Last updated 2012 January 29
You can click here for the current "test" update to Guide 9.0 UnZIP its contents to your Guide folder; this will overwrite some files and create some new ones. That should be all Guide 9.0 user have to do.
Note that it's also possible to use the update with Guide 8.0! Things get a little trickier (though not much so); click here for details.
(2012 January 29) Lunar phase indicator fix in legend: At the suggestion of Pete Gladstein and Stephen Tonkin, the lunar phase indicator is now a separate option in the Legend dialog. So you can have a compass indicator, the lunar phase indicator, or both or neither.
One small benefit of this is that if you do have the lunar phase indicator showing, you can right-click on it to find the Moon and left-click on it to find the Sun.
(2012 January 29) Apparent diameters available in ephemerides: When making ephemerides, you can click on Ephemeris Items and see "App Diam" listed in the resulting dialog. The apparent diameter is shown in arcseconds. Note that this works (at least right now) only for planets, satellites, and the Sun.
(2012 January 16) Fix to some problems in entering/displaying times: Luc Desamore pointed out that there were bugs in the Settings... Enter Time feature. For example, were one to enter any of the following:
2012 jan 16 13:14 3/13/1977 15:00 6 mar 10:12:17
(click here for details as to the ways in which times can be entered), you'd expect Guide's default time zone to be used. On the other hand, a JD or MJD really ought to be on Universal Time, no matter what. (Unless you've specified TD = Dynamical Time, in which case you'd expect that system to be used.) But the latter didn't happen. If you entered, say, JD 2451545, you'd expect the result to be noon UT of a particular day. Instead, you got noon local time of that day.
This is now fixed. (Note that JDs and MJDs default to being UT no matter what, even if the default "time zone" is TD.)
Also, Luc noticed that the JD shown in Quick Info was put into local time. It is now always a UT JD.
(2012 January 16) Ability to enter time zones when entering times: Something that fell out of the above bug fix: I usually run Guide with UT (Universal Time) as the default time zone. If I want to set Guide's time to, say, 3:14:15.9 Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) or 12:34:56 Dynamical Time (TD), I've had to change the default time zone, enter the desired time, and then switch back to UT.
Now, when using Settings... Enter Time, one can specify a time zone, which you couldn't do before. For example:
3:21:16 UT 03:14:15.9 EDT 12:34:56 td
now behave properly, with the time zone extracted from the end of the text. (Otherwise, the default time zone is assumed, unless you enter a JD or MJD, in which case UT is assumed.)
Incidentally, one can also now use PM, P.M., p.m., AM, etc. to indicate 12-hour-clock times; and one can start the time string with 'now', to do things such as
now 3:00 PM EDT (15:00 Eastern Daylight Time today) 4:15 a.m. (4:15 in currently-set time zone, leave day unchanged)
(2012 January 16) NSV finding fixed: Roger Pickard pointed out that using Go To... Star... NSV... 134, or using Go To... Object Name and entering "nsv 134", failed. The same thing happened for every NSV star that has received a GCVS variable star designation (which includes a lot of them). This has been fixed.
(2012 January 16) Fix to colors used in Great Red Spot transit time tables: Pete Gladstein pointed out that the GRS transit times shown in "More Info" when Jupiter is clicked on, as well as those shown by the Tables... GRS Transits function, are always red. They really should follow the common Guide scheme in which red means the object is below the horizon, yellow means it's less than ten degrees from the horizon, and green means it's above ten degrees in altitude. This is now fixed.
(2012 January 16) Lunar phase indicator shown in Legend: If you have the Compass item shown in the legend area, you'll see a lightly overlaid outline of the moon's current phase.
(2012 January 16) 2012 July 1 leap second inserted: Of concern mostly to precision nuts: it was announced recently that a leap second will be inserted into UTC at the end of June 2012. That is to say, 2012 June 30 23:59:59 will be followed by 2012 June 30 23:59:60, which will be followed by 2012 July 1 0:00:00. (Leap seconds are inserted at the end of June or December at irregular and unpredictable intervals, in order to keep UTC in synch with the slightly irregular and unpredictable rotation of the earth.) This leap second is now included by Guide when computing UTC times.
• Before installing a 9.0 update, you have to make sure that you have the last Guide 8.0 update. To check this, run Guide 8.0 and click on Help... About Guide to check the version date. If it is not 2011 Aug 16 or later, then you aren't up to date on Guide 8.0; click here to get it. Install it (basically, save the contents of the guide8.zip file in your Guide folder, overwriting some files and creating others.)
• Then click here for the current "test" update to Guide 9.0 for Guide 8.0 users, and unZIP its contents into your Guide folder, too. Again, this will overwrite some files and add others.
• Note that this gets you the current Guide 9.0 software. (It'll even say "Guide 9.0" on the application title bar.) So you'll get the improvements mentioned above, but not the updated asteroid elements, star and galaxy catalogues, and so forth that require the gigabytes of data on the Guide 9.0 DVD. For that, you should click here for information on ordering Guide 9.0.