Seeing Stars

I was in Australia last month and kicking myself for not having brought a star chart. Gary Leavens overheard me and pointed me to Stellarium.

It's a very nice little program that shows you the stars, constellations, nebulae and other information in the night sky based on where you are and the date and time. Just dim your laptop screen enough, hold it up, and you can match the program output with what you're seeing. It also has an object search facility, and will track the passage of time. And it's free, and runs on all the standard platforms! They were smart enough to design it to run unplugged, so you really can take it outdoors no matter where you are.