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Sky Planetarium Changelog

What's new in Sky Planetarium 3.23

Jun 26, 2013
  • Fixes/additions:
  • Fixed several minor bugs in the Plate Solve system.
  • Fixed minor bug with telescope goto/sync accuracy.
  • Added Goto Assist, when active applies to all telescope gotos/syncs.

New in Sky Planetarium 3.22 (Jun 26, 2013)

  • Fixes/additions:
  • Positions of the Major planets are now calculated via the USNO's NOVAS through ASCOM (when available). This improves the positional accuracy for those objects to the sub arc-sec level. Where ASCOM NOVAS is not available or not used (as in Sun, Moon, Comets, and Asteroids) the in-built routines have been updated for modest accuracy improvements. Star and deep sky object astrometry now includes annual aberration and nutation, these object positions should be accurate to something around the ±10 arc-sec level. ASCOM Telescope goto's now include better support for refraction and the ability to send coordinates in LocalTopocentric form, or precessed to B1950, J2000.0, or J2050.0 as requested by the ASCOM driver.

New in Sky Planetarium 3.21 (Jun 26, 2013)

  • Fixes/additions:
  • Added support for Serial-Port Dtr/Rts control of Philips LX modified web-cams (SC1/SC2). Improved LX capture with "bright frame" detection

New in Sky Planetarium 3.20 (Jun 26, 2013)

  • Fixes/additions:
  • Installer is now done, includes the ability to pull together the DSI drivers and register the .NET components to communicate with the DSI family imagers.
  • Fixed calendar/date pickers. Calendar was built with Delphi TCalendar component which is no longer available in my version of Delphi. Adapted TStringGrid to do the same thing.
  • Added support for Imaging. Camera support includes: ASCOM b/w and color cameras (including CCD temperature control if present). DSI-I and DSI-II mono are tested, color and DSI-III support is experimental. VFW cameras (webcams, including SC modded LX type).
  • Added support for ASCOM filter wheels.
  • Added support for ASCOM focusers.
  • Added Imaging Console for aquiring sequences of images, supports saving in FITS format (several integer and floating point types) and jpeg or bmp. Moves filter-wheel, adjusts focus, adjusts exposure length, and names files as you specify in sequence. Pre-processing can convert to B/W, invert/mirror the image, and handle various Debayer/Demosaic variations. When previewing the image in the console, you can shrink or stretch the image and overlay several different cross-hairs. Double-clicking gives a highly zoomed area for focusing help.
  • Added Plate-Solving (through Astrometry.net). Figures out where you're at in the sky, easy to setup and use.
  • Added Auto-Guiding. Adapts to your camera/optical orientation and issues guiding commands to your ASCOM compativle mount.
  • Added Telescope control features. Some are OnStep specific, for example PEC read/write and visualization. While others should work with any mount with an ASCOM driver that supports them. For example, the Home and Park/Un-Park commands. Another general purpose feature is the Goto Assist. This allows you to apply geometric corrections to an equatorially mounted telescope/mount and provides an "improved guess" at where your telescope is actually pointing in the form of an second bullseye marker on the map.

New in Sky Planetarium 3.12 (Jun 26, 2013)

  • Fixes/additions:
  • Fixed main window sizing issues it now works properly when the Windows Start Menu is positioned anywhere, not just at the bottom of the screen.
  • The main window now responds properly to being maximized (by loosing it's scroll-bars) on XP and Vista.
  • Fixed tool window visual corruption when Windows Start Menu is of large size.
  • Updated help system to cover all current features.
  • More updates to global location dialog, it now shows a thumbnail of the current horizon image. It's also smarter about saving defaults, it asks to save if you changed something about the location.

New in Sky Planetarium 3.10 (Feb 25, 2008)

  • Added support for the ASCOM telescope interface.
  • Corrected Daylight Savings Time routines to current US standard.
  • Corrected bug that caused "Early Tonight" time setting to be one day early.
  • Corrected bug that crashed program on loading "Points of Interest".
  • Added support for online download and display of objects from POSS, etc.
  • Misc. improvements for saving/loading Comet and Asteroid elements including online downloading of elements from the MPC.