If you've ever been to the outback of Australia, you'll know that the night sky is a breathtaking display of clarity, with pin-sharp stars glistening against a pristine black backdrop. Go out on a wet Wednesday night in Manchester and you'll be lucky to see the flashing tail-lights of a 747 coming down towards the airport.

But in spite of our light-polluted environment, keen amateur astronomers won't be stopped from star gazing. And even in the UK we have our good days, or rather, nights. Plus we don't have to hang dangly corks on the brims of our hats.

It's one thing to set up your telescope and scan faraway galaxies, but quite another to actually know what you're looking at, and this is where programs like the Starry Night series come in very handy. The latest release in the series from Avanquest is this deluxe package which comprises of the Starry Night program itself, a Deep Space Explorer disc and a SkyTheatre DVD. The Starry Night Companion book is thrown in for good measure.

As always, the centrepiece of the program is the detailed star map, which is well presented and extremely thorough, covering some 28,000 galaxies. You can use this to view stars, constellations, asteroids, comets and so on, obtaining an accurate map of the night sky at any specified time from any location in the world or indeed space.

Whereas the old Starry Night had a search function and observation planner, these features have now been rolled up into one easy to use system called the Star Guide. This is very user friendly and works like a mini Web browser, chock full of everything you need to know in terms of planning a night's activity.

For example, if you want to search out a specific star, the Guide lists the brightest stars visible in your location going by season. Nightly listings of astronomical events are provided so you can plan out an evening session in detail, or check ahead for the week, possibly finding out about a major incident such as a passing comet. Advice such as whether you'll need a powerful telescope to see something is also imparted.

It's indispensable material for the more serious amateur astronomer, as it were, plus the Guide boasts a load of multimedia tours, giving you a glimpse of distant nebulae, eclipses, shifting constellations and explanations of how various phenomena occur. The video is of a reasonable quality and there are plenty of links and cross references throughout.

If that little lot wasn't enough on the knowledge front, the Deep Space Explorer disc carries well over an hour of video on various topics such as the structure and composition of the universe, dark matter, black holes and so on, with its own galactic map to boot.

The final disc is the SkyTheatre DVD which contains over an hour of documentary-style footage regarding the planets and stars. It's very informative and is a standard DVD so you can watch it on your computer or TV. Finally, there's also the 200-page Starry Night Companion book which is an excellent bundled read.

The Starry Night programs have always been about quality, but this is a particularly resplendent effort, with many interesting and informative extras tacked on. It's priced more keenly than the last version we reviewed back in 2003, and now represents excellent value for money.