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Encyclopedia Galactica is distributed as freeware for personal and non-commercial use. If you want to use this software for other purposes, you have to obtain a written permission from the author.

This version of Encyclopedia Galactica has been developed under Windows 2000 and is known to run under Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Professional Edition. I'd appreciate if anyone can provide me with additional execution reports on other Windows platforms. The program is known to run even on a 486, but the faster the processor the better.

The following material is available for download:

Note: A mirror site is available at here. You will find there the bin files that are unavailable most of the time here.

• March 21st 2002. Encyclopedia Galactica 3.0 is made public.

  Errors corrected:

  • Double entry for M110 when querying the Object Locator corrected.
  • Wrong management of default map types corrected.
  • The Observing List Generator now only takes into account those objects previously selected in the Solar System tab of the Settings menu.

  Functional changes:

  • Stars catalog management has been completely rewritten. Now stars catalog files are called "*.stars.cat" and have to exist inside the DATA directory. These new stars catalog files exhibit a flexible structure that allow the management of different information that different stars catalog have in an homogeneous way, thus easing the use within Encyclopedia Galactica of different stars catalogs. Many internal areas have been rewritten for this, and the affected dialogs are the following:
    • The New Stars File (now called New Stars Catalog), which has changed its appearace and now allows to obtain catalogs via Internet by accessing the VizieR service at CDS.
    • The Object Locator, Stars tab. Now you have to specify a particular catalog to perform the search.
    • The Observing List Generator dialog. Again, you have to speficy a catalog to test for visibility of stars.
    • To cope with the added descriptive information contained in the new stars files, the Select Stars File (now called Select Stars Catalog) dialog has been upgraded.
    • The Map->Stars dialog now offers as labeling options a list of all the fields contained in the given stars catalog.
    • The Reference Cards for stars have changed their appearance. Due to the fact that each catalog may contain different fields, the stars' available data is organized in a grid which will change its contents depending on the selected catalog.

  All this as deserved a direct jump to version 3.0.

• January 27th 2002. Encyclopedia Galactica 2.2 is made public.

  Errors corrected:

  • Some additional bugs related to date and time management have been solved.
  • Corrected wrong labeling of Flamsteed numbers for stars that didn't have such number.

  Functional enhancements:

  • The Observing List Generator is added to the Tools menu. Have Encyclopedia Galactica automatically generate an observing list for a given date and location.
  • Jupiter satellites' events predictor is added to the Tools menu. You can now predict the ocultations, transits and eclipses of the four galilean moons.
  • Constellation mythological figures are shown as long as the figure files are available in the DATA directory. You must download additional material (see above) for this feature to work.
  • The horizon obstruction editor allows the specification of altitude ranges for visibility, not just minimum altitude.
  • The Visibility Predictor allows to specify a horizon obstruction file to filter its output.
  • A warning is generated if the elements of the artificial satellites are older than a specified number of days. This feature is controlled from the Settings menu, in the User Interface tab.
  • Seasons' start dates and times are included in the Orrery tool.

  Functional changes:

  • The "Default Map Type" choice which was set from the Settings dialog, Maps tab, now has an additional option which specifies to ask for the map type to use whenever a new map is created.

• December 9th 2001. Encyclopedia Galactica 2.1 is made public.

  Errors corrected:

  • Wrong date errors associated to calculating satellite visiblity during any day of any December.

  Functional enhancements:

  • The Visibility Predictor is added to the Tools menu. Now you can check in which moment a given object traverses a specific region of the sky.

• December 3rd 2001. New upgrade to Encyclopedia Galactica 2.0 is made public.

  Errors corrected:

  • Abend when opening a Reference Card for a Solar System Object from the Observing List corrected.
  • In the Moon and Sun Reference Cards, wrong specification of distance to Earth and Sun corrected.
  • Severe error in calculation of Azimuths corrected.

  Functional enhancements:

  • Moon Calendar now has options for showing Rise and Set times, plus Phase Angle.
  • Planets can be shown as generic icons or by their corresponding symbols.
  • Added support for Meteor Showers as an additional Solar System Object.
  • Stars can now be labeled with their magnitude.
  • Added support to choose between different label position options.

• November 6th 2001. Upgrade to Encyclopedia Galactica 2.0 is made public.

  Errors corrected:

  • (Hopefully) corrected random error messages like "Assert failed in.... Do you want to stop the program?. You can also choose [Cancel] to suppress further warnings" related to dates and times. These errors were apparently specific to USA users (!?).

  Functional enhancements:

  • New "Internet Resources" option under the File menu allows to easily download different Internet files. Initially configured to locate comets, asteroids and artificial satellites elements files.

  Functional changes:

  • When associating an image to an object via a Reference Card, the option to download an image from the DSS (Digitized Sky Survey) is always active. The download will anyhow fail unless there is an active Internet connection on the computer.

• October 2001. Encyclopedia Galactica version 2.0 available on this site.