I agree that skycat is an excellent sky-charting tool for UNIX. But I'd also like to bring another tool to the attention of variable star and other amateur observers: 'xephem'. This tool is (in my opinion) EVEN BETTER than skycat! It also allows Internet access to the GSC and ESO catalogs, as well as providing an easily extensible (and already HUGE) database of deep-sky objects from many fairly obscure catalogs. And finally, it provides the ability to access Web pages describing individual deep-sky objects (including variable charts). The author is Elwood Downey <ecdowney@noao.edu> and you can find the software on the Web at: http://iraf.noao.edu/~ecdowney/xephem.html Clear skies, Lew Gramer