part of the package for so you are basically going to be downloading and building the guts of KDE on top of KStars, that's no small task Prerequisites for KStars Before installing KStars you will need to install (on the OS X DVD), (including it's GUI Fink Commander) and developer tools (because we have to build KStars from source).

Installing X11 and XCode is easy, installing Fink is a little more involved but there are excellent instructions on the Fink web page so there's no point in my repeating them here. Configuring Fink KStars is currently considered experimental on OS X so you have to tell Fink that you are happy to install 'unstable' packages. To do this launch the FinkCommander app go to the FinkCommander menu and select Preferences.

In the new Window that pops up go to the Fink tab and select the check-box to use unstable packages. You'll be asked for your password at this stage and then Fink will take a few minutes to update itself and add the unstable packages to it's list of packages. Installing KStars Now, simply enter KStars into the search bar in FinkCommander, and it should find the KStars package. Because KStars is still 'unstable' there is no binary version of it available so you have to install from source.

Right click the KStars package and select Source - Install. Fink will now go off and get all the packages KStars needs and then KStars itself and then automatically build the lot for you. This may take some time and you may be asked for your password a few times during this process, this is normal on OS X for security reasons. You will also be asked a number of questions, you can accept the default answer on them all except the third one. Lynx does not install correctly (at least on PPC macs) so select links (option 3) instead. Once it starts downloading and compiling you can leave it alone.

I generally leave this part running over night because it takes a few hours. Running KStars KStars is now installed but don't expect to see an icon for it or anything like that.

Gci-discuss Re Kstars For Mac

To run it you have to get your hands dirty in a terminal. To do this start X11 and then in the terminal that opens up enter /sw/bin/kstars and KStars will start. This is not nice to have to do so I have written a small AppleScript app to launch KStars from the Dock or the Applications folder like a regular app. You can get this launcher on the on. Just open the DMG and drag and drop the KStars Launcher app into your Applications folder.

Hi Kenny, I did give it a go about a year ago but it gave me a lot of trouble and kept crashing on my MacBookPro so I got rid of it. It’s probably moved on over the last year so I should probably give it another shot.

This install procedure for KStars does work but it’s certainly not for the faint-hearted! I’ll be upgrading to Leopard as soon as it’s out and I’m not sure how much work it will be to get KStars to play nice on it perhaps the time is right to move away from KStars on the Mac.

Thanks for your comment, Bart. Derek Bell on October 10th, 2007 9:10 pm. Hi Derek, Nicely worded comment 😉 I did manage to install Xephem on OS X once. I remember it taking me a lot of time, effort and googling.

When I did get it installed it reminded me of exactly why scientists make such terrible software engineers. I’m sure it’s immensely powerful under the hood but the interface is so poor that I never did get any use out of it. I hear real astronomers rave about what it can do though, so I’m sure it has it’s uses. It just didn’t appeal to me one bit. greenmeanie on November 7th, 2007 4:21 am.

Hi Bart, Yes, I did the same thing on my PPC G4 mac and got the same message. I have let other mac users know CDC is an easy install on Intel Macs.

I installed X11 in Tiger to try CDC in that environment, but can’t quite figure out how to install. Some UNIX knowledge required and I don’t have any! I wrote CDC’s author thanking him for his work getting it over to OSX and asked him for advice to get it working on a G4Mac. Will let you know if he can assist. Do let me know if you get CDC to work on your laptop! Gerald. daniel h on June 28th, 2008 12:25 am.

I get this message when trying to install – wht do i do?? Fink needs help picking an alternative to satisfy a virtual dependency. The candidates: (1) openslp-ssl-dev: Development files for OpenSLP (2) openslp-dev: Development files for OpenSLP Pick one: 1 fink needs help picking an alternative to satisfy a virtual dependency. The candidates: (1) help2man: Generates man pages from program output (2) help2man-perl586: Generates man pages from program output Pick one: 1 Invalid choice. Please try again 1.

on June 29th, 2008 2:12 pm.