All Other: Virtual Moon Atlas

5.0 Virtual Moon Atlas, The best at any price --- And it's FREE

Incredible wealth of detail and information. And it's free!

Could use better working control over label saturation.

Virtual Moon Atlas was created by aficionados of lunar observing who believe that amateurs should spend their money on decent telescopes and not on expensive software, and to encourage as many people as possible to study the Moon. Each new version released gets better and better

The level of detail is outstanding. Textures and overlays from the Clementine and Lunar Orbiter probes allow surface features zoomed in to 250 meters/pixel as well as several downloadable picture libraries (I recommend the "Best of Amateurs" set) that can be opened when selecting specific features.

A new improved "Full Globe" feature allows the lunar globe to be rotated in ALL directions (not just East-West as with prior versions). All craters and features can now be view face-on, even at the poles.

Newest to the latest version is a medium resolution dynamic shadow feature, which depicts true direction and angle of light on the lunar features throughout the change of phases.

If there are any faults it is that the saturation of labels can at times get pretty dense (even at the lowest setting) unless labels are optionally turned off. The updating of the library continues. I hope they will include crater Shackleton with the next release.

I've looked into other lunar mapping software that wasn't free, and frankly I haven't found any out there that could hold a candle to VMA.

Not merely recommended, but a must-have for any lunar observer. And it's FREE!

http://www.ap-i.net/avl/en/start