In the past 50 years, computers have become an extremely valuable part of astronomy.  Today computers are required to control our big observatories and to process and store our astronomical data.  This is not just true of the professionals however.  Computers are also extremely valuable to amateur astronomers.  You can use a planetarium program running on your desktop, laptop, or even your phone to discover what will be in the sky on a particular evening, what interesting objects you can find, and even what object you are looking at right now.  You can use an image capture program to control your camera so that it takes images at the appropriate times and durations.  You can use guiding software to monitor your mount's tracking accuracy and to make corrections when it goes astray.  If you connect the computer to your telescope, you can use it to align your telescope to the sky and to tell your telescope to slew to the next object of interest.  I hope that the articles on these pages can help you find out about the exciting astronomical software that is out there so you can use it to do astronomy!