I'll have to admit that I keep a demo version of Chris's SkyMap program on my
laptop just for this one feature. I do a fair amount of public star parties
with my dobsonian/SkyCommander DSC combo and its a real crowd pleaser to have
a real time display indicating to visitors exactly where what they are
looking at through the eyepiece is actually located in the sky. When I'm
busy with a line of people or trying to give various explanations, its
convenient not to have to keep going back to the laptop to "Slew Guide" as
the evening progress or I change to another target..

> > From: "Chris Marriott" <chris@...>
> >----- Original Message -----
> >From: "James Ellis" <ejge24@...>
> >Subject: Re: [guide-user] scope xtrol
> >
> >> Just to be pedantic tho', if an observer saw something interesting in
> the
> >> scope they could just as easily hit 'Slew Guide to scope" to get the
> same
> >>effect...your way is more friendly.
> >
> >Oh sure, absolutely - I certainly wasn't intending to imply that Guide was
> >somehow "defective" in this way. To be perfectly honest, I rarely have
> >SkyMap's "Auto Track" feature switched on, because I personally find it
> >confusing to have the star chart constantly redrawing itself as the
> >telescope moves! It was a feature I added (like most features) at the
> >request of my users, and some people do find it useful. Perhaps it might
> be
> >something Bill could add as an option to Guide?
>

Cheers,
Sandy Mc

SandyMc456@... (Sandra McNamara)
Stanford, IL N 40d 26m W 89d 13m


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]