Hello Bill,

the color code for comets in the find comet dialog is good. And the
centering of it afterwards is great.

But I would suggest that the "link" (normally blue and underlined) to the
comet should be the name of it and not its position (here the color
code should stay). When you have a list of many comets and a high
monitor resolution (==> small display font) you have to look very
carefully to get the right object.

The next improvement in this concern would be another sequence of
sorting. At the moment I can't see any consequent order.I would
prefer the following:

1. non-periodic comets (highest number first (but without regarding
the praefix C or P), so the latest discovered comets are at the
beginning)
2. numbered periodic comets (large numbers first)

Another possiblity would be a strict order by name (also omitting C, P).

What do other comet observers think?

The next improvement would be the output format of the "Speed of
apparent motion" for comets and minor planets. In the moment it is
given in arcmin per hour and postion angle. The best would be a user
definable format where you can choose the units (arcmin, arcsec,
hour, minute ...) and whether it gives speed and PA or speed split in
RA and declination (also with adjustable time scales)

The background for this is following: A very popular (in Germany)
telescope drive unit (the FS2 from Martin Koch, http://www.astro-
electronic.de/) has the capability to follow moving objects. But it
demands the input in time minutes per day for RA and minutes of arc
per day for declination. So you always need a calculator to transform
the output from Guide to this desired format.

Clear skies
Bernd




Bernd Brinkmann
Herne, Germany

http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Bernd.A.Brinkmann/index.html