Hi folks,

Bob is right about this one. To see the problem in somewhat
dramatic form, go into "Display... Background" and turn on
"Show Ground" and "Horizon Objects". Then go into "Settings...
Location" and, in the "Altitude" box, set a value of 8000 km.

If you happened to be looking at the horizon at the time, you'll
see it dip quite drastically, as you are now looking down at the
earth from an immense height. Click on objects, and their
rise/set times are modified accordingly, setting much later
and rising much earlier than they did before (or suddenly
becoming circumpolar... in fact, at this height as seen from
my latitude of +44 degrees, some far-southern stars become
"circumpolar"; the earth has an apparent angular diameter
of about 50 degrees, and only those stars between declinations
-69 and -19 ever go behind the earth, i.e., "rise" and "set".)

So the lunar data table is the broken element here... something
for me to fix.

Matt, Charon will indeed work with Guide 8. The only change
you will see is when doing Tycho-based astrometry. Because the
base catalogue is now Tycho-2, you will see "NET TYCHO-2"
in your MPC report files when using that catalog. (And, of course,
when doing Tycho-based astrometry, you will suddenly see
_many_ more stars.)

About contrast/adjustment of images (and of planets): there are
both toolbar buttons and hotkeys for that job:

http://www.projectpluto.com/update7c.htm#contrast_hotkeys

However, they are supposed to affect either the images (if
you've clicked on one) or the planets (if you haven't), but not
both at the same time.

As Jari pointed out, the intrinsic contrast of these images
isn't entirely constant over the sky; the variations are usually
not too bad, but are terrible on a few DSS plates. I expect to
tackle that one by having Guide do a sort of histogram analysis
of the images as it decompresses them.

Mark, about the galaxy sizes: the currently-uploaded 'guide8.zip'
fixes this one. (There was a bit of confusion as to whether the
size given was a major axis or a _semimajor_ axis... just a little
factor of 2 to 1.)

-- Bill

-- Bill