Hi folks,

I've just posted an updated version of Guide on my site. As
you'll see, the updates are not especially major. You can now
display and enter times in local and Greenwich sidereal times,
local mean time, and Ephemeris Time (a.k.a. Dynamical Time).
There's a way to have Guide ignore its "usual" formulae for
Delta-T, substituting your own. I also made some changes
involving outer planetary satellites, adding one discovered a
couple of weeks ago, updating orbits for three others, and
fixing the magnitude formula for Japetus (satellite of Saturn).

Claude Serquet's comment about ShellExecute caused me to slap
my forehead in embarrassment, and to make one more change (probably
the most important) to the software. You can now add hotlinks to
.NOT files (and .ETB, "event table" files) that reference .GIF,
.HTML, etc. files. For example, suppose you had some images of
NGC 1234 and a little Web page written up about it. You could add
the following to NGC.NOT:

~1234
NGC 1234 is best know as... etc... etc...
^Click for image of this object//xc:\images\ngc1234.gif^
^Click for Web text about this object//xc:\ngc\ngc1234.htm^
^Click for a Word doc about it//c:\ngc\ngc1234.doc^
Another interesting thing about NGC 1234 is... etc... etc...

Unfortunately, you _can't_ (yet) add lines such as:

^Click for more info about this
object//http://www.mydomain.com/ngc1234.htm^
^Click to download an image//ftp://ftp.mydomain.com/ngc1234.tif^

I'm still puzzling that one out. Because of that, and because I
consider this to be somewhat "experimental", it's not mentioned on the
Web site.

Denis, you mentioned an error in the position Guide gives for Palomar
4... thanks for mentioning this. Unfortunately, the data is in the
(binary) file VARIABLE.LMP, and there's no way to modify that beast.
The best I can tell you is that (now that I know about it) it can be
fixed in Guide 8.

Actually, one thing you _can_ do is to go into "Extras", "Toggle
User-Added Datasets", and toggle "Globular Clusters (Harris 1997)" on.
Harris' list apparently puts that object in its correct place. If you
don't see that list, you may have to copy the file \CLUSTERS\GLOBS_97.TDF
from the CD over to your Guide directory on your hard drive. A clumsy
way to do things, but it _does_ let you display these objects from
an editable plain-text file. If you do this, it's best to go into
"Display... Data Shown" and turn off the globulars shown from Guide's
built-in dataset.

Incidentally, you mention editing GLOBULARS.NAM. This is still a
good idea, because it will ensure that when you use "Go To... Globulars",
you'll "go to" the correct location.

-- Bill