Hi John,

A late reply to:

"...Suppose I wanted to use Guide to plot the location of events
occuring in the visible sky at different times (i.e., Iridium
flares)... Is there any way that I can then plot the results
on Guide's sky view screen using some kind of user supplied labels
which might show a name and time?"

For this, you would probably create a user-added dataset,
or "TDF" (text definition file). You create a small file that
"explains" your list of events to Guide, telling it in which
columns the RA/dec and magnitude fields are in your data file,
and how it ought to be shown on-screen, and perhaps what additional
data is given when the user clicks on a flare's symbol, and/or
asks for "more info" about that flare.

There's some discussion of how the TDF system works in the
user manual, and also at http://www.projectpluto.com/tdf_info.htm .
I highly recommend that, for your first foray, you look at some
of the existing TDFs; you'll probably find one that can be adapted
to your dataset. If at all in doubt, feel free to e-mail me an
example dataset.

"...Is there any way to make a single satellite visible on the
screen without having all satellites above a certain magnitude
show up?"

Guide will show every satellite in the TLE file you select,
or those above a certain magnitude limit. The only way around
this is to edit the TLE file and remove any satellites in which
you aren't interested (in this case, all but one of them.) A
bit crude, I suppose, but it does give you the flexibility to
create any sort of subset of satellites you might desire.

-- Bill