Information about Guide 7.0

Improvements over Guide 6.0: The biggest improvement is that there is a 32-bit Windows version in addition to the 16-bit Windows version. This has resulted in a fairly impressive speedup, especially in functions that involve a great deal of math (drawing of bitmapped planets, eclipse/occultation computations, and so on). Functions of this sort run from three to six times faster than they do in the 16-bit Windows software. Other functions that involve more graphics or disk activity are also faster, but not by so large a factor. (Going to 32-bit Windows won't make a CD-ROM spin faster, for example.)

The CD-ROM still contains a 16-bit Windows and a 32-bit DOS version of Guide, for Win3.1 and DOS users. (The 32-bit software should work correctly using Win32s in Windows 3.1. But Win32s is not an especially reliable solution; for cases where it fails, the 16-bit Windows software will prove useful.)

New/improved datasets: Guide 6.0 provided outlines of nebulae down to declination -16, the limit of the RealSky North CD-ROMs. In Guide 7.0, this has been repaired; outlines are available for the entire celestial sphere. Also, the PGC (Principal Galaxy Catalogue) has been updated to include over 160,000 galaxies, and some extra data has been added for many galaxies that were already in the original PGC.

The asteroid database has been updated with a current Lowell ASTORB dataset. This provides 9511 numbered asteroids and a total of about 25,000 "good-quality" asteroid orbits. (An additional 7,000+ asteroids will be of lesser quality; some will verge on being "lost".)

A few new datasets that have appeared on this Web site, mostly on this page, are included on the CD-ROM, such as pulsars, meteor showers, the Bennett and Caldwell catalogs, and some others.

And, of course, the software itself has been improved considerably since Guide 6.0 came out in October 1997. You can see many of these improvements with your existing Guide 6.0 CD, by downloading software from this page. The same page has a very long list of improvements to the software.

In addition to the improvements listed on that page, Guide 7.0 has a user-configurable toolbar (meaning you can select which buttons appear on the toolbar). The software for extracting RealSky images now runs in Windows, instead of as a separate DOS application; it makes it easier to select alternative plates, or to sample images to reduce their size.

Shipping data: The CDs arrived from the plant on Friday, 20 November; almost all copies were shipped by Monday, 30 November, with a few more complicated orders taking until 7 December. But now, we're be back to "normal" conditions (in which orders are shipped almost immediately).

How to upgrade: If you ordered directly from Project Pluto, or sent in a reply form, then you should have received an upgrade offer in the mail. If you've not received your copy, click here to read the text of the upgrade letter.