105 Pears Avenue, Toronto, ON Canada M5R 1S9, (416) 926-2174
E-mail: contact@siennasoft.com
URL: http://www.siennasoft.com/sienna
Welcome
Welcome to Starry Night! Starry Night is your ticket to solar system tourism. Travel in both time and space; get a first hand experience of the intricate and beautiful clockwork of the heavens. You can see the stars and planets as they appear from your own backyard, from a country on the other side of the world or from the Moon. You can watch as the Sun sets from the surface of Mars. Perhaps you would like to take a trip to Saturn, there, you may glide through its rings as it lumbers by in its slow methodical orbit. Witness a total eclipse of the Sun as seen from the Moon. Set time flowing at whatever pace you wish. Your only limit is your curiosity.
Registration
Feel free to use Starry Night for up to 10 days. We hope you enjoy it. Starry Night is not a free program. If you decide you like Starry Night and want to keep it, then you must register your copy. Registering will remove the reminder message that appears in the night sky after the 10 day trial period expires. You can register by following the instructions presented when you first start Starry Night (this initial dialog will also go away after registering). Note that the cost of this program is only $28 US. Also, you will be entitled to discounts on future versions of Starry Night by registering now. If you have any questions you can reach us at (416) 926-2174.
We welcome your comments and suggestions and would like to hear what features you would like to see in future versions of Starry Night. See “Reaching us by e-mail” below for our addresses.
Pass it Along
Please feel free to upload Starry Night to online services or local bulletin boards, keeping the following in mind: you may not distribute Starry Night™ for profit in any form without the prior written consent of Sienna Software, Inc.. Non-profit distribution of Starry Night™ is acceptable without prior written notice, providing the software is not modified in any way and provided all components of the Starry Night software package are included in the distribution package. So if you know of a friend who might like Starry Night, pass it along.
Legal Stuff
We put a lot of work into making sure that Starry Night is bug free, but in the end Sienna Software, Inc. can not be responsible in the unlikely event of any damage to your computer system or to your data. Sorry, but our lawyers made us say that.
Balloon Help
We have added extensive Balloon Help to aid you in learning about Starry Night. You can turn Balloon Help on from Apple’s help menu at the top right of you screen. Balloon help can also be turned on temporarily by holding down the option key when clicking in a menu. It will remain on until the mouse button is released.
Apple’s Map Control Panel
Be sure to set the physical location of your computer using Apple's Map control panel before running Starry Night. Starry Night uses this information to determine Greenwich mean time in addtion to setting the default viewing location for new windows.
Drag and Drop
If you have Apple’s Drag and Drop feature installed then you can open Starry Night documents by dragging the document icon from the finder into any open sky view window. We suggest you go through the included example files in this manner to see what Starry Night can do. In addition you can drag any picture selection made using the Picture Selection tool into any other program that supports drag and drop or into the finder to create a clipping file.
Adding Comets
Starry Night can now display comets as they revolve around the Sun and comes with three comets already setup. If you want to add or delete comets from the program, open up the file “Orbital Elements Data” located in your Sky Data folder and add a new line of data for each comet. Make a backup of the original version of the comet data file for reference. Orbital element data for comets can be found in astronomy textbooks and magazines. To view a comet’s orbit it is best to view from a position a good distance from the Sun.
Sat1, Sat2 and Moon Probe
We have added two artificial satellites for the Earth and one for the Moon in order to provide additional locations to view from (you can achieve interesting views from these satellites). Any similarity to orbits held by real satellites, living or dead is purely coincidental.
The Shoes
To help orient yourself when looking straight down (towards your feet) we show a pair of large footed sneakers. You may want to turn the display of these feet off, if, for example, you have risen above the earth and want to look back down at it. There is a checkbox in the preferences dialog box for turning shoe display on and off.
Sound Effects
The supplied sound effects were created by master sound effects artisan, Bruce Evans. You can turn them on and off from the preferences dialog box. In addition you can add, change and remove the various sound effects by editing the Sound file in the “Sky Data” folder using ResEdit.
Black & White Monitors
Starry Night was optimized for colour monitors, however it is possible to run in black and white. A few tips:
-make sure "Smoother star movement" is off in star settings dialog
-set guide colours to white
-turn "Detailed Surfaces" in the planets dialog off.
Speeding up Starry Night on Slower Computers
Starry Night is a very compute intensive program. This means that Starry Night’s speed scales pretty well with the speed of the computer on which it is running. This is good news for those with PowerMacs and not so good news for those without. We have added many enhancements to try and speed Starry Night up on slower computers. If you are interested in having Starry Night run as quickly as it can on a slower computer you can try some of these suggestions (but keep in mind that the default settings for standard, non-PowerPC Macintoshes should run pretty well):
-make sure "Stay on when scrolling" is turned off in all settings dialogs
-turn "Smoother star movement" off in the star settings dialog
-turn the scenery (i.e. the trees) off in the horizon settings dialog
-make sure "Hide Milky Way at high magnifications" is on
-in the planet settings dialog:
turn off high accuracy planets
turn off "Detailed Surface"
turn off "Planet Shadows"
pick "None", "Dark Grey", or "Black" as Phase setting from Phase popup menu
-in the main Preferences dialog:
turn off "Dynamic scrolling"
turn off "Enlarge moon size"
turn off "Plot other windows in sky"
set "Sun Halo" popup to "Never"
enter "30" for the number of seconds between updates in real time
try making zoom and elevation steps larger
set "Panning speed" SLOWER to achieve smoother pans on slower computers
And finally try making your window size smaller.
Known Problems
-Some deep sky objects erroneously state their magnitude as 0.0 when it should be "unknown".
-When coarse guides are being used the meridian and equator may not show if you have them selected as well.
-Find does not find any deep sky objects nor does it find stars by SAO number.
-Rhea's position may not always be correct
-Highly eccentric orbits (comet orbits for instance) are not always displayed when viewing from a position close to the solar system
Troubleshooting
If you have trouble starting Starry Night try these tips:
•try throwing out the "Starry Night Preferences" file (located in the Preferences folder within your System Folder).
•it may be possible that there is a conflict with an extension or control panel on your system. Try starting the computer with the shift key down (this turns extensions off) and see if the problem persists.
If you can't see the new comets included with 1.0.3:
•try throwing out the "Starry Night Preferences" file (located in the Preferences folder within your System Folder)
•make sure that the “Orbital Elements Data” file is located in your Sky Data folder
Changes since Version 1.0.2
•now includes ability to add your own orbiting objects using the “Orbital Elements Data” file
•added ability to set one's fixed location using spherical coordinates
•rise, set, and transit times for planets in Get Info windows were sometime incorrect and have been fixed
•fixed a problem that occurred where planets would sometimes jump from the centre of the screen even though they were "locked on"
•panning is now smoother
•fixed a problem where on rare occassions panning would sometimes stall
•Saturn's moon, Phoebe, is now correctly positioned
•added our street address to printed registration forms
•fixed a problem that occured when looking at Earth/Moon shadow targets when not located on either the Earth or the Moon
•added support for MasterCard payments
Changes since Version 1.0.1
•fixed a problem where grid labels where sometimes incorrect (for instance local grid labels now correctly start at 0h and go to 23h)
•rotated galactic coordinate system into correct position
•corrected the position and timezones of a number of locations (as well as adding some new ones). NOTE: to see these changes you must throw out your current "Starry Night Preferences" file which is located in the Preferences folder in your current System Folder. HOWEVER this means you will lose any new locations you have entered.
•main tool floating window now allows entry of latitude and longitude directly.
•fixed a problem where Starry Night would not run on PowerMacs using System 7.1.2 if the system extension, ObjectSupportLib was not installed.
•info windows now show object locations using the current epoch (previously they showed them using J2000).
•reworded and improved many constellation descriptions as well as correcting some spelling mistakes in the Balloon Help.
•the sound file was reduced in size and the sounds were changed to "8-bit".
...as well as many other minor changes.
World Wide Web
Check out our world wide web site for updates, tips and general info. Our URL is http://www.siennasoft.com/sienna.
Reaching us by e-mail
If you have any comments or suggestions or if you just want to drop us a line you can reach us at contact@siennasoft.com. If you would like to make an order or have us invoice you, please email us at orders@siennasoft.com. You can email the authors of Starry Night directly at programmer@siennasoft.com.
