 by Sandro Pintus
"The Universe in CD-Rom"
Take off on an interplanetary journey from your chair at home
We can now use our computer as though it were the control station of a
space ship and take off on a virtual interplanetary journey outside our
solar system to reach the limits of the known universe. This is thanks
to the latest CD-Rom produced by Tecniche Nuove of Milan, called "The
Universe in CD-Rom", which costs 39.000 lire. The necessary configuration
for reading the CD is a PC (what a shame that it cannot be used in a Mac),
with Windows 3, a CD-Rom reader containing 2MB Ram (4MB for the illustrations),
3 MB of hard disk space and a 256 colour VGA graphic card. It is certainly
better to already have some idea about the universe before starting out
on this "voyage", but here we can sit down at the commands of
our virtual spaceship and take off on a flight through the hypertest and
into hyperspace.
The cover of "The Universe in
CD-Rom"
by Tecniche Nuove |
The over 150 visual effects that come from the archives of the NASA,
take up an incredible amount of space and therefore remain in the CD unless
called upfor viewing. These include Uranus or Dione, the 5th satellite
of Saturn, as well as several views of Jove taken by the American space
probes Pioneer and Viking. The archives also contain views of the Moon,
and the satellites of Jove or the Sun, that can not only be enlarged but
also re-elaborated and touched up. On opening the Skyglobe programme,
the celestial globe appears on the screen, showing all the constellations
and the Milky Way. We have the power to remove or add stars, accentuate
the Milky Way or any of the constellations, as well as observe the passage
of the planets. The L key (Location) gives us the index of various places
where observation of the sky is possible, from the South Pole to Winnipeg,
Mexico City and Rome. The Z key allows us to get closer or further away
from any selected constellation, while the directional keys permit us
to move around the sky by using the Ascension - Declination co-ordinates.
The U key corresponds to the Millennium command, allowing us to travel
through the sky over a period of thousands of years and also discover
where the constellations will be in the year 10996.
The Pleiades |
Circumspace is another part of the programme that shows us the universe
outside our galaxy: the F key (Find, search), takes us to the index where
we can request the position of Alpha Centaurus, for example. At first
we are presented with a group of stars that all look exactly alike, however,
if we press the key, their names also appear. Alpha Centaurus is in the
centre of the screen with Proxima Centaurus and Vega next to it. The following
data appears below the picture: distance from the Sun: 42 light years;
closest star: Anon 3919, only 9.05 light years away. The Warp command
allows us to move closer or further away in all directions at will, so
that we can continue to explore the universe as it is known today. After
this, all we have to do is wait for a starry night to observe the real
sky that we have explored in our virtual universe.
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