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Most of the time, when you see a pre-1582 date such as 10 Nov 1444, that date will be in the Julian calendar, and a date such as 20 Jan 1812 will be in the Gregorian calendar. By default, Guide uses this "Gregorian/Julian" system. But exceptions occur. Some countries (notably Protestant ones) didn't switch over until much later: Britain and its colonies in 1752, Russia/the USSR in 1918. So the Time Format dialog offers "Julian" and "Gregorian" options, to force the use of one particular flavor of the calendar. Dates can also be shown in several other calendars, such as the Jewish, Islamic, and French (Republican) calendars. It's not likely that you will wish to do that. But at the end of "Quick Info" (see page 16), Guide does give the current date as expressed in each of these calendars. And if, for some reason, you do wish to have all dates shown using, say, the Persian calendar, you can do so. Clicking on "Current Time" causes Guide to look at your computer's clock and to use its date and time. You can get the same effect at any point in the program by hitting the F3 key, or by clicking with the right mouse button on the time shown in the legend area. Clicking on any of the twelve month keys resets the time to the same date in that month. Outside the Time Box, hit Alt-0 to reset the time to midnight UT. If you want to reset the date/time by typing in something like "2008 Jan 17" or "11 Dec 4:42" or "13:26", use the "Enter Time" feature in the Settings menu (page 30), or left-click on the time zone shown in the legend. 15: PLANETARY ANIMATION AND EPHEMERIS CREATION Using the Animation Menu you can watch planets, asteroids, satellites, comets and stars move in time-lapse animation. This menu may also be used to record the tracks left by an object over time or to list ephemerides in a file. For reasons that will become apparent, animation, ephemerides, and tracks are linked concepts in Guide. From the main menu, use the Animation option. The Animation Menu looks like this: Animation Dialog Add a Trail Make Ephemeris Make an .AVI By default, the "Add a Trail" and "Make Ephemeris" options are grayed out, until you have specified a moving object (one within the
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