Hi folks,

My apologies for the late post. The motherboard on my computer died
on Monday, and took out a chunk of the hard drive in the process. I was
able to recover from a recent backup, but I only got back on-line today
(Thursday).

Before that happened, I'd mostly caught up on bug problems. The
"double sun" line in Quick Info was an easy fix, as was the corrupted
satellite pass data (once I figured out it's corrupted when you save
it to a file, not on-screen). I repaired the Find_Orb use of an
older DLL, and the currently-posted version of Find_Orb should now be
compatible with the currently-posted version of Guide.

However, I want to fix a bug or two before posting an update. Bob
Elliott mentioned (via private e-mail) that when he clicks for 'more
info' on a high-numbered asteroid from MPCORB (one that has a number in
MPCORB, but not in the built-in data), Guide crashes. I've replicated
this, but haven't found the bug yet. I'd also like to add some switches
to allow features to appear on the unilluminated side of the moon, and
for some "earthshine". (At present, when I want to use Guide's lunar
display as if it were an atlas, I use "Quick Info", find the lunar
phase data, and select a full moon. Kinda clumsy. "Earthshine" would
be better.)

Anyway, once I get "current" with bug fixes, I'll post an update.

Some long-late replies: Stefano Curri asked about an "eyepiece" sort
of function. My thinking on that is discussed a bit at

http://www.projectpluto.com/future.htm#eyepiece

Dario, about the use of JPL's DE ephemerides: I've done a bit of
programming in that direction, but had considered it of very low priority,
because PS-1996 is indeed DE-403 based, and gives planetary positions to
within milliarcseconds of that ephemeris. My interest was therefore mostly
intellectual, as well as in the fact that evaluation of DE ephemerides is
_much_ faster than summing up the long PS-1996 terms. (Not a big factor,
unless you're doing numerical integration over a long time frame and will
be evaluating a lot of planetary positions.)

I'd not investigated lunar accuracy lately, though; it may be more of
an issue than I thought.

-- Bill