Stellarium

My parents always tell me that my fascination with the universe started the moment I could say the word "moon." I found a freebie sky program out there for download for all you astronomy buffs called Stellarium. You can download it at http://www.stellarium.org/ . It’s pretty sophisticated for a free program. It will track the sky over time so if you leave your computer and come back 30 minutes later, the sky will have changed. It will even track the tilt of Saturn's rings over a few months. A handy feature is a mode that will change everything that displays white (like names, constellation boundaries, etc.) to red if you are using the program outside at night. I’ve done that and it beats a paper star chart. It will show the phases of the moon as well. You can customize it to show or not show constellation lines, constellation boundaries, names, what magnitude to display stars and nebulas up to, and a plethora of other options. I mainly use it to see what’s up in the sky at any given time. It's definitely worth a look into for amateur and serious astronomers alike.