is there any astronomy software that can project a constellatio's shape on earth's surface many years before?

Question

the past must be many thosands years if possible

Answer 1

I presume you mean you want to see how the skies looked thousands of years ago, taking into consideration the proper motion (the motion of stars relative to one another projected onto the sky) of stars? I do not know of ANY mass marketed planetarium software that makes use of a stellar proper motion catalogue, however, I can tell you that the definitive proper motion catalogue availabe to astronomers today is the Hipparcos catalogue which contains at least proper motion upper limits on tens of thousands of bright stars from a European parallax mission that flew in the early(?) nineties.

Keep in mind that even the stars with the largest proper motions will only move a few degrees over even a couple of thousand years. Human written recorded history just is not long enough (yet) to see huge changes in the constellations.

There are exceptions: Kapteyn's star, with a proper motion of about 7 arcsec/year, will move a whole degree in only 500 years. Of course this particular guy is WAY too faint to be seen with the naked eye.

If you are willing to neglect proper motion and are only concerned about postions of the planets,d an precession of the celestial poles and the Earth's orbit, then you can find lots of optoins, including the one mentioned by the prior answerer.

Answer 2

Distant Suns 6.0
You can find it at VendorNation, MonkeyByte or
DistantSuns.dk
Very good price for a great planetarium software.



Starry Night Software
You can find it at Space.com

The Enthusiast version goes from 4713 BC to 9999 AD

Kind of pricey, but good.