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.
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.
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32-bit (Win95/98/NT/XP) update (GUIDE8.ZIP) (about 885 KBytes) |
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16-bit (Win3.1) update (GUIDE8A.ZIP) (about 585 KBytes) |
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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: 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:
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:
If you don't explicitly set a lowercase hotkey, the action for the uppercase one will be used instead.