Starry Night Pro

[Lee]

Guys.... I picked up Starry Night Pro today, and am looking forward to getting the most out of this pretty cool piece of software....
any killer tips anyone can share now - in terms of chart making, planning or just any tips on ways to wring value from this baby????

So far my initial impressions - lots of power, slightly clunky interface (I am used to Mac OSX ways of doing things) but overall very good..... now I may still miss those faint DSO's but will at least miss them after looking in the right spot! Just have to make sure I have settings tuned so I'm not pulling out my hair trying to spot a globular, to find out it is mag 58 or something....

Thanks for any tips....

[davidpretorius]

I like setting up the monthly challenges in the "find section" and selecting them, then saving that as a favourite. I also love the way you can enter your scope properites ie fl etc and then your eyepieces and your guide scope.

Then you can select an object, centre on it and then ask the program to make the view the size of your selected eyepiece. Very good for seeing how big something will be ini your field of view.

rotate in both directions and then you can star hop very easily thru the guide scope.

great for tracking forward to see what will be rising etc!

thats the main things i use all the time. my laptop comes out with me all the time with starry pro inred mode!

[fringe_dweller]

Lee, SN is probably the most mac friendly heavy duty planetarium app there is - especially seeing the OpenGL graphics engine runs best on macs it appears - so I dont understand the clunkiness thing?. Have you got plenty of ram? (have you got the star mag/numbers up to high?) - it is very ram hungry at full tilt boogie - I have 1.5 gb ram in my dual 1.8mhz G5 tower (very soon to be 2 gb ) and it still wants more at max evrything! maybe a bigger graphics card would improve it too. mind you i am still only using SNP 4.5.2
Some tips
- I dont know if its the same in your (i am assuming SNP 5) version - but in my old version 4.5.2 The allsky view was my favourite tucked away feature i found - going from the default 100ºx57º fov to 191ºx124º by clicking just under the slider button for fov at top right hand corner - scroll down and untick by selecting "restrict max FOV to 100º"
also have a look at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StarryNight/ do searches - this is important site for knowing snp inside out.
also depending on your mouse (get a PC mouse like a logitech with all the wheels/bells/whistles - u can scoll/zoom in and out with the wheel as well if you click on screen ect.) forget those stupid mac double click mouses - why they are hanging onto to that design since OSX came out and allowed you to right click ect. I dont know? beats me
also make sure you up to date with patches - 5>5.0.5 atm, when I updated from 4.5>4.5.2 the difference was absolutely HUGE!! it was like a totally new program!!!
I find SNP to be a massive program to get know intimately - I am still learning plenty of stuff all the time nearly two years later!!
...anyway enjoy that all-sky ccd mosiac they have in version 5 pro (if thats what you have)
hope that helps
Kearn
EDIT: ps
some cons to snp - 1/ I hope they improved the search function in snp 5 - coz it stinks in 4.5. - in fact it was famous for this major fault
2/not the best program for driving scopes I have read - i think that is improved in 5 a bit
3/hate the auto update system - dont like the idea of having to open a port in firewall just to update - and their update server is weird and offline half the time apparently - and bad luck if you dont have broadband!! i just manually update stuff i want, like new comets

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

ATM my fav planetarium prog. Ditto on the Ram hungry. Also the nightvision setting doesn't dim the screen enough and give it anywhere near enough red colour. I found its options and view menus much more intuitive than other similar progs

[Lee]

Thanks guys....
The "clunkiness" I referred to was my initial reaction to the single window format.... I prefer the mac way of multiple windows.... Am getting used to it now though....
Thanks for the suggestions

[fringe_dweller]

ummm Lee, I just realised you may want it for timing iridium flares and other satelites - you will definitely need to auto update once a week for those to be even near up to date (to allow for the affects of drag on the crafts) I remember sattelite timings being mentioned often as an issue with sn on that yahoo list in the past- but they may have been the old 4.5 and unders only - not sure - cant remember. They all still seemed to just use heavans above and those type of sites for accurate positions and times... disclaimer: as usual i could be wrong? I have never tried to see if they were accurate or not.
Kearn