Updated software for Guide 8.0

This page will only help if you have the Guide 8.0 CDs; click here for updates to Guide 7 or here for updates to Guide 6 or here for updates to Guide 5, or here for information about ordering Guide 8.

Japanese version here

It's recommended that you return to this page from time to time. There is a long list of possible improvements to Guide that will be worked on in the coming months, and they will be reflected on this page.

Also, be aware that at times, there is an "in-testing" version of the software. This will incorporate new features and bug fixes; it's usually not considered quite ready for this page, either because bugs still need fixing or the features aren't completely done.

How to use the update files: To get the update and the features listed below, download one of the following three files and unZIP it in your Guide directory. Important: if you run Guide in a language other than English, you'll also need to download and unZIP one or more of the "language" files offered below, if such a file is provided. Also, it's a good idea to read through the list of new features (following the download section) to see what you're getting.

32-bit (Win95/98/NT/XP) update (GUIDE8.ZIP) (about 885 KBytes)
16-bit (Win3.1) update (GUIDE8A.ZIP) (about 585 KBytes)
32-bit DOS software (DOSGUIDE.ZIP) (about 805 KBytes)

(Note that update files aren't available for all languages yet. In such cases, some new features won't be translated.)

Chinese Dutch French (27K)
German (232K) Italian (75K) Japanese (24K)
Russian (29K) Spanish (14K) Czech (15K)
Polish (38 K) Hungarian (35K)

Improvements so far, in reverse chronological order:


  • (24 Mar 2007) Ability to use ASCOM scope drivers
  • (24 Mar 2007) Ability to get CMC-14 data via Internet
  • (24 Mar 2007) Ability to show where the scope is, continuously
  • (24 Mar 2007) Ability to find A2.0 and UCAC-2 stars by catalog number
  • (24 Mar 2007) Some artificial satellite improvements
  • (24 Mar 2007) More 'More Info' about artificial satellites
  • (24 Mar 2007) Proper motion arrows shown for UCAC-2 stars
  • (24 Mar 2007) Fix for RealSky bug
  • (24 Mar 2007) Use of new GCVS (General Catalogue of Variable Stars)
  • (24 Mar 2007) Mixed "Gregorian/Julian" calendar

  • (29 May 2006) Fix to deal with six-digit asteroid numbers
  • (29 May 2006) Ability to add/modify user-specified locations
  • (29 May 2006) New functions for controlling Meade telescopes
  • (29 May 2006) Use of B1.0 data from the hard drive
  • (29 May 2006) Better default contrast when loading images
  • (29 May 2006) Comments on NGC and IC objects from Steve Gottlieb's observations
  • (29 May 2006) Hotkeys/toolbar buttons to increment, decrement, or round off the time
  • (29 May 2006) Ability to adjust the time by clicking on the time shown in the legend
  • (29 May 2006) Check-boxes to round off ephemerides and trails to nearest step
  • (29 May 2006) Better handling of atmospheric refraction
  • (29 May 2006) New dialog for setting level sizes
  • (29 May 2006) CCD guider chip range rings
  • (29 May 2006) Some very minor changes

  • (23 Feb 2005) Supergalactic coordinate input and readout
  • (23 Feb 2005) Downloading of UCAC-2 data
  • (23 Feb 2005) UCAC-2 stars shown adjusted for proper motion
  • (23 Feb 2005) Moon's age/elongation in legend
  • (23 Feb 2005) Better name and magnitude data for artificial satellites
  • (23 Feb 2005) Display of images with WCS data

  • (02 Oct 2004) New "centering" button
  • (02 Oct 2004) Omission of small images
  • (02 Oct 2004) Automated updating of artificial satellite (TLE) data
  • (02 Oct 2004) Method of changing the 'horizon' display

  • (21 May 2004) Revised "Add MPC Comets/Asteroids" function
  • (21 May 2004) Revised overlay line drawing mode
  • (21 May 2004) "Undo" toolbar button/hotkey
  • (21 May 2004) New Uranometria available in legend

  • (18 Sep 2003) Progress indicator for catalog downloads
  • (18 Sep 2003) Delta-T in the legend
  • (18 Sep 2003) Phobos, Deimos shown with actual shapes and images
  • (18 Sep 2003) UCAC-2 and 2MASS in color
  • (18 Sep 2003) More DSS downloading options
  • (18 Sep 2003) Use of JPL DE ephemerides
  • (18 Sep 2003) Ability to change time/date format and calendar
  • (18 Sep 2003) New "UTC" option in Time Zone selection

  • (24 Aug 2003) Ability to display UCAC-2 data
  • (24 Aug 2003) Ability to control arrow-key panning
  • (24 Aug 2003) Ability to show a second "alternative" time in the Legend
  • (24 Aug 2003) Ability to show the airmass ("sec(z)") in the Legend
  • (24 Aug 2003) Ability to reset line widths
  • (24 Aug 2003) Several smaller changes

  • (18 Apr 2003) Ability to show DSS-2 images in color
  • (18 Apr 2003) Options to download B1.0 and 2MASS data
  • (18 Apr 2003) Some better "Go To" functions
  • (18 Apr 2003) Planets shown in perspective
  • (18 Apr 2003) Display of J002E3
  • (18 Apr 2003) Use of COM5 or COM6 for scope control
  • (18 Apr 2003) "Pick" data stored in a file

  • (14 Jan 2003) Guide in Polish

  • (6 Dec 2002) Keyboard/toolbar options to "go to" compass points
  • (6 Dec 2002) Revised 'go to satellite' function
  • (6 Dec 2002) Better tooltips
  • (6 Dec 2002) Bug fix for AVIs
  • (6 Dec 2002) SIMBAD data for some stars
  • (6 Dec 2002) Use of SDP4 for high-altitude artificial satellites
  • (6 Dec 2002) Several minor changes

  • (5 Oct 2002) Adjustable color for 'night' (red) mode
  • (5 Oct 2002) More (extremely minor) irregular satellites
  • (5 Oct 2002) Three bugs fixed

  • (22 Sep 2002) True "full screen" mode
  • (22 Sep 2002) Multiple aperture circles
  • (22 Sep 2002) Ability to make color PostScript files
  • (22 Sep 2002) More "standard", Windows-like menus
  • (22 Sep 2002) New (Hammer-Aitoff) projection
  • (22 Sep 2002) Better "realistic" mode
  • (22 Sep 2002) NexStar improvements
  • (22 Sep 2002) Support for Astro-Physics mounts
  • (22 Sep 2002) Handling of USB-to-RS232 devices for scope control

  • (4 May 2002) New projections
  • (4 May 2002) Adjusting isophote contrast
  • (4 May 2002) More interesting horizon

  • (24 Apr 2002) Orbital binaries shown
  • (24 Apr 2002) Choice of photometric band and color saturation for stars
  • (24 Apr 2002) More 'Go To' functions revised
  • (24 Apr 2002) Improvements to the DOS software

  • (25 Mar 2002) Settable colors for Help/Table/More Info data
  • (25 Mar 2002) 'Go To Comet' dialog heavily revised

  • (19 Mar 2002) Change in display of "help", table data
  • (19 Mar 2002) Lots of bug fixes

  • (12 Mar 2002) Ability to reset hotkeys
  • (12 Mar 2002) Full-color and line style selections

  • (26 Feb 2002) Creation of animation (.AVI) files
  • (26 Feb 2002) Some new isophote controls
  • (26 Feb 2002) Access to DSS-2 via Internet
  • (26 Feb 2002) Suppression of some spurious GSC stars
  • (26 Feb 2002) Additional data about galaxies in "more info"
  • (26 Feb 2002) "Motion trails" for asteroids

  • (24 Mar 2007) Ability to use ASCOM scope drivers: Quite a few telescopes can be controlled via ASCOM drivers (click here for the full list of scopes supported by ASCOM). If you run the current version of Guide and click on Settings... Scope Control, you'll see an "ASCOM" radio button. Click on the "ASCOM" radio button and on OK, and you'll be prompted to choose your telescope.

    Guide will show the 'scope pad' menu item, and you can use the 'slew Guide' and 'slew scope' functions within the Scope Pad. (Thus far, the other functions, such as setting slew rates and arrow keys, don't work.) Also, the scope indicator function will work with ASCOM scopes.

    To get this to work, you must download this DLL that allows Guide to communicate with ASCOM (about 62 KBytes). If you don't already have the ASCOM 'platform' of drivers set up, you should visit the ASCOM downloads page and get the current ASCOM platform and install it.

    (24 Mar 2007) Ability to get CMC-14 data via Internet: In the Extras... Get Star Catalog Data menu, there's a new "Get CMC-14 from Internet" option. This works much like the existing star catalog download options, except that it gets data from the CMC-14 star catalog. This catalog provides data for over 95 million stars, covering almost all of the area between declinations -30 and +50. That makes it quite a bit denser than UCAC-2, but not nearly as dense as Ax.0 or B1.0.

    The positions are about as good as those from UCAC-2 (and therefore much more accurate than those from Ax.0 or B1.0). The really interesting thing about this catalog is that the photometry (in r') is quite good. No effort was made to get good photometry in UCAC-2, so this is a very welcome change indeed.

    (24 Mar 2007) Ability to show where the scope is, continuously: (This has been present, in undocumented form, for some time.) If you look in the Settings... Toolbar menu, near the bottom, you'll see an option to 'Toggle scope location indicator'. When turned on, you'll see a toolbar button with a red target symbol. Click on this button, and Guide will show a red indicator, on the chart, showing where your scope is pointed. This will be updated about once a second, so as your scope slews, the red symbol will move with it. If needed, the chart will be redrawn to keep the symbol on-screen.

    (24 Mar 2007) Ability to find A2.0 and UCAC-2 stars by catalog number: This followed an inquiry from Josch Hambsch on the Guide user list. If you have set up Guide to read A2.0 data from the hard drive, you can now use Go To... Object Name, and enter an A2.0 designation such as

    A2 1050 3141592
    

    Guide will then center on that A2.0 star.

    A2.0 designations always consist of "A2", followed by a zone designation (always a multiple of 75), followed by an object number within that zone.

    If you've set up Guide to read UCAC-2 data from the hard drive, you can now use Go To... Object Name, and enter a UCAC-2.0 designation such as

    U2 3141592
    

    Guide will then center on that UCAC-2.0 star.

    (24 Mar 2007) Some artificial satellite improvements: You can now use 'Go To... Object Name' and find satellites via NORAD and international designations. For the former, one would enter (for example) 'NORAD 13456' or 'norad 13456'. (The 'norad' prefix is necessary, to distinguish between satellite 13456 and minor planet 13456.) For international designations, you would enter (for example) '69046f' or '69046F', to find the object 1969-046F.

    Also, the underlying ephemeris code has been revised, resulting in some small improvements in accuracy; click here for details. Be advised that nobody seems to know exactly what model is used by NORAD, so the "improvement" may be somewhat illusory.

    (24 Mar 2007) More 'More Info' about artificial satellites: Paul Gabriel suggested that Guide ought to show the TLE (Two-Line Element) data for artificial satellites in 'More Info'. This data is now shown, but a "plain" TLE is hard to puzzle out (all the orbital data is run together without comments or spaces), so the data is also shown broken down so you can see the individual bits and pieces.

    In addition, 'More Info' for satellites now includes links to data from Heavens-Above, n2yo.com, and the NSSDC (National Space Science Data Centre). Each link gets you additional data about the satellite in question. Heavens-Above, for example, will show you the current ground track of the object, and its orbit as "seen from above". NSSDC will give background information about the mission the satellite was intended to accomplish.

    (24 Mar 2007) Proper motion arrows shown for UCAC-2 stars: Ed Wiley pointed out that in the Star Display dialogue, you can tell Guide to show arrows indicating a given amount of proper motion for stars, and those arrows will appear on Guide's "built-in" star data. But they don't appear on UCAC-2 stars (neither those shown by downloading UCAC-2 from Internet, nor those shown by displaying UCAC-2 data from CD-ROM or hard drive.) This has been fixed; proper-motion arrows will be shown for UCAC-2 stars.

    (24 Mar 2007) Fix for RealSky bug: Several people noticed a problem with extracting RealSky images. The extracted images were frequently for areas far from the intended location. This has been fixed.

    (24 Mar 2007) Use of new GCVS (General Catalogue of Variable Stars): This catalogue has had some improvements in recent years. Coordinates have been fixed, and new objects added. You can download the current version of the GCVS here (about 6.6 MBytes). If you put this in your Guide folder, still with the name 'iii.dat', then the Go To... Star... Variable Star function will make use of the new file. Also, when you click on a star and get "more info", the "comments from the GCVS" will be drawn from the new file.

    (24 Mar 2007) Mixed "Gregorian/Julian" calendar: In the past, if you selected a date before 15 October 1582 (Gregorian) and wanted dates to be shown in the Julian calendar, you had to reset the calendar (in the Time Format dialog) to Julian. If you didn't do this, Guide would (usually) warn you that you were using the Gregorian calendar for a date before 15 October 1582. Similarly, if you attempted to use the Julian calendar for dates after the switchover, Guide would again warn you of possible trouble.

    But I often get comments from people who have gotten things switched around, and are wondering why Guide's date is off by 13 days. (As soon as I hear that figure, or "a couple of weeks", I know what's going on.) To guard against this, the Time Format dialog now includes the Gregorian/Julian "calendar" as an option. Select this, and calendar dates will be shown using the Gregorian reckoning for dates on or after 15 October 1582 (Greg.), and with the Julian system for dates prior to that.

    This will be the default calendar in Guide 9.0, and will (I hope) reduce the number of tech support questions I get on this subject.

    One odd side effect of this: if you select the Gregorian/Julian calendar, and go into the Time dialog, and select October 1582, you'll see a calendar resembling this:

    Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
    30  1  2  3  4 15 16
    17 18 19 20 21 22 23
    24 25 26 27 28 29 30
    31  1  2  3  4  5  6 

    Which is correct: in that month, Thursday, 4 October was followed by Friday, 15 October, causing havoc in the computation of rents and other monthly payments (the "Y1582 problem").


    (29 May 2006) Fix to deal with six-digit asteroid numbers: Some months ago, the Minor Planet Center designated the 99942nd minor planet. MPC held off on numbering more than this, because many of their files only allowed for five-digit numbers. Sort of like the two-digit numbers once used for years, causing the "Y2K Crisis". Those of us involved in astronomy software now have an "A100K Crisis".

    It wasn't clear how MPC was going to resolve this issue. Turns out that the astrometry report format and the MPCORB format now fit six-digit numbers into a five-character field, using a pseudo-expanded hexadecimal system: asteroid 100000 is stored as "A0000", and asteroid 359999 will be stored as "Z9999". Then asteroid 360000 will be stored as "a0000", and asteroid 619999 will be stored as "z9999". Guide is now fixed to handle these oddities. (I think. As with the Y2K foolishness, a lot of code is affected, and I may have overlooked something; please let me know if you spot any problems!)

    (In theory, we may someday face an "A620K Crisis". However, well before then, MPC hopes to switch to a new observation format which allows reporting of all sorts of additional details such as uncertainties, reference catalogues, photometry... and allows for far more numbered asteroids and other designations.)

    (29 May 2006) Ability to add/modify user-specified locations: There is now a file, user_loc.txt, to which you can add your own locations. A few examples are provided. For each location, you must supply a latitude/longitude and altitude, the name of the location as entered into Guide's "Enter Location Name" dialog, and the name of the location as it will appear on Guide's title bar. Details are given in the first few lines of user_loc.txt.

    At some point, I'll probably wrap some user interface around this. You should be able to set up a location with latitude/longitude, then tell Guide: "Store this location under the name 'Observatory loc'", and similarly for other locations.

    (29 May 2006) New functions for controlling Meade telescopes: Almost at the end of the list of functions given in Settings... Toolbar, you'll see three new ones: "Set LX-200 time", "Set LX-200 lat/lon", and "Get LX-200 info". (Despite the "LX-200", these will actually work with all Meade telescopes.)

    The first two will cause Guide to reset your telescopes' date/time and/or latitude/longitude. The latter is stored in the scope's permanent memory, so it's not terribly important. But the AutoStar (and, I assume, many other Meade scopes) lack a clock, and therefore start up ignorant of the current time. So the "Set LX-200 time" button may be of use every time you start the scope.

    "Get LX-200 info" will cause Guide to inquire of the scope as to its type (AutoStar, LX-200 16-inch, etc.), date, firmware version, and so on. It will then show a dialog of this information on-screen.

    Certain aspects of how to control Meade scopes are undocumented. For example, I know that my Autostar ETX gives the "Scope type" as "Autostar" (the first line given when I click on "Get LX-200 Info"). But I don't know what other "scope types" there are. Please let me know what "scope type" Guide gets for your scope!

    I have a particular reason for wanting to know this. There are at least four broad categories of Meade scope: "classic" LX-200, AutoStar, 16-inch LX-200, and GPS scopes. Each has a slightly different command set. (For example, some scopes have variable focuser rates, or can "park" or turn field derotators on or off. And the GPS commands obviously will work only with the GPS scopes.) If I knew what "scope types" were out there, I could rig Guide up to detect them and show only those functions specific to your scope.

    If you look near the bottom of toolbar.dat, you'll see that a whole slew of Meade functions are quite possible. If you wish, you can even move them to among the other Meade functions (focus, slew, etc.) and modify the number of toolbar buttons at the top of the file to include the new buttons.

    (29 May 2006) Use of B1.0 data from the hard drive: Markus Funke suggested, in a message on the Guide user list, that Guide might support use of B1.0 data in its raw form. Not many people actually have access to that data, but it's being distributed on hard drives within Europe. Markus sent me a few megabytes of example data near the celestial poles for testing purposes.

    If you run Guide, hit Alt-J, and enter a line such as

    B1_PATH=d:\b1
    

    then Guide will look for B1.0 files in that folder, in the usual B1.0 directory organization. For example, Guide would expect from the above that it would find data for the north celestial pole in the folder d:\b1\179\b1799.cat. If you look in Extras... User-Added Datasets, you'll see a new "USNO B1.0 from hard drive" dataset; you can turn this on, adjust the limiting magnitude, and change the color and labelling of the data.

    (29 May 2006) Better default contrast when loading images: Guide had an annoying tendency, when loading images via the Extras... RealSky/DSS Images... Add DSS Image option, to show them as all black or all white. Getting the right contrast could be very annoying.

    On loading an image, Guide now does a rough histogram and comes up with a pretty good estimate of the contrast level that ought to be used. I admit that adjusting contrast/brightness is still painful. But at least you'll now be starting from decent initial values.

    (29 May 2006) Comments on NGC and IC objects from Steve Gottlieb's observations: On a post in the AmAstro group, Steve Gottlieb mentioned that he has posted an updated set of observations of deep-sky objects on the NGC-IC site. You can click here to get the list of observation files.

    The observations are split over 17 files. One contains all the IC observations; the others span ranges of 500 NGC objects each. If you download these files to your Guide directory, information from them will appear when you ask for "more info" on an NGC or IC object. Many thanks to Steve Gottlieb for making these data available!

    (29 May 2006) Hotkeys/toolbar buttons to increment, decrement, or round off the time: If you look in the Settings... Toolbar dialog, you will see, about a third of the way down the list, options to increase (and decrease) the time set in Guide in steps of .1 second up to a millennium, and to round off the time value. This last means you can do things such as, for example, set the time/date to 1 January of the current year, or to the first of the current month, or to the nearest hour, minute, or second. (Click here for some suggested hotkey combinations.)

    (29 May 2006) Ability to adjust the time by clicking on the time shown in the legend: In the past, if you clicked on the time shown in the legend with the left mouse button, Guide would bring up the time setting dialog. Click with the right mouse button, and Guide would set the time to the present instant.

    Now, you can left-click on the millennium, century, decade, year, month, day, hour, minute, or second shown in the time in the legend to increment these values. For example, if the time in the legend is 2005 Apr 3 14:15:26, you could left-click on the '5' in 2005 to go ahead to 2006, or on 'Apr' to get to May.

    Right-clicking has the opposite effect, causing you to go backward in time by the same step.

    If you have a three-button mouse, using the center mouse button will cause Guide to round off the time. That is, use the middle mouse button on the hours digit, and Guide will round off the time to the nearest hour. Use it on the date, and Guide will round off to 0:00:00 of that date.

    Those with two-button mice can use Shift-left button to get the effect the center button would cause.

    These digits don't cover the entire time shown in the legend; you can still left-click on the spaces and ':'s to get the time setting dialog, or right-click to set Guide to the current time.

    (29 May 2006) Check-boxes to round off ephemerides and trails to nearest step: The 'Make an Ephemeris' and 'Add a Trail' dialogs both have a new 'Round to Nearest Step' check-box. Suppose you want to make an ephemeris or trail with a one-hour step, starting on the next hour. In the past, you would have to set Guide's date/time to that hour, then make your ephemeris or trail. If you didn't do that, you would get an ephemeris or trail starting at exactly whatever time was set in Guide.

    Now, you can check the 'nearest step' box, and Guide will round off to the nearest hour (or whatever step size you happen to be using for the ephemeris or trail.) Something I really ought to have added many years ago!

    (29 May 2006) Better handling of atmospheric refraction: The Settings... Location dialog now has a check-box to "include refraction". Previously, Guide didn't include refraction in its display of altitude in the legend and when you clicked on an object. Now, if you check this box, both displays will be adjusted. The temperature, altitude, barometric pressure, and relative humidity specified in the Location dialog will be used when computing refraction.

    A few things to be warned about:

  • If you're very close to the horizon, the refraction shown in the cursor readout in the legend will not necessarily match that shown for an object when you click on it. For the cursor readout, Guide uses a pretty quick and moderately accurate algorithm to compute refraction. When you click on an object, it uses a much more complex method that numerically integrates the path of a ray through the atmosphere. (For details, see the C source code for this method.) The difference tends to be small, and the full integration method tends to be too demanding for a cursor readout.
  • As the cursor approaches the horizon, you'll see the refracted altitude drop down to a little below zero. (This accounts for horizon dip.) Then, just below the horizon, it will become -.6 degrees or so. (The exact amount depends on your altitude and other settings.) The reason is that there is no way to extend refracted altitudes below the horizon; they become meaningless, and if you just keep plugging through the standard formulae, you get truly bizarre values. So refracted altitudes are used above the horizon, airless ones below it... and that causes the discontinuity at the horizon.
  • Refraction is only enabled for the Earth. (Actually, I could claim that refraction is properly handled on all airless bodies as well.)
  • Guide shows alt/az to .001 degrees in the legend and .1 degree when you click on an object. If you really want to change that, you can edit the file strings.dat and look at lines 90 and 199:
  • Alt %.3lf  Az %.3lf   []
    alt {%4.1lf}  az {%6.1lf}\n
    

    Change the '.3lf' and '.1lf's to, say, '.6lf', and the alt/az values will be shown to six decimal places. Be warned that they are in no way truly accurate to six places. Four places (meaning a precision of .36") is probably about the best for which one can hope, with poorer accuracy near the horizon.

    (If you're running Guide in a language other than English, you should change the variant of strings.dat for your language.)

    (29 May 2006) New dialog for setting level sizes: In the past, you could go to Settings... Level n = (size), and set a new size (in degrees, arcminutes, or arcseconds) for that particular level. Thus, you could (say) tell Guide that level 4 would henceforth be 15 degrees wide, instead of the default 20.

    This confused a lot of people, and it's an item mentioned on the FAQ for current Guide users. People assumed that they should enter a level number, not the size of the level in angular measure. It was simply a bad design choice on my part. Now, when you click on that menu item, you get a dialog that shows the current sizes of all 20 levels, and you can reset them.

    (29 May 2006) CCD guider chip range rings: Kevin Cooper suggested that I might borrow an idea from the program Starry Night. In this program, one can have a pair of dashed circles indicating the range of locations that could be covered by the CCD guiding chip. If you use Display... CCD Frame, and click on the "Guider range" check-box, you will see what is meant by this. (The check-box is grayed out if you aren't using a camera with a guider chip.)

    Also: one could already right-click on the outline of the main CCD frame or the outline of the guider chip, and then on "Display" to get the CCD Frame dialog. One can now also click on the guider rings, in which case you get one more button: "Rotate CCD". Clicking on this will cause the CCD frame to rotate to put that point on the center of the guider chip.

    For example: suppose you have turned on the guider rings, and see a particularly good guide star between them. You would right-click on one of the guider rings (either inner or outer) near that star, then on "Rotate CCD". The CCD would rotate to put the guide star within the guider chip.

    (29 May 2006) Some very minor changes: Nothing of tremendous import, but I should mention them:

  • When Guide gives data from the mpcorb asteroid dataset, it now gives the (computed) time of perihelion, period in years and days, and perihelion/aphelion distances. This follows a suggestion from Jonathan Shanklin.
  • Additions to the toolbar include not only the assorted time step hotkeys described above, but eight map projections added long ago (but for which hotkeys and toolbar buttons were missing.) You can click here for details on all projections offered by Guide. Also, I added a hotkey/toolbar button option for running Guide in Hungarian.
  • For quite a while now, clicking on a planet/asteroid/satellite trail has caused Guide to tell you the date/time the object happened to pass by that point. Now, that same dialog will contain a "Set Time" button; clicking on this will cause Guide to switch to that time, and the object ought to pop into view on the trail.
  • You can now set lowercase hotkeys to do something different from uppercase ones. I have found one immediate good use for this: I've set 'd' to decrement by one day and 'D' to increment by one day, 'h' to decrement an hour and 'H' to increment by an hour, and similarly for 'y' and 'Y' (year). (Unfortunately, 'M' is already claimed for the 'go to Messier' function... and in any case, I would not know if it should apply to months or minutes!)
  • If you don't explicitly set a lowercase hotkey, the action for the uppercase one will be used instead.