Guide 8.0 2005/2/23 更新程式



32-bit (Win95/98/NT) 更新程式 (GUIDE8.ZIP) (約836 KBytes)
16-bit (Win3.1) 更新程式 (GUIDE8A.ZIP) (約 585 KBytes)
32-bit DOS 更新程式 (DOSGUIDE.ZIP) (約733 KBytes)

 

以下為更新內容之英文說明

(23 Feb 2005) Supergalactic coordinate input and readout: Yet another coordinate system supported by Guide, along with alt/az, galactic, and ecliptic coordinates. Go into the Legend dialog, and you'll see a new "Supergalactic" check-box, which will cause Guide to show a cursor readout in that system. You can also set up a hotkey and/or toolbar button to access an "Enter supergalactic coordinates" dialog box. Clicking on the supergalactic coordinate readout in the Legend will get you that dialog box, too, as will the "Go To... Coordinates... Supergalactic" menu option.

(23 Feb 2005) Downloading of UCAC-2 data: This is a continuation of the options for downloading B1.0, A2.0, 2MASS, and GSC-2.2 data. As with those options, you can zoom in on a desired area, click on Extras... Get Star Catalogue Data, and then on "UCAC-2 from Internet." Guide will then extract star data for the desired area, and you can click on the stars to get information about them and to control their display.

Remember that in one respect, UCAC-2 differs from the other downloadable datasets: it doesn't cover the entire sky. Most areas north of about declination +40 lack UCAC-2 data.

Incidentally, the "Get Star Catalogue Data" menu item replaces the "Get A1.0/A2.0 Star Data" option. The latter was increasingly inaccurate, given that one can now access four other star catalogues through the same sub-menu.

(23 Feb 2005) UCAC-2 stars shown adjusted for proper motion: Tiziano Magni suggested that it would be nice if UCAC-2 stars were shown adjusted for proper motion. This is now true for both downloaded stars using the above feature, and for those displayed from the data as distributed on the USNO CD-ROMs.

(23 Feb 2005) Moon's age/elongation in legend: Masaki Kouda requested that Guide should be able to show the Moon's age in the legend. It can now show the age, or the moon's elongation from the sun, or both. I've not given them separate check-boxes in the Legend dialog. But if you use the Add Caption button within that dialog, and add the caption text "MoonE", then Guide will replace this with text such as "MoonE = 141.59" to indicate the moon's elongation. Positive numbers are during the waxing phase, negative during the waning phase. (That is, 0 = new moon, 90 = first quarter, +/-180 = full, -90 = third quarter.)

Similarly, "MoonA" will be replaced with "MoonA = (number)" to indicate the moon's age in days. I did provide one slight change here, because the different lengths of lunations can make this datum not very helpful. For example, an age of 29 days may mean that the moon is almost new again, or still has a day or so to go. So I arranged matters so that an age of 0 or 30 days means a new moon, one of 7.5 days indicates a first quarter moon, 15 a full moon, and 22.5 a last-quarter moon.

(23 Feb 2005) Better name and magnitude data for artificial satellites: Many sources of artificial satellite elements ("two-line elements", or "TLEs") don't provide actual names or magnitude data. Such a dataset would list (for example) the International Space Station as "25544" (the NORAD designation) or "1998-067A" (the international designation), but not as "ISS". It would also leave you with no way of determining how bright the ISS might be at a given time.

For reasons discussed below, this may become a still bigger problem after 31 March 2005: TLEs with name and magnitude information may become scarce. So I've revised Guide to be able to extract name and magnitude data from other sources.

When you click on Settings... TLE=(filename), Guide will inform you (about halfway down in the text) that: 

   If the TLE file you're using lacks magnitude and name information,  you
can remedy this with auxiliary files.  Click here for name data  (about
380 KBytes),  and/or  click here for magnitude data  (about 50 KBytes).

Click on the indicated locations, and Guide will fetch the necessary data from files provided on Mike McCants's Web site. Guide will then be able to show satellites labelled by name, find them when you enter their names, filter them by magnitude, and show their magnitudes when you click on them or generate ephemerides.

Why this matters now: Bernd Brinkmann pointed out that starting on 31 March 2005, satellite element files (TLEs) will be restricted, so that you probably won't be able to get them using the recently-added TLE fetching system in Guide. We'll have to go back to the "old-fashioned way": one will download a file of satellite elements using a browser or FTP program, save the file to disk, then tell Guide to use that file. The newly-available TLE files will also (probably) have no name or magnitude data.

I have wanted to add this capability for some time, because of the many TLE files that already lack name or magnitude data. But after 31 March, this may move from "something it would be nice to have" to "something we must have."

(23 Feb 2005) Display of images with WCS data: Josch Hambsch requested that Guide should be able to show images with WCS (World Coordinate System) data. Guide can already show DSS and RealSky images; these images have some information in their headers describing the RA/dec of a point in the image, the image scale (arcseconds per pixel) in each axis, and orientation. Images with WCS header data provide the same information, but in a somewhat different format.

Guide will now handle either sort of header data. Go to Extras... DSS/RealSky Images, and select "Add DSS Image". Guide will ask you to indicate the image file to be added. It will then display that image file in the background of its charts, much as if it were a DSS or RealSky image.

Josch wanted to use this feature to get Guide to display images that had been processed using Bob Denny's PinPoint astrometric software. That program will add WCS keywords to an image header. Some other images also have such headers; for example, Guide will now display FITS images downloaded from the NASA SkyView site.


自2005年2月28日您是第 位訪客