RTMC report

Excellent. Would you recommend one over the other for a guy just looking
to
do some observation planning?


Sky Tools is a commercial product and is designed for planning sessions.
HNSky is free and fast. I use them both. HNSky is available here...
http://hnsky.com/software.htm

-Florian

On Tue, 1 Jun 2004 20:53:01 -0400, "Tom Hole"
wrote:

I am looking for a program that will allow me to customize the visible sky
for my location. Specifically, I would like to enter the measurements for
my specific obstructions from my driveway viewing location (trees, houses,
small flying rodents) and have that selectable when I am using the program.
This will help me determine when I will be able to view items of interest.
Can TheSky 6 do that for me? If not TheSky, some other program?

Sure, you can do that with TheSky 6. You can either do it symbolically, as you
suggest, so that you have a complex line defining your local horizon, or you can
do it with full realism: TheSky will allow you to insert a panoramic photograph
of your horizon and it will display it very realistically. You can also
configure other visual features to match your location: sky background, lunar
and stellar halos, horizon glow, etc.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

TheSky 6 uses photographic horizons that you make with your own digital
camera and panoramic stitching programs. It is really nice.

Matthew Ota

Tom Hole wrote:

Rod,

I am looking for a program that will allow me to customize the visible sky
for my location. Specifically, I would like to enter the measurements for
my specific obstructions from my driveway viewing location (trees, houses,
small flying rodents) and have that selectable when I am using the program.
This will help me determine when I will be able to view items of interest.
Can TheSky 6 do that for me? If not TheSky, some other program?

Thanks,

Tom

"Rod Mollise" wrote in message
...

3. I was somewhat dissappointed with the version 6 upgrade to TheSky.

Hi Del:

You might want to think about upgrading, anyway. It's not so much that

they

added so many more new things (though there is a lot of new stuff), it's

really

a question of 6's incredible degree of customization potential. This is

the

first program I've seen that gets close to allowing me to have the sky

exactly

the way I want it. I've been using it for a couple of weeks now, and have
barely scratched the surface of what's possible. Yes, there are some bugs,

but

the Bisque Bros have been quick to exterminate them, and I don't think

anything

fatal is left. Above and beyond everything else...man is it COOL to watch

the

summer Milky Way rise...in COLOR! :-)

Peace,
Rod Mollise
Author of _Choosing and Using a Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope_
Like SCTs and MCTs?
Check-out sct-user, the mailing list for CAT fanciers!
Goto http://members.aol.com/RMOLLISE/index.html

In article ,
AMnet says...
Rod,

I am looking for a program that will allow me to customize the visible sky
for my location. Specifically, I would like to enter the measurements for
my specific obstructions from my driveway viewing location (trees, houses,
small flying rodents) and have that selectable when I am using the program.
This will help me determine when I will be able to view items of interest.
Can TheSky 6 do that for me? If not TheSky, some other program?

The free Cartes du Ciel can do this, but you'll need to create a
horizon file with the obstruction altitude data in it. Not too
difficult, but possibly easier if you take a panoramic photo and work
from that (which is probably true of any program that offers
customizable horizons, including SkyTools and others).

--

-- Len Philpot - --
------ ----- http://philpot.org/ --

Can TheSky 6 do that for me? If not TheSky, some other program?

Thanks,

Tom

Hi Tom:

Yes. The Sky 6 will actually allow you to use a 360 degree panorama you can
create with a digital camera (or other_ as your "horizon". I'd be remiss,
however, if I didn't mention that you can do a simple version of this (filled
areas) with Cartes du Ciel, which is free.

Peace,
Rod Mollise
Author of _Choosing and Using a Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope_
Like SCTs and MCTs?
Check-out sct-user, the mailing list for CAT fanciers!
Goto http://members.aol.com/RMOLLISE/index.html

"Tom Hole" wrote in message
...
Rod,

I am looking for a program that will allow me to customize the visible sky
for my location. Specifically, I would like to enter the measurements for
my specific obstructions from my driveway viewing location (trees, houses,
small flying rodents) and have that selectable when I am using the
program.
This will help me determine when I will be able to view items of interest.
Can TheSky 6 do that for me? If not TheSky, some other program?

Starry Night Pro claims (although I have not tried it), that you can take a
panorama of pictures from your actual observing site and create the horizon
based on your photographs.

I was at RTMC from Friday Morning.

I was also greatly disappointed at the great vendor vanishings on
Sunday. I decided to leave right after the Sunday evening raffle drawing.

I wanted to buy a few more items, but that was impossible after
everybody packed up.

If the program is the same next year as this one, I will do the same.
I used to stay through Monday morning.

On a positive note, it was nice of Meade Instruments to provide free
wireless internet access at their tent, and I have to give kudos to the
Bisque brothers, who spent over an hour of their time to help me with a
horizon file problem in TheSky Pro 6.

Also noted is that Software Bisque was the only major software vendor
who showed up this year. WHat happened to everybody else?

The food quality at the cafeteria showed a marked decrease in quality
this year. For some reaon they pre-dressed the salads at the salad bar,
which resulted in wilted lettuce. There was no lettuce or tomatoes for
the Sunday lunch hamburgers, and the Saturday morning pancakes were too
small.

Next year should be better with no Moon in the way. I'll still go,
but I may elect to lodge and eat in Big Bear.

Matthew Ota


Del Johnson wrote:

I attended the RTMC gathering near Big Bear, California over the weekend.

Highlights:

1. Tom Osypowski's (Equatorial Platforms) 24-inch Dobsonian on his aluminum
platform drive is once again the best telescope at the conference. I was
able to see the central star of the Ring Nebula, even under a gibbous moon.
One fantastic and surprisingly portable telescope.

2. I had a chance to view through Celestron's new 20-inch corrected
Dall-Kirlham cassegrain. It seems to work well as I was unable to visually
detect any coma at the edge of a wide field eyepiece. Could this surpass
the mighty Ritchey-Chretien? Stay tuned! A very good engineering effort by
Celestron, however, the $40k price tag puts it out of the reach of most
amateurs. Didn't quite see the central star of the Ring Nebula with this
one.

3. Good talk by Phil Plait of the Bad Astronomy web page, except that the
audio/video techs almost ruined his PowerPoint presentation with a
malfunctioning (or just out of range) wireless keyboard. Instead, they kept
on blaming Microsoft for the malfunction.


Lowlights:

1. Sky & Telescope decided to treat all of their major advertises to an
offsite dinner and drinking party which meant that the vendors were not at
the conference Saturday evening (prime time) to demo their products.

2. The conference was a ghost town on Sunday. Anybody giving a talk on
Sunday was just wasting their time. The RTMC organizers could fix this by
simply moving the big Saturday door prize to Sunday, the I guess that that
there are too many "I want in now!" whiners to allow for that. The RTMC
conference is for all practical purposes a one-day Saturday event.

3. I was somewhat dissappointed with the version 6 upgrade to TheSky. Some
very nice improvements in visualizations, but only a few new astronomical
functions. Most of the menu functions are the same. There was a partial
fix with regard to the screen update problem in alt-az mode, but I wish that
they would implement full tracking in alt-az mode. I don't know too many
people who sit and watch the stars drift by in a fixed alt-az position, on
the other hand, more and more Dobsonians are now fully driven. I would also
like to see support for more of the natural satellites in the solar system.

Del Johnson

"Del Johnson" delastro@{right star in Orion's belt}.sdsu.edu wrote in
message ...
2. The conference was a ghost town on Sunday. Anybody giving a talk on
Sunday was just wasting their time. The RTMC organizers could fix this by
simply moving the big Saturday door prize to Sunday, the I guess that that
there are too many "I want in now!" whiners to allow for that. The RTMC
conference is for all practical purposes a one-day Saturday event.

I did not attend any of the talks in the dining hall on Sunday, but Ron
Wodaski's presentations in the annex on Sunday were pretty much SRO.

I attended one Sunday morning and got the heads up that Ceragoli hadn't
shown up for his talk. Too bad as it would have been an interesting one.

--
Bob May
Losing weight is easy! If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink less.
Works every time it is tried!

I peeked in a Chris Schur's Sunday talk and only saw a handful of attendees.
He normally draws a good crowd. The RTMC directors really need to address
this "come early, leave early" problem. Moving the merit awards to Saturday
night was a step in the wrong direction.

Del Johnson


"Alson Wong" wrote in message
...

I did not attend any of the talks in the dining hall on Sunday, but Ron
Wodaski's presentations in the annex on Sunday were pretty much SRO.