284 Richmond St. E.
Suite 300
Toronto, ON
M5A 1P4, Canada
www.starrynight.com
©2004 Imaginova Corp.
All rights reserved. Starry Night and Imaginova are
trademarks of Imaginova Corp.
Microsoft and Windows are trademarks of Microsoft
Corporation. Apple, Macintosh, Mac, and QuickTime
are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc.
OpenGL® is a registered trademark owned by Silicon
Graphics, Inc.
Printed in Canada.
Table of Contents
Getting Started
Welcome ..................................................................... 7
Outline Of This User’s Guide ..................................... 8
Starry Night Companion ............................................. 9
Special Fonts ............................................................... 9
Installing Starry Night Pro 5.0 .................................... 9
Running Starry Night Pro 5.0 ................................... 12
Registering ................................................................ 12
Data Updates ............................................................. 13
Setting Your Home Location .................................... 14
Starry Night For the First Time................................. 15
Getting Help .............................................................. 15
Program Updates....................................................... 16
Starry Night Website................................................. 16
Basics
10 Important Features ............................................... 17
Using The Controls ................................................... 18
Changing Your Viewing Direction ........................... 20
Changing The Date And Time .................................. 20
Identifying Objects In The Sky ................................. 21
Labeling Objects ....................................................... 22
Displaying Constellation Figures.............................. 22
Finding Objects ......................................................... 23
Zooming In On Objects............................................. 24
Learning More About Objects .................................. 27
Printing Star Charts ................................................... 27
Tool Selection Control .............................................. 28
Appearance of the Sky
Sky Contextual Menu................................................ 31
Options Pane ............................................................. 32
Light .......................................................................... 33
Changing the Horizon ............................................... 35
Displaying Celestial Objects ..................................... 36
4 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Labeling Celestial Objects ........................................ 37
Celestial Object Display Options .............................. 38
Star Display Options ................................................. 39
Star Brightness, Contrast & Colour .......................... 41
Planet Display Options.............................................. 42
Comet, Asteroid & Satellite Display Options........... 44
Messier/Bright NGC/User Images Display Options. 44
Milky Way Display Options ..................................... 45
Tully Database Display Options ............................... 45
Selecting Filaments and Groups ............................... 46
Other Object Display Options ................................... 47
Label Options ............................................................ 47
Constellations............................................................ 48
Guides 1 (Co-ordinate Systems) ............................... 50
Guides 2 (Display Options)....................................... 52
Field of View Indicators 1
(Creating an Equipment List).................................... 54
Field of View Indicators 2
(Displaying Indicators) ............................................. 56
Flip ............................................................................ 58
Heads-Up Display (HUD) Options ........................... 58
OpenGL Options ....................................................... 59
Number Formats ....................................................... 60
White Sky Mode ....................................................... 61
Night Vision Mode.................................................... 61
Full Screen Mode ...................................................... 62
Saving Your Settings ................................................ 62
Sky Data
SkyGuide................................................................... 66
SkyCalendar .............................................................. 67
DVD Movies ............................................................. 70
LiveSky Pane ............................................................ 71
Status Info ................................................................. 72
Downloading Photographic Images .......................... 75
Online Telescope Imaging ........................................ 76
Object Databases
Introduction to Databases.......................................... 78
Databases 1 (Solar System)....................................... 78
Databases 2 (Stars).................................................... 79
Databases 3 (Deep Space)......................................... 80
Databases 4 (Other)................................................... 81
Database Updates ...................................................... 83
Find Pane Info........................................................... 85
Object Contextual Menu ........................................... 86
Info Pane ................................................................... 88
LiveSky.com Object Database .................................. 94
Bending Space & Time
Time Flow ................................................................. 98
Time Flow Modes ..................................................... 99
Local and Celestial Paths ........................................ 100
Changing Your Viewing Location .......................... 102
Changing Elevation................................................. 104
Location Mode ........................................................ 106
Orientation .............................................................. 107
Orbits....................................................................... 108
Spaceship Mode ...................................................... 110
Piloting the Spaceship ............................................. 111
Special Tools
Telescope Control ................................................... 114
Observation Planner ................................................ 116
Graph....................................................................... 119
Ephemeris Generator............................................... 121
Working With Files
What is a Starry Night Pro 5.0 File? ....................... 124
File Features ............................................................ 124
The Favourites Menu .............................................. 125
Creating Files - An Example................................... 126
Multiple Windows................................................... 127
Exporting Images .................................................... 128
Making Movies ....................................................... 129
Movie Compression Settings .................................. 130
Playing Back QuickTime Movies ........................... 131
Making QuickTime Virtual Reality Files ............... 131
Quicktime VR Movie Settings ................................ 132
Exporting Sky Data................................................. 132
Adding Your Own Data
Adding Log Entries ................................................. 135
Adding Calendar Events ......................................... 137
Adding Objects 1 (Solar System Objects) .............. 139
Adding Objects 2 (Multiple Solar System Objects) 146
Adding Objects 3 (Stars)......................................... 146
Adding Objects 4 (Databases)................................. 147
User Images............................................................. 148
Modifying Images ................................................... 152
Custom Horizons..................................................... 152
Photorealistic Horizons ........................................... 153
Customizing the Favourites Menu .......................... 153
Custom Asterisms ................................................... 155
Backing Up Custom Data ....................................... 155
5
6 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Frequently Asked Questions
QuickTime .............................................................. 159
Registration Number ............................................... 160
Installation............................................................... 161
Support .................................................................... 161
Updates/Upgrades ................................................... 161
General Run-Time Problems .................................. 162
OpenGL................................................................... 162
Time & Date............................................................ 163
Viewing Location.................................................... 165
Internet Database & Digitized Sky Survey ............. 166
Printing & Making Movies ..................................... 166
Telescopes ............................................................... 167
Constellations & The Zodiac .................................. 167
Solar System Bodies ............................................... 168
Stars......................................................................... 169
Keyboard Shortcuts ...................................... 171
Index..................................................................... 173
Chapter 1
Getting Started
Welcome
The invention of desktop astronomy software has
been the most exciting new development in the
astronomy hobby in years, perhaps since that
night four centuries ago when Galileo pointed the
newly invented telescope at the heavens for the
first time! Starry Night Pro 5.0 is the premier
astronomy software package on the market,
putting more power and knowledge in your hands
than even the world’s pre-eminent astronomers
had just a few years ago.
You can see how the sky will look tonight,
tomorrow, or far into the past or future. You can
view the stars as they appear from your own
backyard, from a country on the other side of the
world, or from another planet. You can witness a
total eclipse from the Moon, watch the Sun set
from the surface of Mars, or even ride a comet.
You are limited only by your curiosity.
This guide is designed to help you harness the
full power of Starry Night Pro 5.0. Enjoy the
ride!
8 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Outline Of This User’s Guide
All users of Starry Night Pro 5.0 should
read chapters 1 and 2 of this User’s Guide
to get a basic grasp of how to use the
program. After this, you may want to
explore the program on your own and only
refer to the User’s Guide if you have
questions about a specific feature.
Alternately, you may wish to read the
entire User’s Guide. Below is a brief
summary of each chapter in the User’s
Guide.
Chapter 1: “Getting Started
to get Starry Night Pro 5.0 up and running
for the first time.
Chapter 2: “Basics
frequently used features in the program.
Chapter 3: “Appearance of the Sky
you how to modify the onscreen
appearance of Starry Night Pro 5.0.
Chapter 4: “Sky Data
more information about astronomy and the
sky in general.
Chapter 5: “Object Databases
the different types of celestial objects
included in Starry Night Pro 5.0 and the
information you can learn about each
object.
” covers the most
” tells you how
” shows
” shows you to get
” describes
simulations to demonstrate astronomical
concepts.
Chapter 7: “Special Tools
of Starry Night Pro 5.0’s astronomy tools
that go beyond displaying the sky. Some
examples are telescope control and
observation planning and logging.
Chapter 8: “Working With Files
you how to save files, capture colour
images and make QuickTime videos using
Starry Night Pro 5.0.
Chapter 9: “Adding Your Own Data
teaches you how to expand the vast library
of data that is built into Starry Night Pro
5.0. You will learn how to create your own
constellation sets, add custom images, and
even build your own databases!
Appendix A: “Frequently Asked
Questions” answers the questions most
commonly asked by users of Starry Night
Pro 5.0.
Appendix B: “Keyboard Shortcuts
handy reference table listing the Windows
and Mac keyboard shortcuts for the
features in Starry Night Pro 5.0.
” describes some
” teaches
”
” is a
Chapter 6: “Bending Space & Time
a detailed look at the features of Starry
Night Pro 5.0 that let you visit other
locations in the universe, view the sky
from dates in the past or future, and
modify the speed at which time in Starry
Night Pro 5.0 moves forward. This section
will be particularly useful for educators
who plan to use Starry Night Pro 5.0
” takes
Getting Started 9
Starry Night Companion
This User’s Guide will teach you how to
use Starry Night Pro 5.0. The second book
included with your package, Starry Night
Companion, is a guide to learning more
about astronomy and the night sky. This
200 page book, written by astronomer
John Mosley, is your tour guide to the universe and will help you appreciate what
you see when you are outdoors looking up
at the night sky.
You can access an electronic version of
Starry Night Companion by choosing
Help->Companion Book from the main
menu.
Quick Start User Card
This handy reference card walks you
through the installation process and offers
tips on how to use the most common
Starry Night functions.
Special Fonts
Two special fonts are used throughout this
User’s Guide:
1) Command Font: This font is used to
indicate a button, clickable area,
keystroke, or menu choice.
Examples:
1 Click the Online Info button.
2 Press the Ctrl-Alt-Delete keys.
3 Choose File->Open from the menu.
2) File Font: This font indicates a
folder or file, either on your hard drive or
the Starry Night Pro 5.0 CD. File and
folder names are always enclosed in
quotations.
Examples:
1 Locate the “satellites.txt” file
on the CD.
2 Your preferences are saved in the
“Starry Night Pro 5.0
\Sky Data\Prefs” folder.
Installing Starry Night Pro 5.0
Starry Night Pro 5.0 comes on three CD’s
that include both the Windows and
Macintosh versions. To run Starry Night
Pro 5.0, you need to install two programs:
Starry Night Pro 5.0 and QuickTime.
QuickTime is a tool for manipulating
graphics files and constructing and
viewing animation sequences. Starry
Night Pro 5.0 will not run if QuickTime
(version 6.5 or later) is not installed. To
install Starry Night Pro 5.0 and
QuickTime, follow the installation
instructions below.
Note: If you already have QuickTime
(version 6.5 or later) on your computer,
you do not need to install it again. If you
have an older version of QuickTime,
install the newer version of QuickTime
from the Starry Night Pro 5.0 CD. It will
automatically overwrite your older
version.
10 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Windows:
Insert disc 1 in the CD-ROM drive.
1
2 A window will pop up onscreen with
instructions on installing Starry Night
Pro 5.0. Follow the instructions that
appear and insert the next disc when
prompted. The “Full Install” option
will install extra star data, with stars as
dim as magnitude 16 (these stars are
not visible in your sky without a
telescope) and the Principal Galaxy
Catalog (PGC) with 980, 000 galaxies
as dim as magnitude 18. The “Minimal
Install” option will not install these
dimmer stars and galaxies, and will
save about 300 MB of hard disk space.
The “Custom Install” option allows you
to select which extra data to install.
work unless you choose this option.
4 During the installation process, a
window may open which allows you to
enter a QuickTime registration number.
This number is only for a more
advanced version of QuickTime that is
not included with Starry Night. Leave
this screen blank and hit the Next
button. Do NOT enter your name or
Starry Night registration number.
3 At the end of the installation, the Starry
Night installer launches an application
to install QuickTime. Follow the
instructions that appear onscreen. You
will be asked to select an installation
option for QuickTime. Choose the
“Recommended Install” option.
Certain Starry Night features will not
Getting Started 11
5 At one point in the installation process,
there will be a screen titled "File Type
Associations". Press the File Types
button to edit the associations.
6 Make sure that only the box marked
"Quick Time Movie" is checked under
the Video category. This will associate
.mov files correctly with QuickTime.
Other movie file types (for example,
mpeg or avi files) will not be affected.
Tip: The first time you enlarge an image
or play a movie, you may see the Get
QuickTime Pro window. Click Later. You
do not need to upgrade to QuickTime Pro
to see multimedia files in Starry Night.
7 Following the QuickTime installation,
the Starry Night installer launches an
application to install telescope control.
If you have a motorized telescope you
wish to control with Starry Night Pro
5.0, follow the onscreen instructions.
See “Telescope Control
” on page 114
for more information on telescope
control.
.
8 Starry Night Pro 5.0 includes a
standalone DVD disc (“SkyTheater”),
which contains short movies about
astronomy. You can play the DVD disc
on your computer DVD-ROM drive or
your home DVD player.
12 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Macintosh: To install Starry Night Pro 5.0
for the Macintosh, follow these steps.
1 Insert disc 1 into the CD-ROM drive
and double-click on the Starry Night
Pro 5.0 installation icon. Insert the next
discs when prompted. The “Full
Install” option will install extra star
data, with stars as dim as magnitude 16
(these stars are not visible in your sky
without a telescope) and the Principal
Galaxy Catalog (PGC) with 980, 000
galaxies as dim as magnitude 18. The
“Minimal Install” option will not install
these dimmer stars and galaxies, and
will save about 300 MB of hard disk
space. The “Custom Install” option
allows you to select which extra data to
install.
Tip: Macintosh users do not need to install
a separate driver for telescope control, it
is packaged into the main Starry Night Pro
5.0 installer.
Macintosh: Double-click the Starry Night
Pro 5.0 icon in the Applications folder, or
click the icon on your dock.
Registering
When you run Starry Night Pro 5.0 for the
first time, you will be prompted to enter
your name and registration number. To get
your unique registration number, click Get
Registration Number. For this to work,
you must have an active Internet connection. If you do not have an active Internet
connection, you can still click OK and the
program will operate normally—but you
will not be able to download the periodic
data updates, such as new comets, upcom-
ing events and tours
.
2 Starry Night Pro 5.0 includes a
standalone DVD disc (“SkyTheater”),
which contains short movies about
astronomy. You can play the DVD disc
on your computer DVD-ROM drive or
your home DVD player.
Running Starry Night Pro 5.0
Once you have installed Starry
Night Pro 5.0, you can run the
program as follows:
Windows: Double-click the Starry Night
Pro 5.0 icon on your desktop, or select it
from your start menu.
Registering makes it possible for us to
notify you of any upgrades, bug fixes, or
plug-ins as they become available. You
may also be eligible for reduced upgrade
prices to other astronomy software
programs. You can update your
registration information at any time in the
future by visiting
www.starrynight.com/register
.
Getting Started 13
Tip: You can retrieve your registration
number at any time by choosing
Registration from the Help menu
(Windows) or the Starry Night Pro 5.0
menu (Macintosh).
After you have typed in your name and
registration number, press OK to begin
Starry Night Pro 5.0.
Data Updates
The first time you run Starry Night Pro
5.0, a window will pop up that asks if you
wish to update your data files.
If you press Update Files, Starry Night Pro
5.0 will attempt to connect to our website
and download updated data files.
Downloading these files ensures that any
new comets, asteroids, satellites, calendar
events or tours are added to the program. If
you do not want to download updated data
files at this time, just press Cancel to skip
this process. You can update these data
files at any time in the future by choosing
LiveSky->
Update Comets/Asteroids/Satellites from
the menu. See “Database Updates
page 83 for more information on updating
data files.
” on
Only registered users can download the
updated data files. If you did not register
Starry Night Pro 5.0, the following
window will appear onscreen when you
try to download new data files:
Click Open Registration Dialog to obtain
your registration number and proceed with
updating your data files or click Cancel
File Update to continue without
downloading.
Note: Updating data files is not the same
as updating the program itself. To ensure
that you are running the latest version of
Starry Night Pro 5.0, see
“Program Updates
” on page 16.
14 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Setting Your Home Location
The first time Starry Night Pro 5.0 runs, a
dialog box opens that asks you to set your
home location. Once you have done this,
you do not need to change your home
location unless you move.
1 Click the List tab. This displays a huge
database of cities throughout the world.
2 Use the scrollbar on the right to look
through the list. If your home city is
listed, click on its name to highlight
this city and press the Save As Home
Location button. If your city is not
listed, proceed to step 3.
Tip: A list of astronomical observatories is
included in the location list. To see this
list, click on the Province column heading
and scroll down to “Observatories”.
minutes.You must also enter the correct
time zone. Time zones are calculated
according to the time difference from
London, England. For example, all
communities on Eastern Standard Time
are 5 hours behind London, so you
would enter “-5 h” if you are on
Eastern Standard Time. If you do not
know your latitude, longitude, or time
zone, click Lookup Lat/Long on Internet
for Internet resources that will help you
find this information.
4 Once you have entered your co-
ordinates, click the Add Location to List
button. This will open a window where
you can enter your city, province/state
and country. Press the Add Location
button once you have entered this
information., then press the Save As
Home Location button.
3 Click the Latitude/Longitude tab. Type
in the name of your location and enter
your latitude and longitude. You can
enter these values in degrees, degrees
& minutes, or degrees, minutes &
seconds. Starry Night Pro 5.0 will
convert your values to degrees and
Getting Started 15
Tip: If you ever move and need to change
your location (or if you initially enter your
home location incorrectly), choose
Set Home Location from the File menu
(Windows) or the Starry Night Pro 5.0
menu (Macintosh) to enter a new home
location.
Starry Night For the First Time
After you have entered your home
location, the main screen of Starry Night
Pro 5.0 appears. This window shows what
you would see if you stepped outside at the
current time, and looked south from your
home location. Direction markers along
the horizon help you orient yourself. If you
open the program at night, you see a starfilled night sky. If you open the program
during the day, you see a daytime scene
with blue sky and sunshine. A horizon is
shown to give you some perspective.
The current time is shown in the upper left
corner of the screen.
The next chapter will show you how to use
them and become more comfortable with
the program.
Getting Help
Hopefully this User’s Guide will help you
master Starry Night Pro 5.0! But if you
still have questions, there are plenty of
places to turn for help.
Contextual Help: Hold
the cursor over any of
Starry Night’s
controls, and a text
box will pop up that
describes the function
of that control.
Info Icon: Whenever you see this icon
beside one of the controls in Starry
Night Pro 5.0, click the icon to see a short
description of that control.
Electronic Manual: Choosing
Help->User’s Guide from the menu opens
the PDF version of this manual.
Note: The current date and time are
calculated from your computer’s clock. If
your computer’s clock is incorrect, Starry
Night Pro 5.0 may show night when it is
day outside, or vice versa. See
“Time & Date
” on page 163 if you do not
know how to change your computer’s
clock settings.
Most of the controls in Starry Night Pro
5.0 will probably look unfamiliar to you.
Tech Support Website: A list of frequently
asked questions is included in Appendix
A: “Frequently Asked Questions
”. An
up-to-date version of this FAQ is available
online by choosing Help->Online Help from
the menu. Any new bugs or other issues
regarding Starry Night Pro 5.0 will be
covered in this FAQ.
16 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Discussion List: The Starry Night
Discussion List is a newsgroup that allows
you to ask questions and share tips with
other owners of Starry Night Pro 5.0. At
press time, the Discussion List had more
than 6000 members, so it is an excellent
resource. Sign up for this list at http://
www.starrynight.com/support/
discussion_lists.html
Contact Technical Support: You can
contact our technical support staff at http://
www.starrynight.com/support/ for help
with your problems.
Program Updates
Starry Night Pro 5.0 is updated on a fairly
regular basis. Updates may add new
features, or may fix bugs in the existing
program. To find out if you are running the
latest version, choose About Starry Night
Pro 5.0 from the Starry Night Pro 5.0
menu (Macintosh) or the Help menu
(Windows). A new window will open, and
this window will have your version
number in the bottom left corner.
running the most up-to-date version of
Starry Night Pro 5.0.
Starry Night Website
More information about Starry Night Pro
5.0 and other astronomy programs is
available at our website,
www.starrynight.com
.
Once you know your current version
number, choose
LiveSky->Check For Program Updates from
the menu. This will take you to the updates
section of our website. If any updates are
available, instructions for downloading
and installing these updates will be
provided. We recommend that you check
for program updates soon after you install
the program, to ensure that you are
Chapter 2
Basics
It is impossible to cover all of the features of
Starry Night Pro 5.0 in one short chapter.
However, you will use certain features much
more than others. This chapter will show you
how to use the 10 most important features in
Starry Night Pro 5.0. Once you have read this
chapter, you will be able to use Starry Night Pro
5.0 effectively as a guide to the night sky.
10 Important Features
Here are the 10 tasks you will learn to perform
with Starry Night Pro 5.0 in this chapter:
1 Use the controls.
2 Change your viewing direction.
3 Change the date and time.
4 Identify objects in the sky.
5 Label objects.
6 Display constellation figures.
7 Find objects.
8 Zoom in on objects.
9 Learn more about any object.
10 Print star charts.
18 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Using The Controls
All of the controls in Starry Night Pro 5.0
are in three areas of the screen: the toolbar,
the side panes, and the menu. There is
more than one way to access many of the
features in Starry Night Pro 5.0 - for
example, you may be able to access a
feature through the main menu and
through the side panes.
Tip: If some of the controls described in
this section appear to be missing from
your version of Starry Night Pro 5.0, you
may not have installed QuickTime
correctly. Reinstall QuickTime and be sure
to choose the “Recommended Install”
option, and you should then see all of the
controls. See
“Installing Starry Night Pro 5.0
” on
page 9 for more information.
Toolbar: The toolbar is the strip of buttons
which runs just above the main window.
The toolbar has the following controls
(each set of controls is explained in a later
section):
Tool Selection
Tip: Clicking the blue pin button on
the toolbal will display a menu with
all the log entries you have added to Starry
Night Pro 5.0. See “Adding Log Entries
”
on page 135 for more information on
observing logs.
Side Panes: These panes are along the left
side of the screen.
Clicking on a pane causes the pane to slide
out, revealing a set of controls. Each pane
opens to a default width. However, by
clicking along the right edge of the pane
and dragging the mouse, you can make the
pane narrower or wider.
Within a pane, you can expand or collapse
various
layers by using these buttons:
Expand layer (Windows).
Expand layer (Macintosh).
Collapse layer (Windows).
Collapse layer (Macintosh).
You can hide the toolbar by choosing
View->Hide Toolbar from the main menu.
Time and Date
Time Flow Rate
Viewing Location
Gaze
Zoom (FOV)
Layer
(expanded)
La
Layer
(collapsed)
Pane
Basics 19
Each of the side panes controls an
important function in Starry Night Pro 5.0,
and is explained in detail in a later section.
Pane Page
Find
Options
Favourites
Status
Info
SkyGuide
SkyCalendar
Planner
LiveSky
FOV
Telescope
85
32
125
72
88
66
67
116
71
56
114
Button Bar (Windows only): On
Windows, the button bar provides an
additional set of controls. The button bar is
located under the menu, just above the
toolbar. It contains a set of buttons for
some of the most commonly used
functions in the program. Point the cursor
at one of the buttons, and a text tip will
pop up that describes the button’s
function.
Tip: You can hide the button bar at any
time by selecting View->Hide Buttonbar in
the menu. If you prefer to hide the button
bar, you can still access all of its controls
through the other menus and tools. You
can also turn off the text tips for the button
bar by choosing Preferences from the File
menu (Windows) or the
Starry Night Pro 5.0 menu (Macintosh),
choosing General from the dropbox in the
upper left corner of the Preferences dialog
box, and unchecking the “Show button
help on scroll over” box.
Menu: The menu runs across the top of the
screen, above the toolbar. Clicking on an
item in the menu expands the menu to
reveal additional options.
20 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Changing Your Viewing Direction
By default, Starry Night Pro 5.0 always
opens with your view facing south,
looking slightly above the horizon. You
can then adjust this view to look in any
direction.
Tip: If you would prefer that Starry Night
Pro 5.0 open with your view facing in a
direction other than south, choose
Preferences from the File menu (Windows)
or the Starry Night Pro 5.0 menu
(Macintosh), choose General from the
dropbox in the upper left corner of the
Preferences dialog box, and adjust the
“Default Viewing Direction” ring slider.
You can also adjust the default altitude
(how high above the horizon you are
looking).
The default cursor icon in Starry
Night Pro 5.0 is a hand. When you
hold the mouse button down, you will see
the hand close, as if it is “grabbing” part of
the sky. If you hold the mouse button
down and drag the mouse, your view shifts
in the direction that you moved the mouse.
The compass icon in the upper right corner
of the screen shows the direction in which
you are viewing. You can also use the
compass points marked along the horizon
to find your viewing direction.
above the horizon, you may see a red
marker. This marker identifies the
zenith,
the point in the sky that is directly above
your head. If you are located in space, you
can also look straight down to see a
marker for the
nadir, the point directly
beneath your feet. If you are located on
Earth or another planet, you are limited in
how far down you can look. You are able
to look only slightly below the horizon,
and cannot see the nadir. If you wish, you
can turn off the markers for the zenith and
nadir by choosing Preferences from the
File menu (Windows) or the
Starry Night Pro 5.0 menu (Macintosh),
choosing General from the dropbox in the
upper left corner of the Preferences dialog
box, and unchecking the “Show zenith and
nadir while scrolling” box.
Changing The Date And Time
When you open Starry Night Pro 5.0, you
may see a bright blue sunny sky, a dark
sky filled with stars, or a twilight realm
with only a few bright stars showing. This
is because Starry Night Pro 5.0 always
opens showing the sky at the current date
and time. The date and time are shown in
the upper left corner of the toolbar.
Tip: You can configure Starry Night Pro
5.0 to display scroll bars along the edges
of the window by selecting
View->Show Scroll Bars from the menu.
You can then use these scroll bars in place
of the hand to adjust your viewing
direction.
Zenith and Nadir Markers: If you adjust
your view so that you are looking high
Tip: A small icon of the Sun
appears to the left of the time in the
toolbar. If Daylight Saving Time is
turned on, this icon is lit up. Starry Night
Pro 5.0 uses your computer clock to
determine if Daylight Saving Time should
Basics 21
be turned on. Click on the icon to turn on
or off Daylight Saving Time.
See “How does Daylight Saving Time
work in Starry Night?” on page 164 for
more information on Daylight Saving
Time.
To change the date or time, just click on it.
The date or time will light up, and you can
type in a new value.
If Starry Night Pro 5.0 is showing a
daytime scene, try changing the time so
that it is night. If you already see a night
scene, change the time so that it is day.
Starry Night Pro 5.0 allows you to set the
date from anywhere between 99 999 BC
and 99 999 AD.
Tip: As you are working through the rest
of the features in this chapter, you will
probably want to set the time in Starry
Night Pro 5.0 so that the sky is dark. In the
day, only the Sun will be visible onscreen,
and it will be difficult to use some of the
features.
Special Times:
Immediately to the
right of the time
display in the toolbar is
a pull-down menu that
lets you quickly change
the time to one of
several key times.
sunset, moonrise or moonset. You can also
change to
Sun is highest in the sky, or
solar noon, the time at which the
moon transit,
the time at which the Moon is highest in
the sky.
Moon Calendar: Clicking the
SkyCalendar pane will open a pane
showing a calendar with moon phase
information. See “SkyCalendar
” on
page 67 for more information on the
Calendar.
Identifying Objects In The Sky
If you point the cursor at any object shown
onscreen, information about the object will
automatically appear. This is Starry Night
Pro 5.0’s
Heads-Up Display (HUD).
Displayed are the object’s name, the
constellation it is in, and its distance (if
known) from Earth. This makes it easy to
identify any of the points of light
displayed onscreen.
You can reset the time to the current time
by pressing Now or set the time to sunrise,
22 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
You can choose which information fields
are displayed when you point the cursor at
an object. See
“Heads-Up Display (HUD) Options
page 58 for more details.
Labeling Objects
The Heads-Up Display is great for finding
out what a specific object is, but it’s not
much help if you want a quick overview of
all of the brighter objects onscreen. The
best way to quickly identify all bright
objects is to choose
Labels->Show All Labels from the menu.
This labels the brightest objects in each
category (stars, constellations, planets,
deep space objects). You can turn these
labels off again by choosing
Labels->Hide All Labels.
” on
Displaying Constellation Figures
For thousands of years, stargazers have
joined the brighter stars together into
patterns that we call constellations.
Astronomers currently recognize 88
constellations, which together cover the
entire sky. Knowing which constellation
an object is in is the first step to finding the
object.
You can turn on the stick figures for the
constellations by choosing
View->Constellations->Astronomical from
the main menu. Choosing this option again
will remove the figures. Use the Labels
menu to turn on/off the constellation
labels.
Starry Night Pro 5.0 offers much more
precise control over object labels. You can
label only certain types of objects,
increase/decrease the number of labels, or
label only the objects that you select. See
“Labeling Celestial Objects
for more information.
” on page 37
Many more options exist for displaying
the constellations. These options are
outlined in “Constellations
” on page 48.
Finding Objects
If you are interested in finding a
specific object, such as a planet
or a bright new comet, open the
Find side pane. Click in the text box at the
top of this pane and type in the first few
letters of the object you are looking for. As
you type, Starry Night Pro 5.0 displays a
list of objects that match your name.
Once the object that you are looking for
appears in the list, double-click on its
name, and Starry Night Pro 5.0 will centre
on the object. Several information fields
are listed beside each object in the list of
found objects. See “Find Pane Info
” on
page 85 to learn what these fields mean.
Tip: The object you are searching for may
be hidden beneath the horizon. If this is the
case, Starry Night Pro 5.0 will offer you
the option of hiding the horizon or
advancing the time forward to a time when
the object will be above the horizon.
Objects below the horizon are greyed out.
Basics 23
Panning To Found Objects: By default,
Starry Night Pro 5.0 slowly pans to objects
that you have double-clicked on in the
Find pane. This feature is handy because it
allows you to see where the new object is
relative to your current view. If you choose
Preferences from the File menu (Windows)
or the Starry Night Pro 5.0 menu
(Macintosh) and choose Responsiveness
from the dropbox in the upper left corner
of the Preferences dialog box, you will see
a slider and checkbox named “Pan to
found objects”. Adjusting the slider
changes the speed at which Starry Night
Pro 5.0 pans to found objects. Unchecking
the box disables the panning feature
completely, so that your view changes
instantly to the “found” object as soon as
you double-click on it.
Tip: If you hit the space bar during a pan,
the program immediately takes you
directly to the object. If something catches
your eye and you want to stop the pan,
press the Esc key.
Searching Specific Databases: By default,
Starry Night Pro 5.0 searches all of its
object databases when you use the Find
pane.
If you wish, you can
choose to search in only
a specific database, by
clicking the arrow on
the left side of the textbox in the Find
24 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
pane, and choosing the appropriate
database from the menu that appears.
“Object Databases
” on page 77 describes
each of the object databases included in
Starry Night Pro 5.0.
Enhanced Find: By default Starry Night
Pro 5.0 searches for objects whose name
begins with the first letters typed in the
text box at the top of the Find pane.
Clicking on the dropbox that reads “begin
with’ opens a menu with additional search
options. You can customize your search by
selecting to find objects that exactly
match, contain or end with the letters you
entered in the text box.
Solar System Object List: If you clear the
text box at the top of the Find pane, the list
of items found is replaced by a list of solar
system objects.
Click the symbol to the left
of an object’s name to
expand the list to include all other objects
that orbit this object.
For example,
clicking on this
symbol for Mars
will expand the list to include the moons
of Mars. Clicking again collapses the list
and hides Mars’s moons. You can doubleclick on any object in this list to centre on
the object in Starry Night Pro 5.0’s main
window.
Zooming In On Objects
Now that you know how to find objects,
you will probably want to know how to
zoom in for close-up views of spectacular
objects such as Saturn and the Andromeda
Galaxy.
The amount of sky that you can see is
called the
field of view. If it was possible
to see the entire hemisphere of sky that is
above the horizon at any time, you would
have a 180° field of view. Of course, this is
impossible. Including some peripheral
vision, the human eye can see
approximately a 100° field of view. If you
look through binoculars, the area you see
is a much smaller piece of the sky, which
means binoculars have a correspondingly
smaller field of view (usually 5° to 7° ).
Telescopes have an even smaller field of
view than binoculars.
Starry Night Pro 5.0 opens with a 100°
field of view. We call this the normal field
of view, since it approximates a view of
the sky that you would see with your own
eyes. Along the top right corner of the
Basics 25
toolbar is a set of zoom buttons which
adjusts your field of view.
Clicking the zoom button on
the right zooms in (reduces
your field of view), while clicking the
button on the left zooms out (increases
your field of view). Clicking the left zoom
button and holding your mouse button
restores your field of view to 100°. It is
important to remember that when you
zoom in on objects, you are not in fact
changing your location. Think of zooming
as looking through a more and more
powerful telescope, while your feet remain
firmly planted.
Note: You can also use the Magnification
tool to adjust your field of view. See
“Magnification Tool
” on page 28 for more
information on the Magnification tool.
Your exact field of
view is always listed
in the Zoom control of
the toolbar. If you
click on the arrow to
the right of the Zoom
display, a pull-down
menu opens which
allows you to choose
from several preset
fields of view.
Note: When you zoom in to a very small
field of view, your field of view will be
shown in
arcminutes. If you zoom in even
closer, your field of view will be shown in
arcseconds. One arcminute is 1/60 of a
degree, and one arcsecond is 1/60 of an
arcminute. The smallest field of view
which Starry Night Pro 5.0 can display is 1
arcsecond.
The compass image in
the upper right corner
(visible only when you
are using the field of
view controls or changing your viewing
direction) provides an excellent graphical
interpretation of the field of view. This
image shows how large a patch of sky is
being displayed in your current view. As
you zoom in, the patch of sky shrinks. As
you zoom out, the patch of sky expands.
The compass image also shows your
viewing direction.
Tip: To hide the compass, open the
Options pane, expand the Guides layer
and uncheck the “Show compass indicator
while scrolling” box.
Maximum Zoom Out: By default, you are
unable to zoom out past the standard view
of 100°. To zoom out to see an even larger
field of view, choose Preferences from the
File menu (Windows) or the
Starry Night Pro 5.0 menu (Macintosh),
choose General from the dropbox in the
upper left corner of the Preferences dialog
box, and check the box marked “Allow
Maximum Zoom Out”. Then continue
zooming out using the left zoom button
until you have a circular field of view of
180°, which is the entire hemisphere of
sky that is above the horizon at any one
time. This is the view of the sky that most
planispheres (handheld circular star
charts) represent.
26 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Changing the Zoom Step: If you choose
Preferences from the File menu
(Windows) or the Starry Night Pro 5.0
menu (Macintosh) and choose
Responsiveness from the dropbox in the
upper left corner of the Preferences dialog
box, you will see a slider named “Zoom
Step”. This slider adjusts the rate at which
Starry Night Pro 5.0 increases and
decreases your magnification when you
use the Zoom buttons. By setting this
slider farther to the right, you will zoom in
or out faster, because each zoom step will
be larger.
Angular Separation: Angular separation
provides another way of understanding
fields of view and angles in the sky. If you
point at an object and click and hold the
left mouse button and then drag the mouse
to a second object, a line appears which
connects the two objects. The
separation
between the two objects is
displayed, along with the direction of the
line and the actual distance between the
two objects (if known).
angular
The angular separation measures how far
apart in the sky two celestial bodies
appear. The entire sky is divided into 360°,
so an object which is directly in front of
you and an object directly behind you in
the sky have an angular separation of
180°. If you measure the angular
separation between two objects on
opposite sides of your screen, you should
find that it is very close to the field of view
that Starry Night Pro 5.0 is showing. Note
that the angular separation of two objects
has no connection to how far apart these
objects really are: two bodies which
appear side by side in the sky may be
hundreds of light years apart!
Example: Magnifying Jupiter
1Open the
“Jupiter”.
2 Double-click on Jupiter’s name in the
list to centre on Jupiter. If a dialog box
shows that Jupiter is beneath the horizon,
choose the
3 If Starry Night Pro 5.0 is displaying a
daylight sky, choose
from the menu to turn off daylight.
4 Click the “+” zoom button to slowly
zoom in on Jupiter. As you zoom in, Starry
Night Pro 5.0 automatically shows dimmer
stars. Once your field of view reaches
about 30 arcminutes, Jupiter will start to
look like a ball instead of a point.
Find pane and type in
Hide Horizon option.
View->Hide Daylight
5 Continue clicking the “+” zoom button
all the way until your field of view is about
Basics 27
6 arcminutes. Note that Jupiter will still not
fill the screen.
6 Press the “+” zoom button to continue
zooming in on Jupiter. Once you reach a
field of view of about 35 arcseconds, Jupiter should fill the screen.
7 Click the “-” zoom button and hold your
mouse button down to restore your field of
view to 100
°.
Learning More About Objects
For any object displayed
onscreen in Starry Night Pro
5.0, you can double-click on
the object to learn more about it. Doubleclicking will open the Info pane, which has
information on the object organized into
different categories. All of the information
fields in the Info pane are described in
detail in “Info Pane
” on page 88.
Tip: Right-clicking (Ctrl-click on the Mac)
on any object onscreen will open a
contextual menu of options. Select Show
Info from this menu to open the Info pane
and learn more about the object.
Printing Star Charts
Starry Night Pro 5.0 has a special set of
print settings which make printing
informative, legible charts a snap. You can
then take these charts outside to help with
your stargazing.
Centre on the area of sky you are
interested in, and use the zoom buttons to
set the correct field of view for your
printed chart. For example, if you want a
chart that shows the entire sky, centre on
the zenith, and set your field of view to
180°. Remember that the appearance of
the sky is time-sensitive, so make sure to
set the time in Starry Night Pro 5.0 to the
time that you plan to go outside to
observe!
Once you have set the time, viewing
direction and field of view, select
File->Print from the menu. You will get a
full-page printout of the area shown
onscreen.
Print Settings: If you choose
Preferences->General from the File menu
(Windows) or the Starry Night Pro 5.0
menu (Macintosh), you will see the
options “Use print settings when printing”
and “Use current settings when printing”.
These options control the appearance of
your printed chart: how many stars are
shown, how many objects are labelled, etc.
“Use print settings” will print star charts
using Starry Night Pro 5.0’s special print
settings file, while “Use current settings”
will print charts using the same settings
that you currently have onscreen. You can
also create custom print settings. See
“Customizing Print Settings
” on page 62
for more information.
28 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Tip: If you choose
Options->Presets->Print Settings from the
menu, Starry Night Pro 5.0 will apply its
special print settings to your screen view.
This allows you to see how a star chart
printed with these settings would look.
Tip: If you are interested in viewing a dim
object, and it is not labeled on the printed
chart you make, select it on the screen by
pointing the cursor at the object and
clicking on it. Its name should then appear
on screen with an arrow pointing to the
object. This is known as “selecting” an
object. See “Labeling Select Objects
” on
page 37 for more information on selecting
objects. If you print a new chart, the
selected object will now be labelled.
Tool Selection Control
Now that you know about some of the
major features in Starry Night Pro 5.0,
we’ll take a quick look at the Tool
Selection Control. This control (in the
upper left corner of the toolbar, to the left
of the time controls) alters the
functionality of the cursor, giving you
easier access to a variety of the program’s
features.
replaces the mouse pointer on your
computer screen.
Arrow Tool: Highlights objects in the
sky. To select multiple objects, press the
Shift key while making selections.
Hand Tool: Changes the direction in
which you are viewing. Use this tool to
drag the sky to the left or right, up or
down, until you reach the area you want to
see.
Tip: When using any other tool, you can
temporarily switch to the Hand tool by
holding down the keyboard’s space bar.
Constellation Tool: Selects
constellations. Choose this tool and click
anywhere in the sky to select the
constellation that contains that point.
Location Scroller: Changes the latitude
and longitude from which you are
observing. Dragging up or down adjusts
your latitude, while dragging left or right
adjusts your longitude. For example, while
viewing from Earth, you can use this tool
to quickly travel anywhere on the Earth’s
surface.
The Tool drop down menu contains a
number of selections. To use a tool, click
on its name. When selected, the tool’s icon
Tip: This tool is particularly useful when
you’ve lifted off into space and want to
adjust your view of the planet below you.
Angular Separation Tool: Displays the
angular separation between two objects, as
seen from your current viewing position.
Select the tool, click on one object, and
drag to another.
Magnification Tool: Magnifies your
current view. Select the tool and click
anywhere in the window to zoom in that
direction. To magnify a specific area of the
sky, hold down the mouse button and drag
to encompass the area you want
magnified.
Tip: Holding down the Ctrl key (Windows)
or the Option key (Macintosh) while using
the Zoom tool zooms you back out.
QTVR Tracker Tool: Changes your
viewing direction. Unlike the hand tool,
you don’t drag the sky around. When you
hold down the mouse button, the cursor
changes from a bull's eye icon to an arrow
icon that points in the direction you move
the mouse. The sky will move in the direction you are moving the cursor, and moves
faster the further you move the cursor with
the mouse button down. If a line appears in
front of the arrow cursor, it means you
have reached the limit of scrolling in that
direction. The QTVR tool is a fast way of
moving around the sky.
Basics 29
Adaptive Hand Tool: By default, the
adaptive hand tool is selected. This tool
allows you to change your viewing
direction. However, unlike the regular
Hand Tool, the adaptive hand tool can
change to other tools automatically. For
example, it will change to a selection tool
when you point to a selectable object, a
location scroller when viewing from space
or an angular separation tool when you
click-hold on an object and drag to
another.
30 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Chapter 3
Appearance of the Sky
Unlike the real world, Starry Night Pro 5.0 allows
you to modify the sky’s appearance to best suit
your needs. You can display illustrations of the
classical constellations, show only the artificial
satellites circling overhead, or customize your
view in dozens of other ways. This chapter will
look at all of the functions that let you modify
Starry Night Pro 5.0’s simulation of the night sky.
Sky Contextual Menu
You can open a
contextual menu in
Starry Night Pro 5.0 by
pointing the cursor at any
area of the sky and rightclicking (Ctrl-click on the
Mac). If you are pointing
the cursor at a specific
object, the contextual
menu will provide
options specific to that object. If you were not
pointing the cursor at a specific object, the menu
gives you options for the appearance of the sky as
a whole and the constellation which you are
pointing at. Many of the most used functions
relating to the appearance of the sky are in this
contextual menu (for example, turning the
horizon on/off, turning daylight on/off, turning
light pollution on/off).
32 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Options Pane
Many of the options for modifying the
appearance of the sky are in the Options
pane. The Options pane is organized in a
layered framework, based on the distance
of various celestial objects from Earth.
Controls for altering the appearance of the
sky are slotted into the appropriate layer.
For example, controls for adjusting the
appearance of the planets fall into the
“Solar System” layer. Any of the layers in
the Options pane can be expanded by
clicking the expand button to the left of the
layer’s name.
3 Stars. Controls for objects outside the
solar system, but inside the Milky Way.
For example, stars, extrasolar planets,
and the appearance of the Milky Way
itself.
4 Deep Space. Controls for objects
outside our galaxy. For example, other
galaxies.
Tip: This layer also includes databases
that include objects both within and
outside of our galaxy. For example, the
Messier database includes globular
clusters, which are inside our galaxy, but it
also includes other galaxies, so it is
classified in the “Deep Space” layer.
Guides and constellations do not fall
naturally into this layered scheme, so they
are given their own layers. Finally, certain
databases overlap with other databases, so
their controls are placed in the “Other”
layer. See “Databases 4 (Other)
” on
page 81 to see which objects fall into this
category.
Most controls fall naturally into one of
four layers. These layers correspond with
different databases - see
“Introduction to Databases
” on page 78 for
a description of these databases.
1 Local View. Controls that affect the
view of the sky from your location. For
example, turning the horizon on/off.
2 Solar System. Controls for objects in
our solar system. For example, planets,
comets, and asteroids.
Appearance of the Sky 33
Most of the object classes listed in the
Options pane have special options
associated with them. Clicking on the
object name in the pane will open a dialog
box with options for that object class. For
example, clicking on the word “Comets”
in the Options pane (“Solar System” layer)
will open a dialog box with options for
altering the appearance of comets.
Light
Many celestial objects are only visible
during certain times of the year. At other
times in the year, they are above the
horizon only during the daytime, when
they are washed out by the Sun’s light.
With Starry Night Pro 5.0, you can get
around this problem by selecting
View->Hide Daylight from the menu, or
unchecking “Daylight” in the Options pane
(Local View). This turns on or off the
effects of a planet’s atmosphere, including
the scattering of light which makes our sky
appear blue. If it is daytime and you turn
daylight off, you will be able to see the
stars which are normally hidden.
Tip: This feature works on any planet
which has an atmosphere. On Mars, the
atmosphere scatters sunlight and makes
the sky look pink. Turning off daylight
eliminates this effect. Our Moon has no
atmosphere, so turning daylight off on its
surface has no effect.
Tip: Use the brightness slider to the right
of an object class name to control how
bright these objects appear onscreen.
Brightness Slider
Light Pollution: There may be times when
you want to add light, instead of
eliminating it. This is because the default
night view in Starry Night Pro 5.0 assumes
the observer is far from bright lights, under
dark skies. As a result, many stars are
visible, perhaps too many for the urban
stargazer.
Even on a perfectly cloudless and
moonless night, an observer in a big city
will not see anywhere near the number of
34 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
stars which his or her counterpart in the
country will see. Starry Night Pro 5.0
allows you to mimic the effects of light
pollution, showing only the brighter stars
and making the sky more closely resemble
what you see from home. To turn light
pollution on or off, check or uncheck the
“Light Pollution” box in the “Local View”
layer of the Options pane.
Distant Light Pollution: Even when we
live in an area of low local light pollution
there is often a source of artificial light on
the horizon. A nearby city for example,
can create a light pollution dome, washing
out celestial objects that are low on the
horizon. You can add light pollution
domes for one or more nearby cities.
Click the “+” button in the Distant Light
Pollution section of the dialog box to bring
up another dialog box that will allow you
to name the light source, set the direction
and control the intensity of the light
pollution dome.
To add the light pollution dome of a
nearby city, click on “Distant Light
Pollution” in the “Local View” layer of the
Options pane. This will open a dialog box
with options for adding distant light
pollution sources.
Your new distant light pollution entry will
be added under “Distant Light Pollution”
in the Options pane (“Local View” layer).
Tip: You can also turn on light pollution
by right-clicking (Ctrl-click on the Mac) on
the background sky in the main window.
This will open a contextual menu with two
light pollution options: Local Light
Pollution and Distant Light Pollution.
Tip: Another way to customize light
pollution levels is to specify a limiting
magnitude for celestial objects, especially
stars. See “Constrain
” on page 38 for
more information.
Changing the Horizon
By default, Starry Night Pro 5.0 shows a
photorealistic horizon. However, there
may be times when you wish to hide the
horizon (for example, to view a close-up
image of an object that is beneath the
horizon). You can turn the horizon on/off
by checking/unchecking the “Local
Horizon” checkbox in the Options pane
(“Local View” layer), or by choosing View-
>Hide Horizon from the main menu. By
choosing
Options->Other Options->Local Horizon
Appearance of the Sky 35
from the main menu, a dialog box with
options for changing the horizon appears.
Horizon Style: You can choose from one of
three horizon types. Flat horizons have no
variation in elevation or scenery. Custom
horizons are illustrated horizons with
images of trees, hills and clouds. See
“Custom Horizons
information on modifying custom
horizons. Photorealistic horizons are
panoramic images. A pull-down menu lets
you choose from one of several horizon
images and also cloud types.
Note: If you do not have an OpenGL
compatible graphics card, you will not be
able to view the photorealistic horizons, so
you will probably want to use the custom
horizon type.
Options: The standard horizon view is
opaque, but you can make it semitransparent by checking “Translucent” or
reduce the horizon to a thin line by
checking “Outline”. This will help you
determine which objects and
” on page 152 for
36 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
constellations are about to rise above the
horizon.
By default, Starry Night Pro 5.0
displays compass points on the
horizon. If you find that you don’t use or
need them, you can turn them off by
unchecking “Show Compass Points”.
Displaying Celestial Objects
Checkboxes in the Options pane for each
database of celestial objects let you turn on
or off these databases. See
“Object Databases
complete listing of the object databases
included in Starry Night Pro 5.0. You can
turn databases on/off so that only the
objects that you are interested in appear
onscreen. For example, you may want to
find out which of the many points of light
shown onscreen represent planets. By
turning the database of stars off, it will be
much easier to identify the planets.
” on page 77 for a
If a database is turned off, no objects from
this database will be displayed. However,
if a database is turned on, not all of the
objects in the database will be displayed.
There are two reasons for this. First,
several databases are very large. It would
be impossible for Starry Night Pro 5.0 to
draw all 16 million stars in its database
onscreen at one time! Second, Starry Night
Pro 5.0 strives to present a realistic
representation of the sky, so it only shows
those objects bright enough to be visible.
As you zoom in to a smaller field of view,
dimmer objects are automatically shown
(remember that zooming in is equivalent
to looking through a more powerful
telescope). Many databases have options
that let you adjust how many objects are
displayed. See
“Celestial Object Display Options
page 38 for more information.
By default, all databases are turned on,
with the exception of those databases in
the “Other” layer, which are turned off
because they may overlap with the core
databases. See “Databases 4 (Other)
page 81 for a listing of these “other”
databases.
” on
” on
Tip: You can also turn databases on/off by
choosing View from the main menu and
checking the appropriate database.
Appearance of the Sky 37
Labeling Celestial Objects
In “Labeling Objects
” on page 22, you
learned how to turn on labels for all types
of objects. You can also selectively choose
which types of objects to label. To the
right of each database listed in the
Options pane is a “labels” checkbox.
Checking this option will label the
brightest members of this database.
Labeling certain object types makes it
easier to identify these objects. For
example, deep space objects may be hard
to identify among the glare of the brighter
stars and planets. By labeling only deep
space objects, these objects will be easy to
locate.
change the label colour for selected
objects by choosing Preferences from the
File menu (Windows) or the
Starry Night Pro 5.0 menu (Macintosh),
choosing General from the dropbox in the
upper left corner of the Preferences dialog
box, and clicking on the “Selection
colour” rectangle.
Database Label Options: You have great
control over how labels appear in Starry
Night Pro 5.0. You can change, the size,
colour, font and number of labels for each
database. See “Label Options
” on page 47
for more information.
Tip: You can also turn database labels on/
off by choosing Labels from the main menu
and checking the appropriate database.
Labeling Select Objects: If you only want
to label a few specific objects, point the
cursor at the first object, and click the left
mouse button. This “selects” the object,
and its label will appear, along with an
arrow pointing to the object. For
subsequent objects, hold down the Shift
key and click on the object. You can
deselect all objects by choosing
Edit->Select None from the menu. You can
38 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Celestial Object Display Options
As mentioned in “Displaying Celestial
Objects” on page 36, clicking on a
database name in the Options pane will
open a dialog box with display options for
that database. The options fall into two
categories: options for displaying the
objects in the database, and options for
displaying the labels for these objects.
This section focuses on the options for
displaying the objects, while
“Label Options
” on page 47 will look at
label options.
Tip: You can also access database options
by choosing Options from the main menu
and selecting the appropriate database.
Some display options are common to all
object databases, while some are specific
to certain databases.
displayed onscreen. Moving the slider to
the right will display more objects.
Constrain: If this box is checked, only
objects that fall within the
magnitude
range that you specify will be
apparent
displayed onscreen. For example, if you
live in a city, and your naked eye
magnitude
is around 4.00, you could use
limiting
this function so that Starry Night Pro 5.0
displays all stars whose magnitudes are
between -2 and 4. That way, what you see
on the computer screen will be similar to
what you actually see while observing
from your urban location.
You may also want to use this control to
simulate your telescope view on a given
night. If you know the magnitude of the
dimmest star that your telescope can make
out, setting the “Dimmer” end of the slider
to this magnitude gives you a good idea of
what you can view through your
instrument.
Most (but not all) databases have these
three options:
Number of objects: This slider controls
how many objects from this database are
Tip: The “Constrain” function only
displays a subset of the objects that would
be shown if this function was turned off.
For example, assume you want to increase
the number of stars onscreen so that all
stars brighter than magnitude 7 are
visible. If you are at a 100° field of view,
then Starry Night Pro 5.0 will only show
stars up to a magnitude of 5.7, by default.
Increasing the apparent magnitude range
using the “Constrain” function would
have no effect. To increase the number of
stars shown, you would first move the
“Show” slider farther to the right (so that
stars as dim as magnitude 7 are now
visible), and then use the “Constrain”
function to ensure that no stars dimmer
than magnitude 7 are shown.
Appearance of the Sky 39
Many databases have unique options. We
will look at these options in the next few
sections.
Star Display Options
There are more options for displaying stars
than for any other database of objects in
Starry Night Pro 5.0. Many of these
options can be turned on/off from a
checkbox in the Options pane, while
clicking the option name will often open a
dialog box with more controls.
Click the words “Limit by Distance” in the
Options pane to open a dialog box that lets
you set numeric values for limiting by
distance or magnitude.
Mark Binaries/Mark Variables/Mark Stars
With Extrasolar Planets:
These options let
you display special markers for variable
stars (stars whose brightness varies),
binary stars (double stars that orbit around
a common center of mass), or stars that are
known to harbour planets. Variable stars
are marked with one of four symbols,
according to how much they vary in
brightness.
Limit By Distance/Magnitude: These
options let you set up Starry Night Pro 5.0
to display only those stars whose distance
from Earth or whose apparent magnitude
(brightness) fall within a certain range.
One use of this function would be to
identify which bright stars are within 100
light years (for example) of Earth.
Tip: If you turn on markers for extrasolar
planets, the star’s Info pane will include
information about the extrasolar planet,
such as the planet’s mass and distance
from its central star. See
“Extrasolar planet information fields
” on
page 92 for more details.
Proper Motion Vectors: Every star is
moving rapidly through space, in a unique
direction. However, because the stars are
so far away, they appear to remain in the
same place in the sky. Only over thousands
of years can we see the stars shift position
with respect to each other. This slow
40 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
movement of the stars is called proper
. Starry Night Pro 5.0 lets you
motion
display proper motion vectors, lines that
represent the speed and direction of each
star’s motion. The length of a star’s proper
motion vector indicates its relative speed.
The Proper Motion Options dialog box has
a “vector scaling” option that allows you
to change the length of all proper motion
vectors, and a “vector colour” option that
allows you to change the colour of these
vectors.
Additional Star Options: The main Star
Options dialog box lets you control how
many stars are displayed and how they are
labeled.
It also has a “3D Positions” slider that lets
you determine how many stars are drawn
in the correct position in 3-dimensional
space. This feature is only useful when
your viewing location is outside the solar
system, in such a manner that you can see
the 3-dimensional arrangement of the stars
in our solar neighbourhood. See
“Changing Your Viewing Location
” on
page 102 to learn how to change your
viewing location. “Only show 3D stars
when outside Solar System” hides those
stars for which we do not have accurate 3dimensional positions, making it easier to
see the 3-dimensional structure of our
solar neighbourhood.
Appearance of the Sky 41
Example: Isolating the Hyades
Cluster
This example will show you how to use
the star display options to separate stars in
the Hyades cluster from other stars.
1 Turn off daylight and hide the horizon
by checking the appropriate boxes in the
Options pane (“Local View” layer).
2 Ensure that the star database (in the
“Stars” layer of the
on, and the “Bright NGC Objects” database
(in the “Deep Space” layer) is turned off.
We need to do this because the Hyades is
an object in the “Bright NGC Objects”
database - and that would be too easy!
3Open the
“Epsilon Tauri”. This is a bright star in the
Hyades cluster. Double-click on this star’s
name to centre on the Hyades cluster.
4 Use the zoom buttons in the toolbar to
zoom in to a field of view of about 15°.
5 Turn on proper motion vectors for stars,
using the checkbox in the
(“Stars” layer). Increase the length of
proper motion vectors to maximum, by
pulling the “Vector scaling” slider in the
“Proper Motion Vectors Options” dialog box
all the way to the right. You should see
that many of the stars have vectors
pointing in the same direction, indicating
that they are moving together through
space and are part of the same cluster.
However, many other stars, such as the
bright star Aldebaran, are moving in very
different directions.
6 Open the “Limit by Distance Options”
dialog box for stars. Check “Limit stars by
distance” and set the distance range from
140 to 170 light years, the distance of the
Hyades cluster. This will cause almost all
stars that do not belong to the cluster to
disappear, leaving only stars in the Hyades
cluster, all with proper motion vectors
pointing in the same direction. Those few
stars with vectors pointing in different
directions (likely not cluster members) are
now very easy to identify.
Options pane) is turned
Find pane and type in
Options pane
Star Brightness, Contrast &
Colour
Starry Night Pro 5.0 gives you complete
control over the brightness, contrast, and
colour of star display. To access these
options, choose Preferences from the File
menu (Windows) or the Starry Night Pro
5.0 menu (Macintosh) and select
Brightness/Contrast from the dropbox in
the upper left corner of the Preferences
dialog box.
The Star type dropbox lets you choose
from several different types of star images.
This preference will be applied to every
star drawn onscreen. Try testing out each
of these different star images and seeing
which one you prefer.
The “Min/max star size” slider determines
how large stars appear onscreen.
The Range slider increases or decreases
the size distinction between the brightest
42 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
and dimmest objects in the sky, while the
Contrast slider increases or decreases the
colour distinction between the brightest
and dimmest objects in the sky. If you’re
viewing from an urban location, you may
want to decrease the contrast so that Starry
Night Pro 5.0’s display is closer to your
physical view. If you’re viewing from a
rural location, you can increase the
contrast to view a more diverse night sky.
A star’s colour is determined by its surface
temperature, ranging from blue (hottest) to
red (coolest). The Colour slider increases
and decreases the extent to which Starry
Night Pro 5.0 displays star colour. Pulling
the Colour slider to the right shows more
and more of the full spectrum of star
colours, to an extent you would never see
from Earth. Pulling the Colour slider to the
left strips away colour distinctions until all
stars appear white.
Planet Display Options
Starry Night Pro 5.0 gives you many
options for the display of our Sun and its
planets and moons. A variety of guides are
also available to give you perspective.
At a 100° field of view, planets are
displayed like stars, which is how they
appear to us from Earth’s surface. As you
get closer to a planet (by zooming in on
the planet or by changing your location)
you begin to see the disc image and any
phase information.
Starry Night Pro 5.0 depicts the planets
using the latest images from NASA and
other space agencies. Unfortunately, we
have not yet been able to fully image all of
the objects in our solar system. Where
little or no data is available, Starry Night
Appearance of the Sky 43
Pro 5.0 uses the time-honored tradition of
deploying space artists to create the
surfaces of distant worlds as seen from
space, such as Pluto, Charon, and Saturn’s
moon Phoebe.
Several of the planet images in Starry
Night Pro 5.0 were created or enhanced by
astronomy enthusiasts.
Choose Help->Image Credits from the
menu to see thumbnails and credits for the
planet surface images and the images of
deep space objects.
Earth/Moon Shadow Outlines: Earth and
the Moon cast shadows upon one another
in certain alignments with the sun. The
two circles of this target represent the
limits of the umbral and penumbral
shadows projected out at the Earth/Moon
distance. The umbral shadow encloses the
area experiencing a total eclipse, while the
penumbral shadow encloses the area
experiencing a partial eclipse. This feature
is useful when watching a solar eclipse
from the Moon — you can see the Moon’s
shadow approaching Earth before it
actually casts its shadow upon Earth.
Show Atmosphere: You can turn off the
atmospheres of objects that possess an
atmosphere, such as the Sun, Venus, and
Earth. This allows you to see the rocky
surface of Venus, instead of seeing the
almost featureless cloud cover. Turning
the Sun’s atmosphere off shows the Sun as
it would appear when viewed through a
hydrogen-alpha filter.
Surface Guides: You can turn on several
types of guides to help you determine a
planet’s orientation in space, or to locate
features on the planet surface.
The grid draws planetary lines of latitude
and longitude. You can also turn on the
planet meridian and equator lines. The
pole sticks show you the north and south
poles of the planet. Grid numbers mark the
lines of latitude and longitude on the grid.
In the following image, we magnified
Jupiter and turned on all of its surface
guides.
Dark Side: For more realistic and exciting
viewing, you can choose to display the
dark sides of planets. The slider lets you
control the sharpness of the transition
between the dark and lit side.
Specular Reflection: This feature is only
available with OpenGL graphics cards. It
realistically models the Sun’s glare.
44 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Comet, Asteroid & Satellite
Display Options
Brightness: For these three classes of
objects, a slider lets you adjust the
apparent brightness of the objects. For
comets, the slider actually adjusts the
brightness of the comet tail. You also have
the option to turn comet tails off entirely.
Orbit Colour: This rectangle lets you
choose a new colour for the orbit lines of
these objects. See “Orbits
” on page 108
for more information on object orbits.
Messier Objects/Bright NGC
Objects/User Images Display
Options
These databases have a specific image
associated with each object. Most of the
images from the “Messier” and “Bright
NGC Objects” databases were
photographed by astronomy enthusiasts.
Choose Help->Image Credits from the
menu to see thumbnails and credits for the
planet surface images and the images of
deep space objects.
Starry Night Pro 5.0 lets you adjust the
brightness of images using the slider
provided. Using this control, you can
adjust the image so that its brightness
appears as it would through a backyard
telescope (as a very dim image), or as
captured by a long exposure observatory
photograph (a much brighter image). You
also have the option of selecting to display
the outlines for these objects instead of
their images.
Milky Way Display Options
By default, Starry Night Pro 5.0 displays a
stunning photographic image of the band
of the Milky Way. If you find this image is
too bright, you can use the Brightness
slider to tone down the image brightness,
or uncheck the Milky Way box in the
Options pane, to turn off the image
entirely.
Tully Database Display Options
One of the core databases in Starry Night
Pro 5.0 contains 28 000 nearby galaxies
plotted in 3-D. This database was
compiled by astronomer Brent Tully and
colleagues, hence it is referred to as the
Tully Collection. This galaxy database is
very special because it shows the 3-D
position in space of each galaxy, not just
the galaxy’s position as seen from Earth.
In Starry Night Pro 5.0 you have great
control over how this database is displayed
onscreen. To open the “Tully Database
Options” dialog box, click on the words
“Tully 3D Database” in the Deep Space
layer of the Options pane.
Appearance of the Sky 45
You will find the following options:
Bounding boxes: If you have “Entire
dataset” checked, all galaxies will be
surrounded by a 3-dimensional box, letting
you see the spacial area occupied by the
Tully Collection. “Selected filaments/
groups” will only draw a box around the
filaments/groups you have selected.
Magnification: When a galaxy is very
close, it is represented by a full-colour
image instead of a dot. This slider lets you
enlarge these galaxy images. The “correct”
position of the slider is all the way to the
left-this will draw galaxies the proper size,
and you will rarely see more than one or
two galaxy images onscreen at the same
time. Moving the slider to the right allows
you to see many galaxy images at the same
time, producing some spectacular views.
Visibility range: Use this slider to display
only those galaxies that lie within a certain
range. If you move the slider all the way to
the left, only those nearby galaxies that are
bright enough will be displayed, moving
46 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
the slider all the way to the right will
display all the galaxies in the Tully
Collection at the same time.
Colour saturation: Each different type of
galaxy is represented with its own colour
image. The dots used to represent a distant
galaxy are the same colour as the full-size
image. Moving this slider to the right
makes the colour of the dots closer to that
of the galaxy image, while moving the
slider to the left strips away all colour
distinctions until all galaxies are
represented by white dots. The advantage
of having the slider far to the right is that
you can quickly identify galaxy type, for
example, a cluster of blue dots indicates a
group of elliptical galaxies. The
disadvantage is that the sky becomes
gaudy and unrealistic-looking.
Brightness: When a galaxy is too far away
for its image to be visible, Starry Night Pro
5.0 will represent its position in space with
a dot. This slider controls the brightness of
these dots. The ideal position of this slider
will depend on the brightness of your
monitor and the lighting conditions in your
computer room. Moving this slider to the
right makes the dots larger and brighter,
while moving it to the left makes the dots
smaller and dimmer.
you have clicked on. Some of the options
specific to the Tully Collection are
described below. But first lets look at some
terms you may not be familiar with.
Groups are gravitationally bound clumps
of galaxies. Membership can range from a
few to a few thousand galaxies. Large
groups are also known as clusters.
Filaments - or their kin walls, clouds, and
arcs - are formations of galaxies in
expanding space, which are not
necessarily gravitationally bound. These
formations can be string-like or sheet-like.
They can have curvature like a bow or like
a sail. Filaments can be grouped together
into even larger structures called filament
families.
Selecting Filaments and Groups in
the Tully Database
When exploring the Tully Collection of
galaxies, you can get more information by
pointing the cursor at an object (you
should see the cursor icon change to a
pointer) and then right-click or Ctrl-click
(Macintosh). This opens a contextual
menu with specific options for the object
Centre Sun: If you are centered on another
galaxy, selecting Centre Sun will move
your view so that you are looking towards
the Sun (and hence our galaxy the Milky
Way). If you are centered on the Sun, you
can use the elevation buttons in the toolbar
to go back to our solar system.
Centre Group: Each galaxy belongs to a
larger group of galaxies. This option will
Appearance of the Sky 47
place that group at the centre of your
screen.
Highlight Group: This displays a special
marker for all other galaxies that are in the
same group as the object you have clicked
on.
Centre Filament: Many (but not all)
galaxies can also be classified as
belonging to a filament. This option
centres on the filament containing your
object.
Highlight Filament: This displays a
special marker for all galaxies belonging
to the same filament as the object you have
clicked on.
Other Object Display Options
The options for other databases in Starry
Night Pro 5.0 vary greatly. Open the
Options dialog box for any database to see
its display options.
Label Options
Every database in Starry Night Pro 5.0 has
label options. To access these options,
open the Options pane and click on the
name of the database you are interested in.
This will open the “display options” dialog
box for this database. The label options
will be at the bottom of the dialog box.
Most databases share the following label
options:
Appearance: For all databases, you have
the option of changing the label
appearance. Dropboxes allow you to
change the font and size of the label, and
choose whether you want the labels to be
in bold or italics.
Colour: This determines the colour that
labels appear onscreen. Click on the colour
bars to choose a new label colour. Many
users use different label colours for each of
the major databases, making it easier to
quickly distinguish between planets, stars,
and deep space objects.
48 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Number of Labels: A slider allows you to
change the number of objects that are
labeled onscreen for each database. If the
slider is near the left edge, only the
brightest members of the database will be
labeled. As you move the slider farther to
the right, dimmer objects will be labeled as
well.
Some other label options appear only for
certain databases. These options are listed
below:
Label by magnitude slider: This is an
option for planets/moons, comets,
asteroids, and artificial satellites (it
replaces the “Number of Labels” slider).
By default, Starry Night will not label an
object if it is too dim to appear on screen.
You can change this option. For example,
you may wish to know the position of all
the planets. Pluto and Neptune are
generally too dim to be seen, but by
selecting this option, you will still be able
to see where they are in the sky.
Constellations
People have always joined together
patterns of stars to create images in the
night sky. The most well known of these
are those that have been handed down to
us from the Arabs, Greeks, and Romans.
Astronomers use these ancient
constellations as a guide to map the stars
into various regions. Today the
International Astronomical Union
recognizes 88 unique constellations, which
together cover the entire sky. Many of the
best-known figures in the sky, such as the
Big Dipper and the Summer Triangle, are
not formal constellations, but are known as
asterisms. Starry Night Pro 5.0 has many
options for drawing the constellations. All
constellation options can be accessed by
expanding the “Constellations” layer in
the Options pane.
Star Label Options: The “Show” dropbox
in the Star Options dialog box allows you
to label a star by its common name,
catalogue number, Bayer letter, or
Flamsteed number. Most common names
are thousands of years old and have an
Arabic origin. The classification scheme
for Bayer letters and Flamsteed numbers is
discussed in “Bayer
” on page 89. You can
also choose to show the magnitude of
stars, an option that is particularly useful
for printed charts, as you will often use the
brightness of an object to help you
determine if you are looking at the right
object.
Auto Identify: Checking this box will
highlight the constellation which is at the
centre of the screen. If you scroll around
the screen, the highlighted constellation
will change.
Tip: Clicking on the words “Auto
Identify” opens a dialog box that lets you
choose how to display the highlighted
constellations. The display options are the
same as for displaying all constellations
(name, boundary, stick figure or classical
illustration), except they only apply to the
highlighted constellation. If you choose to
display an illustration, you can also
control the brightness of this illustration.
Appearance of the Sky 49
Illustrations: Checking this box displays
classical illustrations for the
constellations.
Labels: Checking this box turns on or off
constellation labels.
Stick Figures: Turns on or off stick figures
for the constellations.
Constellation Options: Clicking on the
words “Boundaries”, “Labels”, or “Stick
Figures” will open the Constellation
Options dialog box.
Boundaries: Checking this box displays
the boundaries of the 88 official
constellations.
This dialog box lets you adjust the colour
of the constellation figures, boundaries
and labels. You can also adjust the size and
font of the labels. For the labels, a dropbox
lets you choose whether to display the
constellation’s astronomical name, its
common translation, or both. For the stick
figures, you can choose from several
different figure sets.
50 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
You can draw stick
figures using either
the standard
astronomical figures,
or those popularized
by H.A. Rey in his book The Stars, a New
Way to See Them. These figures closely
resemble the names of the constellations.
For example, Ursa Major, the Great Bear,
is depicted as a stylized bear. To get the
figures to match the names, Rey had to
take some liberties, so it may be difficult
to match these figures to what you actually
see in the sky. You can also choose to draw
only the constellations of the Zodiac.
Finally, you can draw the asterisms, stick
figures that are not formal constellations.
It is also possible to create your own stick
figures. See “Custom Asterisms
” on
page 155 for information on creating your
own figures.
Note: It is not possible to view more than
one set of stick figures onscreen at the
same time.
By default Starry Night shows the
“Classical” image set for constellation
illustrations. If you have more than one set
of illustrations, you can select which one
to display from the “Image set” dropbox.
Guides 1 (Co-ordinate Systems)
The Guides layer in the Options pane
allows you to display reference points and
grids for different astronomical coordinate systems. These co-ordinate
systems can be used to help you locate
objects in the sky. This section describes
the five co-ordinate systems used in Starry
Night Pro 5.0, while the next section
describes the options in the Guides layer
that control the display of these coordinate systems.
Looking up into the night sky, you can
imagine that the stars are fixed on the
inside of an imaginary sphere surrounding
our planet. To specify locations on this
celestial sphere, astronomers use a
spherical system of co-ordinates similar to
the latitude and longitude measurements
used to map Earth.
All spherical co-ordinate systems require
two independent co-ordinates, which are
determined by an object’s distance in the
sky from two “great circles” which are
perpendicular to each other. For example,
the great circles in Earth’s latitude/
longitude co-ordinate system are the
Equator (which runs east-west) and the
Prime Meridian (which runs north-south).
Starry Night Pro 5.0 uses five different coordinate systems: alt/az, equatorial,
ecliptic, galactic and extra-galactic. The
most commonly used systems are the
alt/az and equatorial systems.
Tip: You can find the co-ordinates of any
object in any of these co-ordinate systems
using the Info pane. See “Info Pane
” on
page 88 for more details.
Alt/Az: The alt/az co-ordinate system is
the most useful system for figuring out
where to actually look in the sky to find a
particular object. The two co-ordinates in
this system are the altitude and the
azimuth. The
altitude measures how high
above the horizon an object is, and is
usually measured in degrees. An altitude
of 0° means the object is right on the
horizon, and an altitude of 90° means the
Appearance of the Sky 51
object is directly overhead. Azimuth
measures the compass direction of an
object. An object which is due north in the
sky has an azimuth of 0°, one that is due
east has an azimuth of 90°, and one that is
due south has an azimuth of 180°. The
local meridian is the line passing directly
overhead in the sky that runs from 0°
azimuth (due north) to 180° azimuth (due
south).
Equatorial (aka Celestial): The equatorial
co-ordinate system is the most common
system for describing the position of
objects in the sky. Its two co-ordinates are
declination and right ascension.
Declination is the astronomical equivalent
of latitude. It measures an object’s angular
distance north or south of the
equator
, which is simply a projection of
celestial
Earth’s equator into space (an object of 0°
declination is directly on the celestial
equator). Because of this, objects with
positive declination can be seen more
easily in the Northern Hemisphere, and
objects with negative declination can be
seen more easily from the Southern
Hemisphere. Declination is usually
measured in degrees, arcminutes, and
arcseconds (°, ', "). Polaris, the North Star,
has a declination of almost 90 degrees.
The east-west measurement is called the
right ascension (RA), and is most often
measured in hours, minutes, and seconds
(h, m, s), from 0 to 24 hours. Because
Earth rotates, it is not possible to equate
longitude on earth with right ascension.
Think of lines of right ascension as
longitude lines which are fixed in space,
not rotating with the Earth-centred lines of
longitude. The zero-point of right
ascension (RA) is defined to be the right
ascension of the sun at the
Vernal Equinox,
which is the first day of spring in the
Northern Hemisphere.
Earth is precessing on its axis of rotation
(picture a spinning top which does not
point straight up but instead moves in an
arc around the vertical) with a period of
26 000 years. Because of this, the Vernal
Equinox slowly changes over time and so
do the equatorial co-ordinates of an object.
These changes are quite small and often
unimportant for the amateur astronomer.
To standardize astronomical positions,
astronomers often refer to an object’s
position using the co-ordinate system of a
particular date. For example you will often
see positions given in J2000 co-ordinates,
using the equatorial co-ordinate system of
Jan 1, 2000. Starry Night Pro 5.0’s Info
pane displays equatorial co-ordinates for
the current time (JNow) and for the year
2000 (J2000).
Note: The book Starry Night Companion
(included with your copy of Starry Night
Pro 5.0) has more information on using
the alt/az and equatorial co-ordinate
systems.
Ecliptic: This reference system uses
ecliptic latitude and longitude as its two
co-ordinates. Ecliptic latitude is similar to
declination, except the line of 0° latitude is
the
ecliptic line (a projection onto the
celestial sphere of the plane of Earth’s
revolution around the Sun), instead of the
plane of Earth’s equator. Notice the
constellations which the ecliptic line
passes through - these are the familiar
zodiac constellations. The Sun will always
be found directly on the ecliptic line,
52 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
passing through the constellations of the
zodiac over the course of a year. Because
the planets all move in almost the same
plane, with the exception of Pluto, they
will all be found close to the ecliptic line.
Ecliptic longitude has the vernal equinox
as its zero point.
Galactic: This system uses the centre of
the Milky Way as a reference point. Its
co-ordinates are galactic latitude and
galactic longitude. Galactic latitude
describes how far an object is from the
plane of the Milky Way (an object with a
galactic latitude of 0° is in the plane of the
Milky Way). The zero point of galactic
longitude points directly toward the
galaxy’s centre.
Extra-Galactic: The co-ordinates of this
system are extra-galactic latitude and
longitude. A large fraction of the nearest
few thousand galaxies from Earth are
concentrated in a narrow band. The centre
of this band is defined as the plane of 0°
extra-galactic latitude, the extra-galactic
equator.
Recall that all of these options are in the
“Guides” layer of the Options pane.
Axes: Displays a 3-dimensional set of
reference axes and/or a reference plane for
the co-ordinate system in question.
Options for changing the look of the
reference axes are in the Guides Options
dialog box. It is not possible to turn on
reference axes for the alt/az system.
Guides 2 (Display Options)
Now that you know what each of the
different co-ordinate systems are, let’s
look at the options in Starry Night Pro 5.0
for displaying markers for these systems.
Equator: Displays the line of 0° “latitude”
for the co-ordinate system in question. For
the alt/az system, this is the horizon line.
For the equatorial system, this is the
celestial equator, a projection of Earth’s
equator into space. For the ecliptic system,
this is the ecliptic line, a projection of the
plane of Earth’s orbit around the Sun onto
the celestial sphere. For the galactic
system, this is the galactic equator, a line
passing through the centre of the band of
the Milky Way.
Grid: Displays a grid with the latitude and
longitude gridlines for the co-ordinate
system in question. As you change your
Appearance of the Sky 53
field of view, the grid spacing will
automatically change. You can change the
default spacing of these gridlines in the
Guides Options dialog box.
Meridian: Displays the line of 0°
“longitude” for the co-ordinate system in
question. For the alt/az system, this is the
local meridian, a line running from due
north along the horizon through the zenith,
through to due south along the horizon.
For the equatorial system, this is the
Celestial Meridian, the line of 0° right
ascension which passes through the Vernal
Equinox.
Poles: Displays markers for the points at
“latitudes” of 90° N and 90° S for the
co-ordinate system in question. For the alt/
az system, these are the zenith (the point in
the sky directly above your head) and the
nadir (the point directly below your feet).
For the equatorial system, these are
projections of Earth’s north and south
poles, known as the
Celestial poles
North and South
, respectively.
first day of summer (in the Northern
Hemisphere), while the
Winter Solstice is
the Sun’s position relative to the stars on
the first day of winter. More precisely,
they are the Sun’s positions in the sky at
the two exact times when the plane of
Earth’s equator is inclined at the largest
angle (about 23.5 degrees) to the plane
determined by Earth’s revolution around
the Sun.
Guides Options: Clicking on the words
“XXX Guides” in the Options pane will
open the Guides Options dialog box for
the co-ordinate system in question.
Vernal/Autumnal Equinox: Displays
markers for the Vernal and Autumnal
Equinoxes. The
Vernal Equinox is the
Sun’s position relative to the stars on the
first day of spring (in the Northern
Hemisphere), while the
Autumnal Equinox
is the Sun’s position relative to the stars on
the first day of fall. More precisely, they
are the Sun’s positions in the sky at the
two exact times when the plane of Earth’s
equator is the same as the plane defined by
Earth’s revolution around the Sun.
Summer/Winter Solstice: Displays
markers for the Summer and Winter
Solstices. The
Summer Solstice is the
Sun’s position relative to the stars on the
You can change the colour of the markers,
gridlines, and reference axes. You can also
turn on/off numerical labels for the
markers and gridlines.
A dropbox lets you control the spacing of
the guides grid, choosing fine (lots of
gridlines close together), medium, or
coarse (a few lines, widely separated).
The bottom set of controls in the Guides
Options dialog box affects the look of the
guide axes. You can choose whether to
draw just the XY grid plane, just the XYZ
54 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
axes, or both. Finally, you can choose to
highlight the closest objects. This will give
a 3-dimensional view of the position of
these objects in relation to the co-ordinate
system in question.
Tip: Any objects that you select (by
clicking on the object) will automatically
have their position highlighted on the 3-D
grid.
area shown inside the indicator by Starry
Night Pro 5.0 should correspond very well
to what you actually see outdoors when
you are observing.
In this section, you will learn how to create
an equipment list which has information
on all of your astronomical instruments. In
the next section, “Field of View Indicators
2 (Displaying Indicators)” on page 56, you
will learn how to display FOV indicators
onscreen for any of these instruments.
Opening the Equipment List: Choose
Edit->Equipment List from the main menu
to open your equipment list. Initially, this
list will be blank.
Field of View Indicators 1
(Creating an Equipment List)
If you own binoculars or a telescope, you
may wonder how the views that you see
onscreen in Starry Night Pro 5.0 match up
with what you would see outdoors using
your astronomical instrument. Starry
Night Pro 5.0 lets you display an outline
onscreen that shows the shape and field of
view (FOV) of any of your astronomical
instruments. We call these outlines field of
view (FOV) indicators. Field of view
indicators are useful because they show
the exact size of the patch of sky that you
will be able to see through a given
astronomical instrument. Therefore, the
Types of Equipment:
The pull-down menu in the
upper left corner of the
equipment list displays the
different types of
astronomical equipment.
Appearance of the Sky 55
Some of these pieces of equipment may be
unfamiliar to you.
• Eyepiece. For any given telescope, you
may have several eyepieces. When
viewing the same object through the
same telescope, the image that you see
will vary, depending on the eyepiece
properties. The most important
property of an eyepiece is its focal
length, which affects the image
magnification. Eyepieces with large
focal lengths (low magnification) are
good for viewing faint deep-space
objects. Eyepieces with small focal
lengths (high magnification) are good
for viewing details on bright objects,
such as the Moon or planets.
• Barlow. A Barlow lens is a device that
sits between your telescope’s focuser
and eyepiece. It is used to increase the
magnification of an eyepiece.
• Focal Reducer. A focal reducer is
essentially the opposite of a Barlow
lens. It reduces the focal length of your
telescope, decreasing the magnification
of an eyepiece.
• Finderscope. A finderscope is a
secondary telescope that attaches onto
your main telescope. It has a lower
magnification and a larger field of view
than the main scope, and is used to
locate objects in the sky, which you
will then view using the main scope.
• CCD. A CCD is a camera that is
attached to your telescope and used to
take digital astronomical photographs.
Adding items to the equipment list: To
add your pieces of observing equipment to
the equipment list, choose the appropriate
equipment category (e.g. “telescopes”)
from the pull-down menu in the upper left
corner of the Equipment List dialog box,
then press the New button in the lower left
corner. A dialog box will open, which
allows you to name your piece of
equipment, and enter its relevant
information. You can also assign a unique
colour for your indicator by clicking on
the colourbar to open a colour palette.
Once you have entered all of the necessary
information, press the OK button to save
this piece of equipment in your equipment
list.
The information that can be entered
depends on the type of observing
equipment. All of the necessary
information should be available in the
documentation that came with your
equipment. Some of this information is
used by Starry Night Pro 5.0 when it
calculates how the field of view indicator
will look when drawn onscreen.
56 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
The following information fields need to
be correct:
Te le sc op e: aperture, f/stop
Eyepiece: focal length, apparent field of
view
Barlow: magnification factor
Focal reducer: reduction factor
CCD: imaging area, camera roll angle
Binoculars: measure of width or angular
field of view
Editing the equipment list: To modify the
details of any piece of equipment, open the
Equipment List, click on the appropriate
piece of equipment, then click the Edit
button. A dialog box will open, allowing
you to modify any details.
Deleting an item from the equipment list:
To remove an item from your equipment
list, open the equipment list, click on the
appropriate piece of equipment, then click
the Delete button.
telescopes, finderscopes and binoculars.
The list will include all of the telescope
eyepieces, CCD cameras, finderscopes
and binoculars that you added when you
created your equipment list (see “Field of
View Indicators 1 (Creating an Equipment
List)” on page 54 for information on
creating an equipment list). If you have not
yet created an equipment list, the list of
FOV indicators will also be blank.
The name of each indicator and its field of
view are shown. The colour of the
indicator is displayed to the right of its
name.
Shop Online: Pressing this button will
connect you to a website with options to
purchase astronomical equipment.
Field of View Indicators 2
(Displaying Indicators)
The FOV side pane allows you
to display an outline onscreen
that shows the shape and field
of view (FOV) of any of your
astronomical instruments. You can also
create special indicators that highlight
specific objects or areas of the sky.
Indicator List: To see the list of FOV
Indicators, open the FOV pane. You will
see a list of indicators, divided into
Turning indicators on/off: Checking/
unchecking the box to the left of the
indicator name turns on/off the outline for
that indicator. For telescopes (except
finderscopes), you need to check a specific
eyepiece or CCD, not the telescope itself.
After you have turned an
indicator on, you should see
the indicator in the main
Starry Night Pro 5.0 sky
view at the centre of the
screen.
Multiple Indicators: You can turn on more
than one FOV indicator at a time. You may
wish to make each indicator a different
colour to make them easier to distinguish.
One situation where you might wish to
Appearance of the Sky 57
display indicators is if you are using a
primary telescope and a finderscope.
Tip: To change the colour of an FOV
indicator, just click on the colourbar to the
right of the indicator name in the FOV
pane.
Adding a Barlow/Focal Reducer: For your
telescope eyepieces or CCD cameras, the
size of the field of view indicator will
change if you are using a Barlow lens or a
focal reducer.
To turn on/off a Barlow lens or focal
reducer for given eyepiece or CCD
camera, click the area to the right of the
indicator’s name in the FOV pane. Any
Barlow lenses or focal reducers that you
added to your equipment list will appear in
a pull-down menu. Select the appropriate
option from the menu.
To add one of these indicators, click the
Add button in the Other (All Charts) or
Other (This Chart) layer in the FOV pane.
The difference between these two layers is
that indicators added to Other (This Chart)
will automatically disappear from your list
of indicators when you adjust the sky view
in Starry Night Pro 5.0. This is handy if
you want to add indicators only to create a
specific image, as you will not need to go
to the trouble of deleting these indicators
after you have created the image.
Once you press the Add button, a dialog
box opens that allows you to specify the
properties for your new indicator. You can
choose a name, colour, and field of view
for the indicator. Unlike FOV indicators
that are associated with an item from your
Equipment List (which are automatically
centred onscreen), you can also specify the
indicator position.
You should see the size of the onscreen
indicator change when you turn on or off a
Barlow lens or focal reducer.
Adding other indicators: It is possible to
display FOV indicators that do not
correspond to any of the items in your
equipment list. You may wish to do this to
highlight specific objects on your screen
view or printed charts.
There are three ways to enter an indicator
position:
• Relative to screen centre: Your
indicator will be at a certain offset from
the screen centre. The offset is
determined by the values that you enter
for “Delta H” and “Delta V”. “Delta H”
58 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
is the horizontal offset and Delta V is
the vertical offset (both in pixels). An
indicator with an offset of (0,0) would
be directly at the centre of the screen.
• RA/Dec: This keeps your indicator
centred on a specific right ascension
and declination on the celestial sphere.
• Alt/Az: This keeps your indicator
centred on a specific altitude and
azimuth, relative to your local horizon
and direction.
Tip: If you want to centre your indicator
on a specific object or area of sky, rightclick (Ctrl-click on the Mac) on the object
or area of sky and choose Add FOV
Indicator from the contextual menu that
pops up. Choose an RA/Dec position or
Alt/Az position. The default co-ordinates
for this indicator will be centred on the
object or area of sky in question.
There are several cases where adding
specially positioned indicators might come
in handy. For example, assume you want
to create a star chart that shows you how to
“star-hop” from a bright deep space object
to a more obscure object. You could add
multiple indicators to your Starry Night
Pro 5.0 view (and printed chart), tracing
out the path that you would need to follow.
Deleting indicators: You can delete any of
your Field of View indicators by doubleclicking on the indicator’s name in the
FOV pane, then clicking the Delete button
in the dialog box that opens.
Flip
Another way of
modifying Starry
Night Pro 5.0’s
screen appearance to
match your telescope
is to flip your view. You can flip your view
horizontally, vertically, or in both
directions, to match what you see through
your telescope. You flip your view by
choosing Options->Flip from the menu.
You can then print out charts that match
the telescope’s view and use those charts
during observing sessions. If you observe
the sky with binoculars or the naked eye,
you will not need to use this option.
Heads-Up Display (HUD) Options
In “Identifying Objects In The Sky
” on
page 21, you learned that pointing the
cursor at an object onscreen causes Starry
Night Pro 5.0 to display the object’s name,
constellation and distance. This feature is
known as the Heads-Up Display (HUD).
You can change the look of the HUD and
also change the information fields that it
displays, by choosing Preferences from
the File menu (Windows) or the Starry
Night Pro 5.0 menu (Macintosh) and
selecting Cursor Tracking (HUD) from the
dropbox in the top left corner of the
Preferences dialog box.
You can set the HUD to display
information only when you are holding
down a certain key. This is useful if you
find that the HUD information appears too
frequently and gets in your way. You can
also avoid this problem by moving the
“Mouse is idle for...” slider farther to the
right. This slider controls how long the
cursor must be pointing at an object before
the HUD information is displayed.
Appearance of the Sky 59
these information fields. If you wish, you
can draw each piece of information in the
HUD with a different colour.
Finally, you can choose the font, style, and
size of the text in which the HUD
information is displayed.
Tip: You can choose to display the HUD
information on the upper left side of the
screen instead of directly beneath the
object, by checking the “Show info in
upper left corner of screen” box.
OpenGL Options
OpenGL offers improved graphics on
computers whose video hardware supports
it. You can access the OpenGL preferences
by choosing Preferences from the File
menu (Windows) or the Starry Night Pro
5.0 menu (Macintosh) and selecting
OpenGL from the dropbox in the upper left
corner of the Preferences dialog box.The
OpenGL dialog box allows you to select a
number of options.
Unchecking the “Show info only when
over an object” option causes the HUD
information to appear even when you
point the cursor at the black background
sky. This can be useful in determining the
co-ordinates of any position in the sky.
A long list of information fields gives you
control over which object information is
displayed, including name, magnitude,
distance, and so on. You can also choose
the colour in which you want to display
60 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Cross fade slider: Rather than jumping
straight into a new scene, instantly load a
new Starry Night File (SNF) or label an
object, you can add a fade ‘break’ between
actions that change your sky view. Think
of it as the fade-in/fade-out effect between
images in a photo slideshow. Use this
slider to control the cross fade transition
timing between actions in Starry Night Pro
5.0.
Use OpenGL: Checking this option will
enable OpenGL if your video card
supports it. If for some reason, you have
an OpenGL graphics card but do not wish
to run the OpenGL version of Starry
Night, uncheck this box.
Use sub-pixel accuracy when plotting
labels: Sub-pixel accuracy gives labels a
smooth feel as they move on the screen.
However, depending on your video card,
this can cause labels to flicker.
Draw stars using polygon smoothing:
Some video cards have trouble doing
what's called polygon smoothing and this
can cause "blocky stars". By default,
polygon smoothed stars are turned off on
the PC and turned on on the Mac. If you
are experiencing the "blocky star" effect
on the Mac you can try turning this feature
off. On the PC, if your card supports it,
turning this feature on can improve the
speed at which stars are drawn; if your
card doesn't support it, it can result in stars
being drawn slower or having a blocky
appearance.
Show specular reflection on planet
surfaces: Realistically models the Sun’s
glare on planet surfaces.
Use prespective correction when
showing planet surfaces: Corrects for
prespective when viewing planet surfaces.
Use half size textures: Checking this
option will save on video graphics
memory and should improve performance
on slower computers or video cards with
less than 32 MB of memory.
Force texture cache size: Specifies the
amount of memory cached by your video
card.
Tip: If you set the texture cache to only 16
MB, it automatically sets the “use half size
textures” option.
Number Formats
You can change the number format for the
information displayed by the HUD by
choosing Preferences from the File menu
(Windows) or the Starry Night Pro 5.0
menu (Macintosh) and choosing Number
Formats from the dropbox in the upper left
corner of the Preferences dialog box.
There are a number of different formats in
which declination, altitude, right
ascension, and azimuth can be displayed,
and you can choose appropriate formats
Appearance of the Sky 61
for each of these options using the
dropboxes.
•d: degrees
•m: minutes
•s: seconds
The number of occurrences of each letter
indicates the number of decimal places.
For example, “dd mm.mmm” indicates
that degrees will be displayed by up to two
digits, with minutes being displayed by up
to two digits rounded off to three decimal
places — 25° 30.123'.
For distances, you can choose to view the
distance between you and any celestial
object in either light years or parsecs. One
parsec is equal to about 3.26 light years.
White Sky Mode
You learned how to print star charts in
“Printing Star Charts
” on page 27. Starry
Night Pro 5.0 also allows you to simulate
printed starcharts on your screen, by
choosing Options->White Sky from the
menu. This displays a negative image of
your Starry Night Pro 5.0 view, reversing
the colours of objects and labels. Stars are
represented by dark circles on a white
background.
Note: Options->White Sky differs from
Options->Presets->Print Settings because it
does not use Starry Night Pro 5.0’s special
print settings, it just displays a negative
image using your existing settings.
Night Vision Mode
Selecting Night Vision from the Options
menu instructs your monitor to dim its
display red. Night Vision mode is suitable
for outdoor, night-time viewing, as it helps
to preserve dark adaptation when you look
into your computer’s display.
62 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Because of the control Night Vision must
exert over your computer display, not all
computers will support it.
Adjusting brightness: You can adjust the
brightness of night vision mode by
choosing Preferences from the File menu
(Windows) or the Starry Night Pro 5.0
menu (Macintosh), selecting
Brightness/Contrast from the dropbox in
the upper left corner of the Preferences
dialog box, and adjusting the Night Vision
slider in this dialog box.
Turning night vision off: If you are in
Night Vision mode, choose
Options->Night Vision from the menu to
turn night vision off.
Full Screen Mode
Starry Night Pro 5.0 has two menu options
that allow you to hide the screen controls.
Selecting View->Hide All Controls will hide
the side panes, the toolbar, and the button
bar (Windows only). Selecting
View->Fullscreen hides the main menu, the
scrollbars, and the window frame. By
using these two options together, you hide
all controls and menus, for a full screen
view of the sky. Even with all controls
turned off, you can still move around the
sky using the many keyboard shortcuts
available, such as the arrow keys. For a
complete list of shortcuts, see
“Keyboard Shortcuts
” on page 171.
Tip: Once you are in full screen mode, you
will need to find your way back out! Press
the F7 key to restore the main menu, and
then choose View->Show All Controls to
restore the other controls.
Saving Your Settings
Now that you know all of the features for
adjusting the appearance of the sky, you
may wish to make some changes to Starry
Night Pro 5.0’s default settings. For
example, you may want Starry Night Pro
5.0 to always open with daylight turned
off. Choosing Options->Save Current
Options as Default will save all of your
appearance settings so that Starry Night
Pro 5.0 will use these settings whenever
you start the program or open a new
window. This allows you to set up Starry
Night Pro 5.0 to look exactly the way you
like, every time you use the program.
Restoring Default Settings. Choosing
Options->Presets->Default will restore all
of the settings in Starry Night Pro 5.0 to
the default values you have chosen (or the
built-in default settings, if you have never
used the
Save Current Options as Default option).
Multiple Settings: You may wish to create
a set of appearance settings that is not used
as the default. To do this, set Starry Night
Pro 5.0 up the way that you want, then
choose Options->Save Preset... from the
menu. This will open a dialog box that
allows you to name your new settings
files. Any settings files that you create can
then be turned on from the
Options->Presets menu.
Customizing Print Settings: You may wish
to modify Starry Night Pro 5.0’s default
print settings. To do this, first apply the
default print settings by choosing
Options->Presets->Print Settings from the
menu. Next, make any changes to these
settings. Finally,. choose Save Preset...
from the Options menu and click on the
file “Print Settings.sno” in the
Save dialog box that opens. This will
replace Starry Night Pro 5.0’s default print
settings with your own.
Global Preferences. Certain aspects of
Starry Night Pro 5.0 are treated differently
than your appearance settings (which you
save by choosing
Options->Save Current Options as Default).
These aspects are called global
preferences. When you change a global
preference, the change will be saved
automatically (there is no need to choose
Options-> Save Current Options as
Default). All of the options in the
Preferences menu are global preferences.
Tip: You can restore the global
preferences which initially accompanied
Starry Night Pro 5.0 by choosing
Preferences from the File menu (Windows)
or the Starry Night Pro 5.0 menu
(Macintosh) and pressing the Factory
Defaults button in the Preferences dialog
box.
Appearance of the Sky 63
64 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Chapter 4
Sky Data
This chapter will show you how to use several
different Starry Night Pro 5.0 features and
functions that teach you more about the night sky
and give you more information about
astronomical events and the sky in general. In the
next chapter, “Object Databases
will learn how to access information about
specific objects.
Note: Some of the features in this chapter require
an Internet connection. If you are not connected
to the Internet when you try to access these
features, Starry Night Pro 5.0 will try to connect
you. If you do not have Internet access, you will
not be able to make use of these features. All of
the features in the LiveSky menu require an
Internet connection. If you are using a feature
that requires downloading information from the
Internet, and the download is going too slow, you
can choose LiveSky->Stop Downloads to abort the
download.
” on page 77, you
66 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
SkyGuide
Dozens of interactive multimedia tours
await you in the SkyGuide pane. These indepth experiences reveal the fascinating
science and history of the solar system, the
stars, the galaxies, the beginning of time,
and the fate of the universe. It also
includes daily headline news on
astronomy and step-by-step instructions
on how to use the most common Starry
Night Pro 5.0 features.
There’s no interface to learn: it works just
like a web browser!
As you and SkyGuide explore together,
you will learn tips for navigating the sky,
fun facts of the solar system, seasonal
tours of the sky, and much, much more.
Throughout this multimedia matrix you’ll
discover images and movies to enhance
the experience.
This section highlights some of the main
features in SkyGuide.
Click on the tab named
SkyGuide to open the
SkyGuide panel.
From the home SkyGuide page you can
select five main options:
Weekly sky events: Takes you to a listing
of all the major celestial events for the
upcoming week.
Daily headline news: The latest astron-
omy and hobby news. This is a page
devoted to amateur astronomers and space
enthusiasts, written by professional space
journalists. It is updated daily and has lots
of skywatching tips, plus topical stories on
astronomical events (new comets, meteor
showers, planet conjunctions, and much
more). Many of the stories are illustrated
with graphics created with Starry Night
Pro 5.0. An internet connection is required
to view this content.
Enter SkyGuide: Begin your exploration of
the night sky here. This link will take you
to dozens of interactive tours - your passport to a voyage through the universe.
Starry Night features: Highlights the
main features of your program. We highly
recommend that you read through this section.
Starry Night basics: Review the basic
controls and functions in Starry Night Pro
5.0.
To start exploring the main SkyGuide content, select the Enter SkyGuide link. The
SkyGuide menu is divided into seven
Sky Data 67
major categories:
Welcome Tour: A self-running guided
introduction to Starry Night and the things
you can do.
Quick Find: Find a planet, star, constella-
tion and other interesting objects. These
lists of objects are usually organized by
season, letting you know when they can be
best observed.
First Night Out: An introduction to the
night sky and how to navigate your way
around.
Night Sky Tours: Guided tours of selected
objects in the night sky. Take a seasonal
tour of the night sky or explore the images
taken by space observatories.
Our Solar System, the stars and our galaxy:
An introduction to objects in our solar
system and beyond. This section tells you
what to look for and how to locate them in
the night sky.
SkyCalendar
The SkyCalendar is your portal to weekly
astronomical events, solar and lunar
eclipses, Moon phases, regional star parties and observation logs. You can also
import, view and even create your own
calendars (using the standard vCalendar
format). For example, you can create a calendar of local events and share them with
other members in your club. See “Adding
Calendar Events” on page 137 for instruc-
tions on adding your own events to the
SkyCalendar.
To open the SkyCalendar,
click on the SkyCalen-
dar side pane.
Record holders: What is the largest planet
in our solar system? Which one is the hottest? Find out the answers in record holders.
Dictionary: A list of the most common
astronomical terms.
We suggest you start with the Welcom e
Tou r and then explore the other sections
of SkyGuide. Have fun browsing!
68 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
At the top of the SkyCalendar pane is a
window that lists all the event calendars.
At the bottom of the pane is a monthly calendar with Moon phase information.
Between the list of calendars and the
Moon phase calendar is the description
fields for an event.
Viewing a calendar event: The calendar
events window lists the calendars that
come with Starry Night Pro 5.0. Each calendar has a name such as Lunar & Solar
Eclipse or Upcoming Events.
You can click on the info icon to the
right of each calendar name to learn
more about that calendar.
To view a calendar event for any of
the calendars listed, click on the
expand icon to the left of the calendar
name. This will display a chronological
listing of all the events for that calendar.
Clicking on an event will highlight it and
display the details and other options for
the event.
Note: Calendar events are updated
frequently. To download the latest event
data available select LiveSky->Update
Comets/Asteroids/Satellites from the main
menu.
Each event contains the following information fields.
URL: An Internet link with additional
information about the event.
Description: A detailed description of the
event.
Depending on which calendar event you
select, you may see one of the following
control buttons.
Web : An option when viewing an upcoming event. If an Internet link with additional information about the event is
available, you can click on this button to
open your web browser.
View Event: An option when viewing an
upcoming event. Clicking this button will
display the celestial event on the main sky
window.
Home View: An option when viewing
lunar and solar eclipse events. Places you
at the event time looking in the proper
direction, as seen from your home location. If the event is not visible at all from
your location at this time, this option is
grayed out.
Best View: An option when viewing lunar
and solar eclipse events. Places you at the
best time and place to watch the event. For
example, selecting Best View for a solar
eclipse places you on the surface of the
Moon.
Event name: The name of the calendar
event.
Start/Finish: The start and finish times for
the event.
Location: The location of the event.
Edit Log: An option when viewing log
events. Allows you to edit your log entry
and make changes.
Centre Target: An option when viewing
log events. This adjusts your view so that
the object in your log is placed in the centre of the screen.
Sky Data 69
By default Starry
Night Pro 5.0 lists
all calendar events.
You can also select
to only display
events for this
week, this month,
this year or even
just past events. To
customize the
events shown in the calendar window,
select an option from the dropbox on the
upper left of the SkyCalendar pane.
Searching for an event: If you are inter-
ested in finding a specific event, such as a
lunar eclipse or an occultation, click on the
dropbox on the upper left of the SkyCalendar pane and select one of the find options
in the menu. You can select to search for
events that contain, begin with or end
with. If you want to exclude a class of
events, select not containing.
date. To enable this option, you must first
select "Set current view to date" from the
dropbox menu at the bottom of the Moon
phase calendar. You can also have the calendar window show only the events for the
date you clicked on in the Moon phase calendar. To enable this option, select "For
dates selected in calendar" from the dropbox menu at the top of the SkyCalendar
pane.
Tip: You can select multiple dates on the
Moon phase calendar by holding down the
Shift key on your keyboard when clicking
on subsequent dates.
Calendar icons: Some dates on the Moon
phase calendar will have small icons.
These icons are there to let you know of
any events happening on that date.
The log icon lets you know you
have a log entry for that date.
The telescope icon symbolizes a
star party.
Browsing events with the Moon phase calendar:
The Moon phase calendar offer a
quick way to glance at Moon phase information for any month of the year. To
change the month and year displayed on
the moon phase calendar, use the year and
date buttons immediately above the Moon
phase calendar.
You can click on a date you are interested
in on the moon calendar, and the date in
Starry Night Pro 5.0 will switch to that
The star icon represents an
upcoming or interesting celestial
event.
You can toggle the icons displayed on the
Moon phase calendar on and off by using
the checkbox to the left of a calendar's
name in the calendar window.
Lunar & Solar Events Calendar: The
events in this calendar fall into several different categories you might not be familiar
with.
Total Solar Eclipse: : An eclipse of the Sun
where the Moon completely covers the
Sun.
70 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Annular Solar Eclipse: An eclipse of the
Sun where the Moon passes directly in
front of the Sun, but does not completely
cover it. At the eclipse's peak, a ring of
sunlight still shines around the Moon's
edges.
Partial Solar Eclipse: An eclipse of the
Sun where the Moon covers only part of
the Sun. The sky does not darken noticeably during a partial eclipse.
Total Lunar Eclipse: An eclipse of the
Moon where Earth crosses between the
Sun and Moon, blocking sunlight from
reaching any of the Moon's surface. During a total eclipse, the Moon darkens
slightly and takes on a reddish colour.
Umbral Lunar Eclipse: An eclipse of the
Moon where Earth crosses between the
Sun and Moon, blocking sunlight from
reaching only part of the Moon's surface.
This part will appear darker than the rest
of the Moon.
Penumbral Solar Eclipse: An eclipse of
the Moon where Earth crosses between the
Sun and Moon, but only partially blocks
the Sun's light. Because some light still
reaches all parts of the Moon, the Moon
does not darken noticeably during a penumbral eclipse.
Tip: If an eclipse is not visible from your
location, select Best View to view from the
Moon. Zoom in to see which areas of
Earth are seeing a partial eclipse
(anywhere inside the large shadow) and
which areas are seeing a total eclipse
(anywhere inside the tiny circle in the
middle of the shadowed area). Then stop
time, right-click the mouse (Ctrl-click on
the Mac) on an area inside the smaller
circle, and click Go There from the popup
menu. This will change your location to
the exact spot on Earth where you clicked
the mouse, so you can watch the eclipse
from Earth.
DVD Movies
Note: The list of Lunar & Solar Events is
not customized for each location on Earth.
This means that not every event listed will
be visible from your location. A total solar
eclipse, for example, may appear as a
partial eclipse from your location, or may
not be visible at all. Use Starry Night Pro
5.0 to help you find out if an event is
visible from your location.
Over an hour of multimedia videos are
included with Starry Night Pro 5.0 on a
separate standalone DVD - “SkyTheater”.
These videos explore topics that range
across the entire field of astronomy, from
observing satellites to hunting comets. The
videos will help you learn more about
astronomy, and will increase your
enjoyment of Starry Night Pro 5.0.
Sky Data 71
LiveSky Pane
Although Starry Night Pro 5.0 has a
wealth of built-in astronomical
information, much more information
exists on the Internet. LiveSky is a
gateway to the rich resources of the
Internet. You can use LiveSky to locate
information on the Internet for any object,
or to access live, up-to-the minute data and
images for certain celestial phenomena.
This section shows you how to use
LiveSky to access live images for celestial
phenomena.
“LiveSky.com Object Database
” on
page 94 will show you how to use LiveSky
to locate Internet information for specific
objects.
Open the Livesky side pane to
access live images.
information about the image, such as its
source and date. Beneath the image
information are two buttons.
Clicking this button opens
the image in a new, larger,
window.
Clicking this button
causes Starry Night Pro
5.0 to begin downloading an up-to-date
image from the Internet.
Accessing Images: You choose which
image will be displayed in the LiveSky
pane by expanding one of the layers listed
beneath the image, and then clicking on an
image name.
At the top of the open LiveSky pane will be
an image. Beneath the image is
Clicking on an image name will display
the most recently downloaded version of
this image. It will not attempt to download
an up-to-date version of the image - you
need to press the Refresh button to do this.
Clicking the information icon to the
right of an image name will display a
brief description of the image.
Types of Images: LiveSky can provide
you with up-to-date images of many
different celestial phenomena: images of
the Sun as seen through different filters
and at different wavelengths, plots of the
sun’s electromagnetic activity, images of
72 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
auroral activity (northern and southern
lights) in Earth’s atmosphere, and satellite
imagery of Earth. As more types of live
planetary images become available online,
links to these images will be added to
LiveSky.
Status Info
The Status side pane
provides a handy summary
of all of the general
information about your sky view - for
example, your viewing location, time, and
viewing direction. All of the information
in the Status pane is dynamic - if you
change your view onscreen (for example,
by changing your time or viewing
direction), the fields in the Status pane will
automatically update to reflect the new
view.
The information displayed falls into four
areas: general information, time
information, location information, and a
Hertzsprung-Russell diagram.
Note: Some of the fields in the Status pane
are only useful to specialists. These fields
are marked with three asterisks (***) and
you should feel free to skip over the
descriptions of these fields.
1 General Information:
Export: Clicking the Save Info button will
export the information in the Status pane
to a text file.
Looking: The direction in which you are
viewing. Both the distance from the
horizon and the compass direction are
listed.
Field of View: The exact width and height
of your current field of view.
Limiting Magnitude: The magnitude of the
dimmest object visible in your current
view. Magnitude is a measure of the
brightness of objects and is discussed in
“Magnitude
” on page 91. As you zoom in
to smaller fields of view, Starry Night Pro
5.0 automatically shows dimmer objects,
or in other words, increases the limiting
magnitude.
2 Tim e:
Sky Data 73
Universal Time: This field displays the
Universal Time of your current view.
Because of time zones, an astronomical
event (such as a lunar occultation) could
take place at any of 24 different times,
depending on your location. To avoid
confusion, astronomers often report event
times using a standard time known as
Universal Time, which is the same
everywhere in the world. Universal time is
equal to the local time in Greenwich,
England (without Daylight Saving Time),
5 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.
Local Time: The local time of your current
view.
***Julian Day: The Julian Day is another
astronomical time concept, used by
astronomers to avoid the problems
resulting from historical calendar changes.
The Julian Day is simply the number of
days that have elapsed since noon, January
1, 4713 B.C. Fractions of days are given in
decimal values. For example, the Julian
day 2451544.5 is 2 451 544 days and 12
hours after noon, January 1, 4713 B.C.,
which happens to be midnight on Dec. 31,
1999!
ascension equal to the sidereal time are
crossing the local meridian at their highest
point in the sky, and this is often the best
time to observe the object.
***Delta T: Delta T measures the
difference between terrestrial time (aka
ephemeris time) and Universal time.
Historians use delta T to date historical
events precisely using solar eclipses.
3 Location:
Location: The name of your current
viewing location (usually a city name).
Latitude/Longitude: The latitude and
longitude of your current viewing location.
Tip: If you want to set the date in Starry
Night Pro 5.0 to a specific Julian day,
open the pull-down menu to the immediate
right of the date/time display in the toolbar
and choose Set Julian Day from the menu.
***Sidereal Time: The local sidereal time
of your current view, which ranges from 0
hours to 24 hours. Sidereal time measures
the rotation of Earth with respect to the
background stars, not the Sun. A sidereal
day is about 4 minutes shorter than a solar
day. Astronomers find sidereal time
helpful because objects with a right
***Heliocentric X, Y, Z: Heliocentric
co-ordinates reference your position in
space with respect to the Sun. Heliocentric
co-ordinates of (0, 0, 0) would place you at
the center of the Sun. The X and Y
co-ordinates mark your position along the
ecliptic plane (the plane of Earth’s orbit
around the Sun). The Z co-ordinate
indicates your distance from the ecliptic
plane. Earth travels along the ecliptic
plane, so if you are on Earth’s surface,
your heliocentric Z value will be close to
0. Heliocentric co-ordinates are given in
astronomical units (AU’s). 1 AU is the
74 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
average distance between Earth and the
Sun, about 150 000 000 km.
***Distance from Sun/Angle from Ecliptic
Plane/Phi:
Another set of heliocentric
co-ordinates, using angular measures
instead of X, Y, Z co-ordinates. Phi
specifies the angle along the ecliptic plane,
with the zero point being the position of
Earth on the autumnal equinox.
4 Hertzsprung-Russell:
Expand the Hertzsprung-Russell layer to
view a special kind of graph known as an
H-R (Hertzsprung-Russell) diagram.
the upper right corner of the H-R diagram.
Finally, “white dwarf” stars will be found
along the bottom left of the H-R diagram,
beneath the main sequence.
The stars plotted in the H-R diagram are
the same stars shown onscreen in the main
window. You can click on any star in the
H-R diagram, and Starry Night Pro 5.0
will draw a circle around this star on the
main window, allowing you to identify it.
This makes it easy to identify stellar
oddballs, such as white dwarfs,
supergiants, and extremely massive main
sequence stars. Conversely, you can point
the cursor at any star in the main window,
and Starry Night Pro 5.0 will highlight this
star’s position (with a red dot) on the H-R
diagram.
Tip: The H-R diagram is fully dynamic. If
you scroll around the screen or change
your field of view, the stars shown
onscreen will change, and the H-R
diagram will update to plot these new
stars.
An H-R diagram tells us about a star’s age
and its mass. Each dot on the diagram
represents a star. The diagram plots star
luminosity (amount of light & energy
emitted by the star) on the vertical axis
versus star temperature on the horizontal
axis. Young stars which are still burning
hydrogen in their cores are found in the
“Main Sequence”, the curve along the left
side of the graph. The larger and heavier a
star is, the farther it will be to the upper
left along this curve. Older stars in the “red
giant” phase of their life are no longer on
the main sequence, and will be found in
H-R Diagram Options:
Expand the H-R
Options layer
beneath the H-R
diagram to access
options that affect
the appearance of
the diagram.
Use Absolute Magnitudes: Unchecking
this option will plot apparent magnitude
Sky Data 75
instead of absolute magnitude on the
vertical axis.
Automatic ranges: Checking this option
will cause Starry Night Pro 5.0 to select
the smallest possible ranges for the X and
Y axes that still manages to include all
stars visible onscreen.
Image Brightness: This slider controls
how bright the star dots in the H-R
diagram are drawn.
Distance Cut-Off: This plots only those
stars with distances from Earth that lie
between the minimum and maximum
distances that you specify.
Labels: Unchecking this option draws a
blank graph with no labels. Checking this
option allows you to turn on any of the
label options listed below.
Gridlines: Draws gridlines from the
vertical and horizontal axes.
B-V: Uses a stars B-V colour as the field
along the horizontal axis. Hotter stars have
a lower B-V value.
Kelvin X 1000: Plots star temperature (in
thousands of degrees Kelvin) along the
horizontal axis. Degrees Kelvin are equal
to degrees Celsius + 273.
Spectral Class: Plots star spectral class
along the horizontal axis.
Main Sequence: Draws a line representing
stars on the main sequence. Any star that
appears close to this line is probably a
main sequence star (a star that is still
burning hydrogen fuel).
Regions: Labels the areas of red giants,
white dwarfs, and main sequence stars.
Note: White dwarfs are very dim and few
are in Starry Night Pro 5.0’s star
catalogues (the Hipparcos/Tycho-2
catalogues), so few will be found in Starry
Night Pro 5.0’s H-R diagrams.
Dim Labels: Draws the diagram labels
much dimmer than the stars.
Downloading Photographic
Images
Starry Night Pro 5.0 shows over 17 million
celestial objects, but this is only a tiny
fraction of the stars and objects that can be
seen from Earth using telescopes.
On the Internet, the Space Telescope
Science Institute (STScI) hosts a very
large database, called the Digitized Sky
Survey (DSS). This survey contains large,
high-resolution pictures of the entire night
sky. The database is so large that it is
distributed on a few hundred CD-ROMs.
Starry Night Pro 5.0 makes it easy to look
at the thousands of galaxies, nebulae, and
other astronomical phenomena that are
contained in this database.
The STScI offers an online form you can
fill out to request a picture of the sky.
Starry Night Pro 5.0 makes this process
considerably easier. Just zoom in on the
part of the sky that you want an image of,
and select
LiveSky->Show Photographic Image.
Getting a picture from the Digitized Sky
Survey to your browser can take up to a
few minutes, so you have to be patient.
The reason for the delay is that the
Digitized Sky Survey’s computer has to
76 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
assemble your request from its extensive
database.
Tip: You can only download Digitized Sky
Survey images when your field of view is
between about 1.5 arcminutes and 30
arcminutes. If your field of view is outside
this range, this menu item will appear
greyed out.
Example: Viewing the Horsehead
Nebula using the
Digitized Sky Survey.
1Open the
“horsehead”. Starry Night Pro 5.0 should
list the Horsehead Nebula.
2 Double-click on the Horsehead
Nebula’s entry in the list, to centre on this
object.
3 Now use the zoom buttons in the toolbar to zoom in to a field of view of about
20' (20 arcminutes), so that the Horsehead
Nebula almost fills the screen.
4Choose
Find pane and type in
LiveSky->Show Photographic Image to
obtain an image of the Horsehead Nebula
from the Digitized Sky Survey. The new
image will open in your web browser.
Tip: After you have loaded an image from
the Digitized Sky Survey, you can paste it
in Starry Night Pro, and it will remain
there every time you run the program. For
more information, refer to “Adding
Images from the Digitized Sky Survey” on
page 150.
Online Telescope Imaging
The Digitized Sky Survey allows you to
download images of any section of the sky
from an image database. These images are
several years old. Another feature actually
allows you to capture live photographic
images of the sky, by directing a remote
telescope and camera over the Internet!
Unlike any of the other features in Starry
Night Pro 5.0, a small fee is charged to
capture images.
Selecting LiveSky->Online Telescope
Imaging from the main menu will open a
web page with instructions on requesting
photographic images.
In this example, we used the Digitized Sky
Survey to load an image of an object
which Starry Night Pro 5.0 already had an
image for. You would be more likely to
use the Digitized Sky Survey to download
images of areas of the sky for which Starry
Night Pro 5.0 does not have a detailed
image. One way to explore with the
Digitized Sky Survey is to turn on the
NGC/IC database or the Galaxies database
and look for an interesting cluster of
galaxies. Zoom in on a promising cluster
and then request the Digitized Sky Survey
image for a detailed view.
Chapter 5
Object Databases
This chapter will show you how to learn more
about galaxies, meteor showers, planets, and all
of the other marvelous denizens of the night sky.
You will first learn about all of the different
object databases included in Starry Night Pro 5.0.
Next, you will learn how to get more information
about any of the objects in these databases.
Note: Some of the features in this section require
an Internet connection. If you are not connected
to the Internet when you try to access these
features, Starry Night Pro 5.0 will try to connect
you. If you do not have Internet access, you will
not be able to make use of these features. All of
the features in the LiveSky menu require an
Internet connection. If you are using a feature
that requires downloading information from the
Internet, and the download is going too slow, you
can choose LiveSky->Stop Downloads to abort the
download.
78 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Introduction to Databases
Starry Night Pro 5.0 includes literally
millions of celestial objects, from dozens
of different databases.
Accessing Databases: As you learned in
chapter 3, “Appearance of the Sky
”, you
can use the Options side pane to turn
databases on/off, turn their labels on/off,
or modify the database display options. All
of these functions can also be accessed
from the main menu, by choosing View,
Labels, or Options, respectively.
We’ll now briefly describe each of the
databases included in Starry Night Pro 5.0.
The databases in your version of Starry
Night Pro 5.0 may be slightly different
from those listed here, as we are
continually updating and adding new
databases. As you learned in
“Options Pane
” on page 32, databases are
organized in a layered framework, based
on their distance from Earth.
The three major database layers are:
1 Solar System
2 Stars
much more rapidly than Earth rotates, so
they move over a large slice of the Earth’s
surface. Geosynchronous satellites are
much farther from Earth. They move at
exactly the same speed as Earth rotates, so
they stay directly above the same point on
Earth’s surface at all times. Starry Night
Pro 5.0 includes about 150 satellites.
Satellite data needs to be updated
regularly. See “Database Updates
” on
page 83 for information on updating
satellite data.
Meteor Showers: This database marks the
positions of the major meteor shower
radiants. The radiant is the point in the sky
where all meteors from a given meteor
shower appear to be coming from. Meteor
showers are formed by comets that come
close to the Sun. Heat from the Sun causes
dust and rock to break off the comet and
gather into a collection of debris that
moves along the comet’s orbital path. If
Earth’s orbit crosses this path, there is a
meteor shower as the dust particles burn
up in Earth’s atmosphere. Each meteor
shower happens at about the same time
each year. This database uses data from the
International Meteor Organization and was
created by Stephen Hutson.
3 Deep Space
Databases 1 (Solar System)
These databases are for objects that are
inside our solar system.
Satellites: This refers to any man-made
body orbiting our Earth. Most satellites
fall into two distinct types of orbits:
near-Earth orbits or geosynchronous
orbits. Satellites in near-Earth orbit move
Asteroids: Small, rocky bodies that are too
small to be planets. Most asteroids lie in
the “asteroid belt”, a region of space
between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Asteroid data needs to be updated
regularly. See “Database Updates
” on
page 83 for information on updating
asteroid data.
Comets: These are the small balls of rock
and ice which revolve around the sun.
Comets have very elliptical orbits,
meaning their distance from the sun varies
Object Databases 79
greatly with time. Comets are usually far
away from the Sun, out beyond the orbit of
Pluto, too dim to see. Once in a long while,
they come close to Earth and the Sun,
picking up speed and getting brighter.
Starry Night Pro 5.0 includes about 150
comets, including some great comets of
yesteryear such as Halley and Hale-Bopp.
Comet data needs to be updated regularly,
so that any bright new comets are added to
Starry Night Pro 5.0’s database. See
“Database Updates
” on page 83 for
information on updating comet data.
Planets/Moons: The Sun, the nine major
planets that orbit the Sun, and all of the
moons of these planets. In the past few
years, many new small moons have been
discovered around the outer planets. Starry
Night Pro 5.0 includes all of the moons
that were known at the time of release. If
any new moons are discovered in the
future, data for these moons will be
available on our website. Choose
View->Check For Program Updates to see if
any new data is available.
Databases 2 (Stars)
This includes not only stars, but all objects
that are outside of our solar system, but
still inside our galaxy, the Milky Way.
Milky Way: The band of our Milky Way,
which stretches across the night sky. The
misty band of illumination that we see is
actually the combined light of millions of
stars. It is possible to adjust the brightness
of the Milky Way.
Pulsars: A catalogue of more than 700
pulsars. Pulsars are neutron stars, former
supergiants that have been compressed
into spheres with diameters of only a few
tens of kilometres. Created by Ulf Teras.
Stars: A star is any body which burns or
once burned hydrogen fuel. The energy
and light produced in stars comes from the
fusion of hydrogen atoms. As stars grow
older, they use up their supply of hydrogen
and have to find other sources of energy.
When they reach this point, they become
either red giants or supergiants, depending
on their size. As they continue to use up
energy, stars eventually become either
white dwarfs or, in the case of very
massive stars, neutron stars or black holes.
The star database in Starry Night Pro 5.0 is
actually a compilation of 3 databases: the
Hipparcos catalogue, the Tycho-2
catalogue, and the USNO-A2 catalogue.
The Hipparcos and Tycho-2 catalogues
come from a European Space Agency
project to determine the distance to our
nearest stars. The Hipparcos catalogue has
about 100 000 stars and the Tycho-2
catalogue has about two million. Find out
more about these catalogues on their
official web page: http://a
stro.estec.esa.nl/
SA-general/Projects/Hipparcos/
hipparcos.html
Starry Night Pro 5.0 uses the USNO-A2
star database for dim stars not included in
the Hipparcos or Tycho catalogues. About
16 million stars as dim as 15th magnitude
can be accessed. These stars will only be
visible if you chose the “Full Install” or
the “Custom Install” options when you
installed Starry Night Pro 5.0.
The entire USNO-A2 star database
contains 500 million stars! This database
is far too large to fit on a CD, so Starry
80 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Night Pro 5.0 allows you to download
portions of this database from the Internet.
See “Adding Objects 3 (Stars)
” on
page 146 for more information.
Tip: Our Sun is an ordinary star. However,
in Starry Night Pro 5.0, it is a member of
the “Planets/Moons” database, not the
“Stars” database.
Databases 3 (Deep Space)
This includes all objects outside of our
galaxy. It also includes databases that
include objects both within and outside of
our galaxy. For example, the Messier
catalogue includes globular clusters,
which are inside our galaxy, but it also
includes other galaxies, so it is classified
in the “Deep Space” category.
Messier Objects: This category includes
the 110 Messier objects, originally
catalogued by French astronomer Charles
Messier and colleagues in the late 1700’s.
Messier was trying to identify all “fuzzy”
deep space objects that might be mistaken
for comets. The Messier objects are a
mixture of star clusters, nebulae, and
galaxies (plus a few objects that don’t fit
into any of these categories). Many of the
Messier objects are favourite targets for
amateur astronomers. For each object in
the Messier catalogue, Starry Night Pro
5.0 includes a detailed image and a text
description with observing tips.
Bright NGC Objects:
This database is a grab bag of famous deep
space objects (mostly star clusters,
galaxies, and nebulae) that were excluded
from the Messier catalogue for one reason
or another. Many of the objects were
missed by Messier because they are more
easily seen from the Southern Hemisphere,
and could only be seen low on the horizon
(if at all) from Messier’s base in Paris. For
each object in this catalogue, Starry Night
Pro 5.0 includes a detailed image and a
text description with observing tips.
NGC-IC: The NGC/IC (New General
catalogue/Index catalogue) is a more
extensive listing of star clusters, galaxies
and nebulae, It was originally compiled by
J.C. Dreyer from 1888-1908 and includes
about 13 000 objects. Starry Night Pro 5.0
uses an updated version of this database,
compiled by Wolfgang Steinecke and
converted into Starry Night format by
Peter Enzerink, which fixes many errors in
the original catalogue. Find out more
about the NGC-IC catalogue on the web at
www.ngcic.com
Galaxies: The PGC (Principal Galaxy
.
catalogue). This database contains 980 000
galaxies brighter than magnitude 18, far
more than the NGC-IC database.
Quasars: More than 18 000 quasars, BL
Lac objects, and active galaxies. All three
classes of objects are the extremely
luminous nuclei of very distant galaxies.
There is probably a supermassive black
hole at the center of each of these objects.
This database was created by Ulf Teras.
Tully 3-D Database: A collection of nearly
28 000 galaxies. The neat thing about this
database is that it contains 3-dimensional
positions of these galaxies. You can use
Starry Night Pro 5.0’s controls to view the
3-dimensional arrangement of these
galaxies.Choose Favourites->Deep Space
from the main menu to view some sample
Object Databases 81
files that use this database to render some
3-dimensional extragalactic views of our
universe.
Hubble/Chandra/Spitzer Images: These
databases contain about 100 images taken
by space telescopes. A full description for
each image is provided in the Night Sky
Tours section of SkyGuide.
See“SkyGuide
” on page 66 to learn more
about exploring SkyGuide.
User Images: This is a database of images
which you have added to Starry Night Pro
5.0 yourself. Initially, this database will be
blank. See “User Images
” on page 148 to
learn how to add your own images.
Databases 4 (Other)
Certain databases are not included in any
of the above layers, and are listed
separately in the Other category of the
Options pane. Most databases fall into this
category because they overlap with one or
more of the databases described in the first
4 layers. For example, the Other category
includes a database of planetary nebulae.
However, many of these nebulae are
already included in the “Messier Objects”,
or the “Bright NGC Objects” databases, so
Starry Night Pro 5.0 would show duplicate
markings for these objects, if the
“planetary nebulae” database was also
turned on. By default, all of the databases
in the Other category are turned off, but
you can turn one or more of these
databases on if it suits your purpose.
Tip: Most of the databases in this category
were created by Starry Night Pro 5.0
users. See
“Adding Objects 4 (Databases)
” on
page 147 for information on building your
own databases.
Note: The list of databases in your version
of Starry Night Pro 5.0 may not be exactly
the same as the following list, as we are
continually adding new databases and
updating existing ones. If you like to
include a database you see described here,
but it is not installed in your version of
Starry Night Pro 5.0, please visit the
Knowledge Base
area of our web site and
do a search for “databases”.
Abell Cluster of Galaxies: The catalog was
originally prepared at the Bulgarian
Academy of Sciences. The Abell clusters
are rich, compact clusters of galaxies
identified by Abell (1958). These clusters
were identified on the red plates of the
Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS).
The magnitude, if known, refers to the
brightest member. There are 2712 clusters
in this catalog.
Arp Peculiar Galaxies: A catalog of 338
peculiar galaxies gathered by Dr. Halton
C. Arp in his Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies.
The catalog is a selection of unusual or
peculiar galaxies, interacting pairs or
larger groups. Arp compiled the list with
photographs from the Palomar 200-inch
telescope in 1966. Magnitude, if known,
refers to brightest member.
Caldwell: The Caldwell catalogue consists
of 109 deep space objects not in the
Messier catalogue that can be viewed with
a small telescope. This catalogue was
originally compiled by Sir Patrick Moore,
and converted to Starry Night format by
Charles Gagne.
82 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Celestron AAM Alignment Stars: The 28
alignment stars for Celestron's Advanced
Astro-Master, a digital setting circle
device. Created by Greg Miller.
Dark Nebula: 37 Dark Nebula taken from
the 2004 Observer's Handbook. Database
formatted into Starry Night format by
Terry Adrian.
Double Stars: The Saguaro Astronomical
catalogue of over 11 000 double stars,
including almost all double stars with a
primary brighter than magnitude 9 and a
secondary brighter than magnitude 13,
created by Steve Coe and A.J. Crayon,
converted into Starry Night format by Bill
Arnett.
Finest NGC: A subset of 110 of the best
deep space objects in the NGC catalogue,
none of which are in the Messier
catalogue. This list was originally
compiled by Alan Dyer and converted to
Starry Night format by Richard
Weatherston.
Herschel 400: A subset of 18th century
astronomer William Herschel's catalogue
of deep space objects. It is designed as a
list of objects for amateurs to observe after
they have seen all the Messier objects. The
Herschel 400 was originally compiled by
Brenda Branchett and converted to Starry
Night format by Michael Desjarlais.
Local Group Galaxies: The 30 or so nearby
galaxies that form our "Local Group". All
of these galaxies are within about five
million light years of Earth. Created by
Bill Arnett.
LX200 Alignment Stars: All of the bright
stars used to align Meade's LX200
telescope. Created by Bill Arnett.
Meteor Showers (RASC): An alternate
meteor shower database with radiant data
from the Royal Astronomical Society
Observer's Handbook. Created by Stephen
Hutson.
Navigational Stars: The 57 bright stars
used for celestial navigation in the
Nautical Almanac.
Nexstar 5 Stars: All 10 000 stars in the
star catalogue built into Celestron's
Nexstar 5 and Nexstar 8 telescopes.
Created by Alan Touchberry.
Nexstar Alignment Stars: The 40 bright
alignment stars for Celestron's Nexstar 5
and Nexstar 8 telescopes. Created by
Brandon Beretta.
Planetary Nebulae: All planetary nebulae
from the Perek-Kohoutek catalogue.
Converted to Starry Night format by Bill
Arnett.
SAA 100: The top 100 non-Messier deep
space objects, as voted on by the amateur
astronomy newsgroup "sci.astro.amateur".
Converted to Starry Night format by Peter
Enzerink.
Sky Commander Alignment Stars: The
alignment stars for the Sky Commander
telescope guiding device. Created by Allan
Keller.
SS2K Alignment Stars: The alignment
stars for the Vixen SkySensor 2000
telescope. Created by Bob Hillier.
Supernova Remnants: All known
supernova remnants in the Milky Way.
This catalogue was created by Dr. David
Green and converted into Starry Night
format by Dr. Leigh Palmer. Visit Dr.
Green's website:
Object Databases 83
http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/surveys/snrs/
to learn more about this catalogue.
UGC: The Uppsala General catalogue of
13 000 galaxies, converted into Starry
Night format by Bill Arnett.
Variable Stars (AAVSO): A database of
almost 6000 variable stars built from the
AAVSO (American Association of
Variable Star Observers) and GCVS
(General Catalogue of Variable Stars)
databases, compiled by Mike Fikes.
Variable Stars (GCVS): All 31 000 stars in
the GCVS (General catalogue of Variable
Stars). Based on data from Kopolev et. al
(1988) and NASA/ADC (1997).
Converted to Starry Night format by
Marion Schmitz.
Variable Stars (GCVS-Hipparcos): Over
8300 variable stars with information from
the GCVS (General catalogue of Variable
Stars) Vols. 4 and 5, and the Hipparcos
catalogues of Periodic and Unsolved
Variables, compiled by Ray Colley.
The databases of comets, asteroids and
satellites change more frequently than
other databases, so Starry Night Pro 5.0
has a special method of updating these
databases. Choose LiveSky->Update
Comets/Asteroids/Satellites and updated
satellite, comet and asteroid data files will
be downloaded from our website. We
update these files several times a week, so
you can expect that any new comets,
asteroids or satellites will be added as soon
as possible. After you have downloaded
the new files, you will need to exit and
restart Starry Night Pro 5.0 before it will
read in the new data files.
You can set up Starry Night Pro 5.0 to
automatically update your comet, asteroid
& satellite files. The various preferences
are in the
LiveSky->Preferences for Auto Updates
menu.
Zwicky Cluster of Galaxies: Database
contains 9134 galaxy clusters compiled by
Fritz Zwicky.
Database Updates
Our view of the universe will change over
the next ten years. New moons will be
discovered, bright new comets will streak
towards the Sun, and new satellites will be
launched into orbit. To ensure that Starry
Night Pro 5.0’s library of data keeps up
with these changes, several update
mechanisms are built into the program.
Maximum number of objects read in at
startup:
This field determines how much
comet, asteroid, and satellite data Starry
Night Pro 5.0 downloads from our
website. The more objects you choose to
download, the longer Starry Night Pro 5.0
84 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
will take to load when you start the
program. You would only want to modify
the default values for these fields if you
have manually created larger comet,
satellite, or asteroid databases. See
“Adding Objects 2 (Multiple Solar System
Objects)” on page 146 for information on
building these databases.
Clicking this
button will
download the latest comet, satellite, and
asteroid data files from the Starry Night
website.
Automatically check for updates from
StarryNight.com every xx days:
Checking
this option ensures that Starry Night will
automatically connect to our website on a
regular basis to update the comet, asteroid
& satellite files. The updates will be
performed when Starry Night Pro 5.0 is
opened. You can control how often Starry
Night will attempt to download the files
from our website. It is recommended that
you update the files at least once every two
weeks. This is particulary important for
satellites. The position of satellites in
Starry Night Pro 5.0 will become
unreliable if your data is more than a few
weeks old, due to the effects of
atmospheric drag.
for information on downloading star data
from the Internet.
Note: It is also possible to manually
modify the comet, asteroid & satellite
databases. See “Adding Objects 2
(Multiple Solar System Objects)” on
page 146 for more information.
For objects other than comets, asteroids &
satellites, the data does not change as
frequently. However, there will still be
changes to existing databases, and
occasionally, new databases. You can
check to see if any new data is available by
choosing
LiveSky->Check For Program Updates from
the menu. This connects you to the updates
page on our website. If any new databases
are available, they will be posted on this
page, along with instructions for adding
them to your copy of Starry Night Pro 5.0.
Now that you know all of the different
databases in Starry Night Pro 5.0, we will
look at how to get more information on
any of the objects in these databases.
Ask Before Connecting to the Internet: If
you check this box, Starry Night will
always ask you before attempting to
connect and download files, otherwise the
connection will be made automatically.
Clear Star Cache: Empties the stars
downloaded from the Internet that were
cached on your local hard disk. See
“Adding Objects 3 (Stars)
” on page 146
Object Databases 85
Find Pane Info
In “Finding Objects
” on page 23, you
learned that typing in a search for an
object produced a list of items found. For
each item in this list, the Find pane
displays several pieces of information:
This opens the object’s
. See “Object Contextual Menu”
menu
contextual
on page 86 for information on the fields in
this menu.
Select/Deselect: Checking the box to the
left of the object’s name in the Find pane
selects the object and labels it onscreen.
See “Labeling Select Objects
” on page 37
for more information on selecting objects.
“Adding Log Entries
” on page 135 for
more information about adding log entries.
Altitude: The object’s height above the
horizon. If the object has a negative
altitude, it is currently beneath the horizon.
If it has a positive altitude that is close to
0°, the object is just above the horizon. An
altitude close to 90° means that the object
is high above the horizon.
Kind: The type of object (e.g. comet,
satellite, etc.)
Database: The database that the object
comes from.
Objects in our solar system also have the
following options:
Orbit: Checking this box (to the right of
the object name) draws the orbital line of
the object. See “Orbits
” on page 108 for
more information on solar system orbits.
Semi-major axis: This is the distance
between an object and its parent body, at
the point when the object is farthest away
from the parent body. For a circular orbit,
the semi-major axis is equal to the orbital
radius.
Text Description: A text description of
the object. All well-known objects will
have unique text descriptions, with
historical information, observing tips, and
other cool facts about the object. For nondescript objects such as dim stars, the
description will be a generic description
for the object type (i.e. red giant star).
This symbol indicates that you have
created a log entry for the object.
Click to view the log entry. See
86 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Object Contextual Menu
An object’s contextual menu provides a
list of actions in Starry Night Pro 5.0 that
can be performed on an object. You open
an object’s contextual menu by clicking
the right mouse button (Ctrl-clicking on
the Macintosh) while the cursor is pointing
at the object.
All of the items in the
menu relate to the
object that you clicked
on. If you were not
pointing the cursor at a
specific object, the
menu gives you
options for the
appearance of the sky
as a whole and the
constellation which
you are pointing at.
See “Sky Contextual Menu
” on page 31
for information on that menu.
Tip: You can also open an object’s
contextual menu from the Find pane. Type
in a search for the object you are
interested in, then click the arrow to the
left of the object’s name in the list of found
items.
The various options in the contextual
menu are described below. Most of these
features are discussed in more detail in
other sections of the book, so only a brief
description of each feature is given in this
section. Don’t be overwhelmed! The
options are just listed here so that you have
a quick reference for all the contextual
menu options in one place.
Select/Deselect: This selects or deselects
the object. If an object is selected, its name
and an arrow pointing to the object will
appear onscreen. See
“Labeling Select Objects
” on page 37 for
more information on selecting objects.
Centre: This adjusts your view so that the
object is at the centre of the screen and
remains locked in the centre of the screen
as time passes. This is handy if you want
to watch a planet’s motion against the
background stars, for example.
Note: If you are centred on an object and
it falls beneath your horizon, your view of
it will be obscured by the horizon.
Magnify: This zooms in on the object so
that you get a close-up view. Objects
within our solar system and deep space
objects in the Messier and Bright NGC
Objects databases all have detailed
images. Stars other than our Sun are just
shown as points of light, and many of the
objects from other databases will just have
position markers instead of images.
Go There: This changes your location to
the surface of the object in question (if the
object is a star, you will be placed nearby).
First your viewing direction will change,
then you will begin to lift off your current
body and fly in the direction of the
celestial body you have chosen. Your
distance from the Sun will appear along
the bottom of the screen as you fly to the
new location. The Heads-Up Display
(HUD) will identify any objects that you
pass by during your journey. The
“Go There” option is only available for
objects with accurate 3-dimensional
position information. There are many
other ways to change your location in
Object Databases 87
Starry Night Pro 5.0. See
“Changing Your Viewing Location
” on
page 102 for more information. However,
the contextual menu is the
only way to
change your location so that you are
viewing from another star or galaxy.
Tip: If you zoom in for a close-up of a
planet and then right-click the mouse
(Ctrl-click on the Mac) and choose
Go There, your location on the new planet
will be the position on the surface where
you clicked the mouse. This can be helpful
if you want to watch eclipses on other
planets. You can zoom in on Jupiter (for
example) until you can see the shadow
caused by one of its moons passing in front
of the Sun. Right-clicking on the shadow
and choosing Go There will allow you to
watch a solar eclipse from Jupiter!
Start\Stop Graphing: This plots the
object’s motion with Starry Night Pro 5.0’s
graphing feature. See “Graph
” on
page 119 for more information.
Generate Ephemerides: This allows you to
create a list of printable ephemeris tables
for any object in Starry Night Pro 5.0. See
“Ephemeris Generator
” on page 121 for
more information.
Add/Edit Image: This allows you to add
an image of this object to Starry Night Pro
5.0, or edit the image, if the object already
has an image. See “User Images
page 148 and “Modifying Images
” on
” on
page 152 for more information.
Add To Planner: This adds the object to
your observation planner list. See
“Observation Planner
” on page 116 for
more information on using the observation
planner.
Add FOV Indicator: This adds a new field
of view (FOV) indicator, centred on the
object. See “Adding other indicators
” on
page 57 for more information.
Add Log Entry/Log Entries: Creates a log
entry for you to add observing notes about
an object. See “Adding Log Entries
” on
page 135 for more information on log
entries.
Note: If you have already added a log
entry for an object, the object’s contextual
menu will list these entries.
Show Info: This opens the Info pane,
which displays much more information on
the object. All the fields in the Info pane
are explained in “Info Pane
Online Info: This will bring up a page on
” on page 88.
LiveSky which has a listing of web
resources with more information about the
object.
Objects in our solar system have a few
additional entries in their contextual menu.
Graph Elongation of Moons: Only an
option for planets with moons, this plots
the elongation of the planet’s moon(s)
using the graphing feature. See “Graph
”
on page 119 for more information.
Orbit: Draws the orbital line of the object.
See “Orbits
” on page 108 for more
information on solar system orbits.
Local/Celestial Path: Turns on the local or
celestial path of the object, which shows
how the object moves over time. See
“Local and Celestial Paths
” on page 100
for more information.
88 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
New Asteroid/New Comet/New Satellite/
Add Moon Orbiting...
All of these options
allow you to add a new object using the
Orbit Editor. The type of object that you
can add depends on the type of object that
you open a contextual menu for. For
example, if you open a planet’s contextual
menu, the “Add Moon Orbiting...” option
appears. See “Adding Objects 1
(Individual Solar System Objects)” on
page 139 for more information on adding
objects with the Orbit Editor.
Edit Surface Image: An option only for
solar system bodies with surface images,
this allows you to modify the surface
image or replace the image entirely. See
“Modifying Images
” on page 152 for more
information.
Save As QuickTime VR: An option for solar
system objects. Allows you to create a 360
degree exposure of a solar system object.
Unlike exporting a 2D image, the QTVR
file is an interactive virtual reality scene.
Edit Orbital Elements: An option only for
objects that you have added with the Orbit
Editor, this allows you to edit the object’s
orbital elements. See “Adding Objects 1
(Individual Solar System Objects)” on
page 139 for more information on orbital
elements and the Orbit Editor.
Delete: An option only for objects that you
have added with the Orbit Editor, this
allows you to delete the object entirely
from Starry Night Pro 5.0’s database.
Enlarge Moon Size: By default, the Moon’s
size is enlarged when you are viewing at a
large field of view, so that you are able to
easily see the Moon’s phase (the Moon is
drawn at its correct size when you are
zoomed in for a close-up view). By
unchecking this option in the Moon’s
contextual menu, the Moon will always be
drawn at its correct size, but it will be too
small to see phase information when you
are viewing at a large field of view.
Halo Effects: The Sun’s halo is an
atmospheric effect that occurs when the
Sun’s light is scattered by our atmosphere.
You can turn the sun halo on all the time,
off all the time, or on in daylight only. You
can also simulate lens flare. If you’re
viewing a total eclipse of the Sun, you will
probably wish to leave the Sun’s halo on,
as this halo also serves as the Sun’s
corona.
Tip: To remove the Lens Flare from the
Sun, open the Sun’s contextual menu,
select Halo Effects and uncheck Lens
Flare.
Info Pane
You were introduced briefly to the Info
pane in “Learning More About Objects
”
on page 27. Recall that you can doubleclick on any object onscreen to
automatically open the object’s Info pane.
You can also open an object’s Info pane by
typing in a search for the object in the Find
pane, then opening the object’s contextual
menu from the list of items found. Choose
Show Info from the contextual menu to
open the Info pane. The Info pane provides
a great deal of information about any
object, as well as links to several Internet
features which can help you learn even
more.
Note: The Info pane for an object differs in
function from the object’s contextual menu.
Object Databases 89
The Info pane provides information, while
the contextual menu lists possible actions.
Some of the fields in the Info pane are
common for all objects, while some fields
are specific to certain object types.
•General Info
This button searches our
LiveSky Internet site for more
information about the object. See
“LiveSky.com Object Database
” on
page 94 for more information.
Name: The name of the selected object.
Catalogue number: The object’s number in
the appropriate astronomical catalogue (if
applicable).
Object Type: The object’s celestial type
(star, galaxy, planet, etc.).
Bayer: For stars only, this field gives the
star’s Bayer catalogue letter, if any. The
Bayer letter is from the Greek alphabet.
The brightest star in a given constellation
is usually named Alpha (the first letter in
the Greek alphabet), the second brightest
is named Beta, and so on. Only relatively
bright stars have Bayer letters.
Flamsteed/Other: For stars only, this gives
the star’s Flamsteed number, if any. The
Flamsteed system orders stars not by
brightness, but by their position relative to
the western boundary of the constellation
they are in. The star closest to the western
edge is labelled 1. Only relatively bright
stars have Flamsteed numbers.
HIP Number/TYC Number: The
HIPPARCOS and Tycho project was a
study done by the European Space Agency
to determine the distances to nearby stars.
The Tycho-2 catalogue included about two
million stars and the HIPPARCOS
catalogue about 100 000. For stars only,
these fields give the catalogue numbers of
the star in question. Not every star has a
HIPPARCOS catalogue number.
More Options: Clicking this button will
bring up the objects contextual menu of
options.
Logs: Lists all log entries (if any) that you
have created for this object. See “Adding
Log Entries” on page 135 for more
information on log entries.
Extended Info: Takes you to LiveSky and
provides a list of web resources containing
more information about this object.
Export: Creates a text file with all the
information generated in the Info pane.
Rise/Transit/Set: The time at which the
object rises above the horizon, transits,
and sets below the horizon, as viewed on
the date and from the location of the active
Starry Night Pro 5.0 window. An object’s
transit time is the time at which it is
90 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
highest in the sky. At its transit time, an
object will be due south in the sky (if you
are viewing from the Northern
Hemisphere), or due north (if you are
viewing from the Southern Hemisphere).
Tip: Clicking on the rise/set/transit
buttons will change the time in Starry
Night Pro 5.0 to reflect the rise/set/transit
times for the object.
• Description
A text description of the object. All wellknown objects will have unique text
descriptions, with historical information,
observing tips, and other cool facts about
the object. For non-descript objects such
as dim stars, the description will be a
generic description for the object type (i.e.
red giant star).
• Position in Sky
This section lists the constellation that the
object is currently in, and the object’s
positional co-ordinates in many different
co-ordinate systems. The meanings of
each of these co-ordinates are described in
“Guides 1 (Co-ordinate Systems)
” on
page 50.
• Position in Space
Tip:
You can also open the text description
for any object by clicking the icon
that appears to the right of an object’s
name in the list of items found in the Find
pane.
This section has information on the
object’s 3-D position in space, if known.
Distance from observer: The object’s
distance from your current location.
Note: the distances to stars are only given
for those stars in the HIPPARCOS
catalogue. The distances to stars are
known only approximately and should be
treated with some caution. The closer a
Object Databases 91
star is, the more accurate its distance
measurement is likely to be. The distances
to stars within a few hundred light years
are relatively accurate, but distances are
much less accurate for stars farther away
than this.
Distance from Sun: The object’s distance
from the Sun.
Proper Motion RA/Dec: Stars are not fixed
in space, and most are in fact moving quite
rapidly. Because of their great distance
from us, however, their positions appear
constant. Only on a timescale of hundreds
or even thousands of years can we actually
see the shifting positions. These fields (for
stars only) describe how much the star’s
equatorial co-ordinates are shifting each
year due to the star’s motion.
•Other Data
The fields that appear in this category
depend greatly on the database that the
object is from. Different databases will
have different information fields.
Star Information Fields: For stars, the
following fields are present:
Variability: This indicates whether a star’s
apparent magnitude (and, therefore, its
brightness) varies with time, and by how
much.
Radius: This measures the star’s radius, in
terms of the Sun’s radius. Red giant stars
can be hundreds of times larger than the
Sun.
Double/Multiple: This field indicates
whether a star is part of a multiple star
system. About half of the stars in the sky
are part of a multiple star system.
Magnitude: This shows a star’s apparent
magnitude
, a value which measures its
brightness in the sky. The idea for
assigning magnitudes originated with
Greek astronomer Hipparchus (190-120
BC). He catalogued all the visible stars he
could see and assigned them magnitudes
from 1 to 6, the brightest stars having a
value of 1.
Contemporary astronomers have refined
Hipparchus’ system, so that the system
now includes larger numbers for dimmer
stars, and negative numbers for very bright
objects. The faintest stars that can be seen
by the Hubble Space Telescope are in the
26 to 28th magnitude range — very dim
stars indeed!
Note: Many newcomers to astronomy get
confused by the fact that the greater an
object’s magnitude, the dimmer it is. An
object with magnitude -5 is much brighter
than an object with magnitude 0, which in
turn is much brighter than an object with
magnitude 5.
The Sun has a magnitude of about -28,
while the brightest star in the night sky is
92 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
the dog star Sirius, which has a magnitude
of -1.47. The magnitudes of the planets
change, depending on how close they are
to Earth, but Venus, Mars and Jupiter can
all have lower magnitudes than Sirius. At
the other extreme, Pluto has a magnitude
of about 14, far too dim to be seen with the
naked eye, and even most small
telescopes.
Absolute Magnitude: The magnitude we
normally use when talking about objects is
the apparent magnitude, which compares
how bright they are as seen from Earth.
But this doesn’t tell us much about the
intrinsic brightness of an object, because
the bodies we see in the sky are spread out
over a wide range of distances. The Sun
produces the same amount of light as the
average star in the sky, but it is far, far
brighter than anything else simply because
it is so close to us.
Absolute magnitude
tells us how bright objects would appear if
they were all at the same distance (the
distance we use is arbitrary, but has been
chosen to be 10 parsecs). As with apparent
magnitude, a lower absolute magnitude
means a brighter body.
Temperature: This is the star’s surface
temperature, given in degrees Kelvin (to
get a star’s temperature in Celsius, just
subtract 273 from its temperature in
Kelvins). The Sun has a temperature of
about 5700 K.
B-V Colour: This is a way of measuring a
star’s colour. An average star has a B-V
value of around 0. If a star has a negative
B-V value it is on the bluish side of the
spectrum. If it has a positive B-V value it
is on the reddish side of the spectrum. The
more negative or positive a star’s B-V, the
more blue or red it will appear. A star’s
colour is directly related to its
temperature: blue stars are hotter and red
stars are cooler.
Luminosity: Luminosity measures the total
light and energy output of a star. It is
different from apparent magnitude,
because it measures not only visible light,
but also the energy released as infra-red
waves, X-rays, and radio waves.
Extrasolar planet information fields:
If you use the
Options pane
to turn on
markers for
stars with
extrasolar planets, the Info pane for stars
with extrasolar planets will have
additional information fields. This
information will also appear in the HeadsUp Display (HUD) when you point the
cursor at a star with an extrasolar planet.
Extrasolar mass: The mass of the
extrasolar planet, in relation to the mass of
Jupiter.
Extrasolar semi-major axis: A measure of
the planet’s distance from its central star,
in astronomical units (AU). 1 AU is the
average distance between Earth and the
Sun.
Extrasolar period: The time needed for the
planet to make 1 complete revolution
around its central star.
Extrasolar eccentricity: A measure of the
shape of the extrasolar planet’s orbit. The
larger a planet’s eccentricity, the more that
its distance from its parent star (and also
its surface temperature) will vary
throughout its orbit.
Object Databases 93
Extrasolar inclination: The tilt of the
planet’s orbit, relative to our viewing
position on Earth.
Note: This is a different definition of
inclination than is used for objects within
our solar system (e.g. comets, asteroids,
satellites, moons) because the tilt is
measured relative to our viewing position,
not to the central body’s equator. See
“Orbital Elements
” on page 140 for the
definition of inclination for objects within
our solar system.
Extrasolar radius: The radius of the
extrasolar planet.
Solar System Object Information Fields:
For objects within our solar system, the
following information fields are present:
number of days that have passed since the
Moon was last new.
Orbit Size: The radius of the orbit that the
object makes around its parent body.
Angular Size: This measures the angular
width of the object (the field of view that it
occupies in the sky).
Disc Illumination: This shows how much
of a planet’s face is illuminated by sunlight
(the rest is in shadow), as seen from your
current position. For example, when the
Moon is half full, its disc illumination is
about 50%.
Planet oblateness: This measures how
much an object is “squished”, in other
words, how much it deviates from a
perfect sphere. A perfect sphere would
have an oblateness of 0. The larger an
object’s oblateness, the more “squished” it
is.
Mass: The object’s mass (if known).
Radius: The object’s radius (if known).
Apparent magnitude: The object’s
apparent magnitude, a measure of its
brightness in the sky. See “Magnitude
” on
page 91 for more information on apparent
magnitude.
Age: Only an option for the Moon, this
gives the Moon’s current phase, and the
Max. Mag. From Earth: The apparent
brightness of planets and other objects in
the solar system changes as the object
moves in its orbit, due to the object’s
changing distance from Earth and the
object’s disc illumination. This field gives
the apparent magnitude of the object when
it is at its brightest.
Length of Sidereal/Solar Day: An object’s
sidereal day is the time that it takes to
rotate once, relative to the fixed stars. An
object’s
solar day is the time that it takes to
rotate once, relative to the Sun. This is also
the average time between sunrises on the
planet’s surface. These two time periods
differ by a large amount only when the
length of a planet’s sidereal day is a
significant fraction of the length of the
94 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
planet’s year. On Earth, the time periods
are almost identical, with the 24 hour solar
day being only four mintes longer than the
sidereal day.
Length of Year: For objects that orbit the
Sun, a year is the amount of time that it
takes for the object to complete one full
orbit.
Other Object Information Fields:
The information fields for objects other
than stars and solar system objects will
vary. Often the only pieces of information
are the object’s magnitude and angular
size.
LiveSky.com Object Database
In “LiveSky Pane
” on page 71, you
learned how to use Starry Night Pro 5.0’s
LiveSky pane to access live, up-to-theminute images of celestial phenomena.
You can also use LiveSky to locate
information on the Internet for any object.
LiveSky.com button in the object’s Info
pane. This will bring up a page on LiveSky
which has a listing of web resources with
more information about the object. It will
also give you the option of searching other
sites on the Internet, both general-purpose
search engines and astronomy-specific
pages, for information on your object.
Example: Finding Web Pages for the
Moon
1Open the
“moon”, then double-click on the Moon’s
name to centre on the Moon.
2Open the
3Click the
Find pane and type in
Info pane.
LiveSky.com button from the
Info pane. At this point your web browser
should go to our LiveSky database and
open a page with several links to websites
with more information about the Moon.
Click on any of these links to read
interesting facts and trivia about the Moon,
and to see lots of pictures and figures.
Some of the links in our LiveSky database
will appear for all objects (these may be
changed if better sources become
available). These links are described
below.
You can access the
LiveSky database for any
object in Starry Night by clicking the
Digitized Sky Survey: The Digitized Sky
Survey (DSS) is a collection of images
obtained with two Schmidt telescopes and
converted into digital format by the Space
Telescope Science Institute. The digitized
data allows the user to generate an image
of any area in the sky. Clicking this link on
our webpage will automatically generate a
DSS image of the object you originally
clicked on in Starry Night Pro 5.0. See
“Downloading Photographic Images
” on
page 75 for more information on the
Digitized Sky Survey.
HEASARC Astrobrowse: Clicking this link
will search dozens of astronomy databases
for information on your object. A new
window will open with each database
being searched listed on the left side.
When the search for that database has been
completed, a green “happy-face” icon will
appear beside the name of the database.
You can then click the name of the
database to retrieve the information.
Tip: It is also possible to visit the “front
page” of LiveSky by opening a web
browser and directing it to
www.livesk
y.com . This page has listings
and brief descriptions of
astronomy-related websites, sorted into
different categories, much like the site
Yahoo!, but devoted exclusively to
astronomy.
Object Databases 95
96 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Chapter 6
Bending Space & Time
This chapter will show you how to take full
advantage of Starry Night Pro 5.0’s planetarium
capabilities. You will learn how to start, stop,
speed up and slow down the flow of time, and
change your location to view from anywhere on
or off the surface of Earth - you’ll even fly a
spaceship! Several examples will help you master
the control of time & space.
98 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Time Flow
By default, time in Starry Night Pro 5.0
advances at the same rate as real time. If
you run Starry Night Pro 5.0 for one hour,
the time onscreen will also advance by one
hour. As the time in Starry Night Pro 5.0
changes, the screen continuously updates
to reflect the changing sky.
Note: This means that the
rate of time flow
is the same as real time, but the time itself
may not be the same. For example, let’s
say you open Starry Night Pro 5.0 at 8
p.m. You then change the time onscreen to
1 p.m. and run the program for one hour.
At the end of the hour, the actual time will
be 9 p.m, but the time that Starry Night
Pro 5.0 shows will be 2 p.m.
Changing Time Flow Rate: One of the nice
things about Starry Night Pro 5.0 is that
you can change the rate at which time
flows. Just like nature programs use timelapse photography to show processes
which take place too slow to see in real
time, you can speed up or slow down time
to get the best possible views of an
astronomical event.
The rate of time flow is
shown immediately to
the right of the date and
time in the toolbar.
Clicking the arrow opens
a pull-down menu that
displays a list of possible
time steps. The steps fall
into two categories:
multiples of real time,
and
discrete time steps.
Time steps that are
multiples of real time
(i.e. 30x) simply advance the time in
Starry Night Pro 5.0 at a rate equal to a
multiple of the real rate of time flow. For
example, a time step of 30x would cause
the time in Starry Night Pro to advance at
30 times the real rate of time flow.
Obviously, the larger the multiple, the
faster time would advance onscreen.
Discrete time steps update the time by a
specific increment. For example, a time
step of 3 minutes means that every time
the screen updates, the time in Starry
Night Pro 5.0 is advanced by 3 minutes.
Discrete time steps are often useful when
simulating astronomical events. For
example, assume you wanted to see how
Jupiter’s position in the sky changes over
the next few months. You could set the
time to sometime in the evening (for
example, 9 p.m.) and then set the time step
to 1 day. Starry Night Pro 5.0 would run
time forward, showing the sky at 9 p.m.
each night. If you had chosen a multiple of
real time instead of a discrete time step,
you would see an alternating cycle of day
and night, instead of seeing the sky at the
same time each night.
A few of the discrete time steps listed in
the pull-down menu may be unfamiliar to
you:
Sidereal day: This is the time it takes for
the Earth to rotate once on its axis. It is
four minutes shorter than the day we are
familiar with, which is called the solar day.
The days are not exactly the same length
due to the revolution of Earth around the
Sun.
Sidereal month: This is the time it takes
for the Moon to rotate once around Earth,
approximately 27.3 days. This is shorter
than the month we are familiar with (the
lunar month), again due to the revolution
of Earth around the Sun.
Lunar month: This is the time interval
between two full moons, as seen on Earth.
It is about 29 1/2 days.
Customizing Time Steps:
You are not limited to
the choice of time steps
that appear in the time
step pull-down menu. If
you click on the
numerical part of the current time step, it
will light up and you can type in a
numerical value. This will let you change
the time step from 1 day to 7 days, for
example.
You can also create entirely new discrete
time steps. To do this, choose Edit from the
bottom of the time flow pull-down menu.
This opens a new dialog box, which lists
the existing time steps and their values.
Double-click on any of the existing time
steps to change their values, or click the
“+” sign in the bottom left corner of this
dialog box to define a new time step. For
example, you could create a “Martian
day”, the average time between sunrise
and sunset as seen from Mars!
Bending Space & Time 99
Time Flow Modes
In the above section, you learned how to
change the rate of time flow, but not the
mode of time flow. Time simply flowed
forward continuously, advancing every
time the screen updated. This is known as
the “Forward” mode and is one of 5
different time flow modes in Starry Night
Pro 5.0. You change the time mode using
the VCR-like controls in the toolbar.
Single Step Backward: Moves the
time backwards by one time step and
then freezes time.
Backward: Runs time backwards
continuously. Each time the screen is
updated, the time moves backward one
time step.
100 Starry Night Pro 5.0 User’s Guide
Stop: Freezes time at the current
value.
Forward (Play): Runs time forward
continuously. Each time the screen is
updated, time moves forward one time
step. This is the default time flow mode.
Single Step Forward: Moves the time
forward by one time step and then
freezes time.
Tip: If you want to view the sky at a
precise time, first press the “Stop” button,
and then type in the viewing time. If you
type in the viewing time first, the time
shown onscreen may update before you
can press the “Stop” button.
Specifying Frame Rate: By default, when
the time mode is Forward or Backward,
the screen is updated continuously. The
number of updates performed per second
will depend on the speed of your processor
and graphics card. You can also specify the
number of updates per second. To do this,
choose Preferences from the File menu
(Windows) or the
Starry Night Pro 5.0 menu (Macintosh)
and choose Responsiveness from the
dropbox in the upper left corner of the
Preferences dialog box.
The “Requested Frame Rate” slider and
textbox allows you to set the frame rate,
which is the number of times Starry Night
Pro 5.0 will update per second. If you run
Starry Night Pro 5.0 on more than one
computer, the advantage of specifying a
requested frame rate is that any
simulations you create using Starry Night
Pro 5.0 will run at the same speed on both
computers.
Local and Celestial Paths
Objects in our solar system move over
time, relative to the background stars and
galaxies. Several options in Starry Night
Pro 5.0 allow you to display this motion.
Right-click (Ctrl-click on the Mac) on any
object in the solar system to open the
object’s contextual menu. You will see
options named “Local Path” and “Celestial
Path”. Selecting one of these options
begins to plot the appropriate path for the
object in question. As time advances, this
path will grow. You can turn off the path
by opening the object’s contextual menu
and selecting the path option again.
Note: A path is the trail an object makes
over a period of time. Therefore, if time is
stopped in Starry Night Pro 5.0, a path
cannot be displayed.
Local Path: A local path is the apparent
trail an object would make over time, as
seen from your location. The local path of
an object incorporates the object’s actual
motion and the effects of Earth’s rotation
(assuming you are located on Earth).
Celestial Path: A celestial path is the
apparent path an object makes on the
celestial sphere — the trail an object
leaves over time, in relation to the fixed
stars. The celestial path incorporates only
the object’s actual motion and ignores the
effects of Earth’s rotation.
Note: There is no local or celestial path
for an object that you are located on, since
that object doesn’t move in relation to you.
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