Argo Navis question

[Miaplacidus]

Hi guys/gals,

I'm an argo navis virgin, having only just received mine on Friday. (Thanks Gary.) Excellent experience so far (alas, not yet under the stars), and have even managed to add a user catalogue of Hartung's objects (via Astroplanner).

My first question (not explicitly denied in the manual, but not mentioned either) is whether it is possible to transfer more than one user catalogue into the Argo Navis at a single sitting, so that I can access two or more separate lists of objects under different headings when I'm out at the observing site?

(I have a look on the Yahoo AN users group site, but didn't see a way of easily searching their threads.)

Thanks for your help.

Brian.

[Vermin]

Not sure about your question Brian, but you can search the threads. There is a search box at the top right of the group home page (under the Argo logo).

[astroron]

I think Gary will get back to you, but in my experiance you can download as many user objects as you like, as long as you have the space, they are not put in as seperate catalogues but all put in as user objects alpha beticaly, just download the first file then when that is complete go back and repeat the proceedure for the next file.
I hope that makes sense. astroron

[gary]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the the post and welcome to the extended family of
Argo Navis owners.

Firstly, thanks to Vermin and Ron for their responses.

As Ron correctly mentions, you can download multiple user
objects into the unit. They don't appear as multiple catalogs
but will all appear in the common USER catalog. However,
the entries will be alphabetically sorted. Some users therefore
prefix the object names to provide multiple pseudo catalogs.

For example, say you had a collection of Hartung objects
and a collection of Wolf-Rayet stars.

You might decide to prefix all Hartung Objects with HG for "HARTUNG'
and all Wolf-Rayet objects with WR.

For example, you might then have entries such as -
HG NGC 1792
HG NGC 1808
HG NGC 1851
etc.

and -
WR LS 8
WR NS 1
WR SMSNPL 1
WR SMSNPL 2
etc.

To tour the objects one at a time, you can use a special feature of
MODE CATALOG. When guiding to an object in MODE CATALOG, if
you spin the DIAL one click clockwise, Argo Navis will automatically
advance to the next alphabetical entry. If you spin the DIAL one
click anti-clockwise, you can go to the previous entry.

Typically you can load up to about 1100 objects at a time including your own
observing notes. You can then erase them and load more on a subsequent
session.

Some user contributed user catalogs can be found in the Files section
of the Argo Navis User's Group - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/argo_navis_dtc

As you have found, Astroplanner is a fabulous utility that directly supports
downloading of objects into Argo Navis.

Best Regards

Gary Kopff
Managing Director
Wildcard Innovations Pty. Ltd.
20 Kilmory Place, Mount Kuring-Gai
NSW. 2080. Australia
Phone +61-2-9457-9049
Fax +61-2-9457-9593
sales@wildcard-innovations.com.au
http://www.wildcard-innovations.com.au

[Miaplacidus]

Thanks Gary,

I've struggled all weekend and finally figured out that the unit works fine, that it's my brain that is the sticking point. I've figured out that the best thing by far is for me to compile the lists in Astroplanner and then export them in the Argo-Navis-friendly format. Makes it all 100 times more friendly and simple. And yes, I have them separately prefixed so they're easy to locate (ADS, SAO, Levy, etc). Not a problem at all. I like the intelligent search facility, too. Simply brilliant.

I'm yet to actually try it under the stars. I'll probably post something here after first light.

Thanks again. Great toy, um, I mean, sophisticated research tool.

Cheers,

Brian.

PS I'm using a Mac. Is there anyway to interrogate the AN with Argoload so that I can figure out how much memory it has left?

[gary]

Currently Argoload for Mac OS X does not implement the #Memory command
which can be used to interrogate Argo Navis to report the free space
in bytes.

Argoload is written by Jeff Terry, who is an Assistant Professor of
Physics at the Illinois Institute of Technology. It is based on two
utilities, catload and sgzload for Linux, which were written by
Wildcard Innovations. All these programs are open sourced under the
GNU Public License.

I'll email Jeff and ask if he could consider adding support for the #Memory
command in a future version of argoload.

Best Regards

Gary Kopff
Managing Director
Wildcard Innovations Pty. Ltd.
20 Kilmory Place
Mount Kuring-Gai NSW 2080
Australia
Phone +61-2-9457-9049
Fax +61-2-9457-9593
sales@wildcard-innovations.com.au
http://www.wildcard-innovations.com.au