A few days ago, the digital interactive multimedia CD—How to Recognize Stars designed and made by Dou Zhong from the National Time Service Center was published by the Science Press.

Based on the popular science book – How to Recognize Stars which isauthored by Dou Zhong, the digital multimedia CD adopts the digital multimedia technology and presents to the viewers a large picture scroll of the constellations and bright stars in the whole sky with animation, sound and video as the main ways of expression, the middle latitude regions of the northern hemisphere where our country situated as the observing site, the 38 major constellations in the starry sky of the four seasons and 18 bright stars as the main line, and at the order of circumpolar constellation, spring, summer, autumn, winter, southern sky constellations and celestial body in the solar system, bringing the viewers direct knowledge and mastery over the features, locations, interrelations of bright stars and main constellations in the sky after easy click. With 2-hour play duration, the CD shows a splendid world of starry sky to the viewers with rich contents, exquisite images, beautiful background music, interest and vividness.

The multimedia CD of astronomy and popular science is the achievement of the Special Project Subsidized by the China Association for Science and Technology on Popular Science in 2004 undertaken by Dou Zhong and others. It comes out after one-year meticulous design & planning and great devotion of the project group. How to Recognize Stars serves as a brand-new astronomy and popular science software after the publication. Besides, with the anticipation of “Shenzhou VII”, “Shenzhou VIII” and “moon exploration”, the “domestic exploration of starry sky” will arouse unceasing attention. And the multimedia CD of How to Recognize Stars will also make contribution to the publicity of astronomy science in China.