Hi folks,

Massimo, about T Boo: when Guide says the position "isn't accurate",
that's a relative term. The star will still generally be pretty close
to the GCVS (General Catalog of Variable Stars) position.

The data in "more info" indicate that this one went nova in 1860, and
its "maximum magnitude" is 9.7. I'll take a guess that this means it's
currently varying with max mag 9.7, and that back in 1860, it got a
lot brighter than that. It probably has had occasional eruptions to
that magnitude.

Guide also indicates that there is an AAVSO chart for this beast,
which caused me to visit the AAVSO site and find the following _very_
interesting page which allows you to generate light curves for variable
stars!

http://www.aavso.org/adata/curvegenerator.shtml

It is based on AAVSO observations over the last 40 years or so. You
specify an object and a date range (in the JD system), and it creates
a light curve plot for you. Very easy to use... it also indicates that
there have been about four successful observations of T Boo by AAVSO
members in the last 40 years, plus a lot of the symbols meaning "it
can't be any brighter than the limiting mag of my scope". So it would
seem this is usually a _very_ faint object.

Mario, about Ced34... I'll... uh... have to get back to you on that
one. It's possible to use "Go To... Nebula" and search for nebulae
under certain catalogs such as Sharpless, but the Ced catalog is not
one of them. And if you edit the file \NEBULAE\NEB.DAT on the Guide
disk, you'll find it listed at 4h27m17s, +23 0.00' (J2000). Go to
that location in Guide, and you'll see that it even shows an isophote
for this object.

Despite all this evidence that Guide knows about Ced34, there's
no way (at present) to do a "go to" for it. I'm not really too upset
about this, but there are several other catalogs in there such as the
GN and so forth that "ought" to be handled somewhere.

Richard, about the lunar features... I may be misunderstanding what
you're looking for with the colongitude; that's given already, in the
"more info" section for the moon. I do intend to do something about the
color selection for lunar features and grids (right now, they can be
any color you want, as long as it's yellow).

I got one inquiry recently about an interesting idea for lunar
display, by the way: an "atlas mode" that lets you easily spin the
moon around so you can see features on the limb and farside, without
worrying about illumination. Right now, some people get a similar
effect by setting their "home planet" as the sun; from that viewpoint,
the moon is always fully illuminated and it rotates. But this is a little
awkward, and it's a workaround, not a fix. Besides, this method
doesn't let you see the poles.

-- Bill