Software Downloads

by Dominic Ford

In my spare time I have written several open-source software utilities, most of which are designed to run under Linux, MacOS, and other Unix-like operating systems (not Windows). They are freely available for download below under the Gnu General Public License Version 3.

A more complete archive of my amateur software-development projects can be found on GitHub.

JSPlot
Latest Release: 1.0.0
(2021 January)

JSPlot is an open-source Javascript graph-plotting and vector-graphics library, designed for embedding scientific charts in websites. I use this library extensively throughout the websites I maintain.

StarCharter
Latest Release: 1.0
(2019 Jul 1)

StarCharter is a command-line tool for producing vector-graphics charts of the night sky in SVG, PDF and PNG formats. It can also overlay the paths of solar system objects, such as planets and comets, across the sky if the tool ephmerisCompute is also installed.

It was written to produce all of the PDF and SVG star charts on In-The-Sky.org.

The latest public release is 1.0 (2019 July 1).

ephmerisCompute
Latest Release: 1.0
(2019 Jul 1)

ephmerisCompute is a command-line tool for producing tables of the positions of solar system objects over time. It was written to produce all of the ephemerides on In-The-Sky.org.

The latest public release is 1.0 (2019 July 1).

Constellation
Stick Figures

Latest Release: 1.0
(2019 Jul 1)

Constellation Stick Figures is a collection of data files which define stick figures which can be used to depict the 88 astronomical constellations.

Two designs of stick figures are offered: the first are elaborate and historically authentic stick figures which match those shown in H.A. Rey's 1952 children's book The Stars: A New Way To See Them. This book was the first book to popularise the trend of using of stick figures to depict the constellations in modern times. These are complemented with a set of less elaborate, simplified, stick figures, which more closely match those used in most planetarium software.

They were produced for the purposes of generating all of the sky charts on In-The-Sky.org. They are also utilised by StarCharter (see above).

The latest public release is 1.0 (2019 July 1).

Pyxplot
Latest Release: 0.9.2
(2012 Sep 19)

Pyxplot is a multi-purpose command-line tool for performing simple data processing and for producing graphs and vector graphics. It borrows much of its interface from gnuplot, but with substantial extensions.

The latest public release is 0.9.2 (2012 Sep 19).

GrepNova
Latest Release: 0.6.0
(2005 Nov 1)

GrepNova is a utility for amateur supernova patrolling, which aligns new images to overlay reference images, and blinks them for easy visual comparison.

Amongst others, amateur supernova hunter Tom Boles of the Coddenham Observatory uses this software, and as of November 2011 has discovered 50 supernovae using it. Binaries provided for Win32; C source code available with Linux automake script. This program was described in a paper in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association.

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