Hi folks,

MISSING STARS:

Most people only notice the missing strip of GSC stars in Hercules.
(If you go to a 20-degree field of view, then center on the star
68 Herculis, then use "Extras... Toggle User-Added Datasets" and
turn the "GSC Plates" dataset On, you can see that there was a little
strip of sky that was not imaged on any GSC plate.) But, as Masaki
Kouda noticed, there is another missing patch that is a "ghost image"
of Capella. It is on the same plate as Capella, but on the opposite
side of the center of the plate:
_________________
| |
| ( ) Missing area
| |
| GSC plate N158 |
| |
| * Capella |
|_________________|

Sirius created a similar "missing area" near FI CMa, and Alpha
Centauri did the same sort of thing on its plate. Vega and Canopus
didn't, only because the areas they obliterated were covered by other
plates. (The GSC Plates dataset makes these situations pretty easy to
figure out.)

As Claes points out, the use of Tycho-2 will fill in some of the
brighter stars in these areas once Guide 8 is ready. The cross-index
to A2.0 will do a wonderful job of suppressing garbage, but won't do
anything to fix missing stars.

NEXSTAR SUPPORT:

(Sigh of relief) I had some fears this would take years and cost
millions of dollars. Glad to hear that won't happen. The link to the
NexStar page should help; people are forever running into cabling
problems with other systems, and I assume that will happen here as well.

Regarding the '@' symbol that is supposed to be returned by the scope,
but doesn't always come back: I decided to play it safe, and have Guide
not rely on getting the '@'. If it comes back, fine; if not, Guide
will not behave any differently.

By the way, I'll be at the Northeast Astronomy Forum in Suffern,
New York, on Sunday, 16 April. (There is some information about this
event at http://www.rocklandastronomy.com .) Hope to see some of you
folks there...

-- Bill