Hi Kevin,

There are some odd things going on with the magnitude data. I asked
Mike McCants about this not long ago. Seems the magnitude data in the
'quicksat' file (the one Guide is now using) is for "full" phase,
rather than the usual 90% illumination. That's no biggie (the difference
is pretty negligible anyway).

The second problem is trickier: the 'quicksat' mag is the brightest
possible (and therefore least likely) magnitude, i.e., the one you'd
get if the object was ideally oriented. The Molczan magnitude is based
on a more average orientation. So contrary to what you might expect,
the Molczan and Quicksat mags don't match.

(In truth, I could see both being useful... i.e., "this object is
usually about mag 6, but sometimes rises to 4." I may modify Guide
accordingly.)

About UCAC: the status image you're mentioning shows the portion of
the sky that the UCAC folks have _imaged_... and, as you say, that now
includes the whole sky (they got the last of it in May 2004). However,
the actual data released thus far isn't quite so comprehensive. See

http://ad.usno.navy.mil/ucac/skycov_u2c.gif

About UTC vs UT1: you're right, there is a problem here. EST is
given as UT1 minus 5 hours, rather than as UTC minus five hours. Hmmm...
I'll have to get back to you on that one...

(For those wondering what UTC vs. UT1 is: there's a discussion here:

http://www.projectpluto.com/update8.htm#utc

The difference is negligible for some purposes, but not all.)

I now have FITS images with WCS data (such as that inserted by PinPoint
and a few other programs, including the SkyView server) working in Guide.
I'll post that in a bit, after I address this UTC issue.

-- Bill