The AstroWall Software

The software applications on this page showcase a few of the uses of the GeoWall (or AstroWall) in Astronomy. A .zip file of all of the applications listed below is available here (ver. 1.1).

There are a few caveats to using this software. Some of this software only runs on Windows 2000/XP, NOT in Windows 98. The nView Window Control setting must be set to allow windows to span across monitors for most of this software to work, otherwise you'll only get one image on one monitor. Also, the Plummer (aka StereoModel.exe) program requires you to have glut32.dll either in your PATH or in the directory of the executable (StereoModel.exe). glut32.dll is installed as part of the walkabout software package available on the software page. (Dave Whipp - 2.19.03)

Stereo Pairs

A simple stereo pair viewer. Any bitmap with left and right pairs sized 2048x768 will work. You can either load individual images or load an image list.

3DView

A simple viewer for 3D data.

Moon Orbit

Moon Orbit is an OpenGL simulation of the orbit of the Moon. It is designed to help students visualize the 3D geometry of the Sunlit Earth and Moon, the seasons, and more.

Solar Neighborhood

This program loads the location of the stars in the solar neighborhood (see 3DView) but with a rough indication of their colors and brightness. The brightness is shown by the size of the sphere.

Plummer

This is a simulation of stars orbiting under Newton's Law of Gravity in a Plummer potential. The Plummer potential is a simple analytical description of the gravitational field that was often used to simulate a globular cluster. The orbiting stars feel only this potential, they do not interact gravitationally with one another. There are a large number of parameters you can adjust to change the physics of the simulation.

Immersaview

This menu choice simply brings up a dialog box looking for *.bat files that call the Immersaview program for specific objects.