Starry Night Software

Greetings

I have starry night backyard. I like it---pretty much. I received the
notice for the "upgrade" to enthusiast. At $8.95 why not...then I see I can
Pro for $79. Pro plus for $119. You can buy Pro at CompUSA for $99. I
was scewedby Orion when I bought Backyard---anyway, all of that aside...

Is Pro worth it?

I like the modeling with backyard. It's a great on screen program. It's
lousy for printing. I can't seem to control the amount of area that's
included when I print a chart. And, you can't print the planner or a custom
planner.

Here's what I'd like:

Print a couple good charts
Print a planner with, say, 3 targets I have in mind.
Print the information about the targets. I'd like to keep a simple Messier
journal. It will help me learn & remember.

Add to that: SUPER IDEALLY, I would like the software to simulate what I
would expect to see with an 8" reflector and a 12mm eyepiece (Radian of
course)
I can zoom and I can set the FOV but that's just a "dumb" circle as far as I
can discern.

I'd like to look at the night model and see various times. It does that.
I'd like to pick a couple targets to practice star hopping. I can do that
too. I'd like to print charts with my couple targets on them. I can do
that but have no control over the area covered. Rookies need reference
points. I'd like to print the target data (distance, size, info---stuff
like that) on a page with the date and time---you can't print that stuff.
You can't copy and paste it into Word either!!!! I plan to staple the chart
and the data together and make some observing notes. Super wishful: I'd like
to connect some "dots" and get degrees between points on my charts.

What's incredibly lame about backyard is that you can't print any of the
information or the planner!!!!! Can you do this with Pro?

Is there a better program? Why can't you copy/paste any of the verbiage in
SNB????? Am I asking too much? These seem like simple features.
Has anyone received Enthusiast? Is it a further waste of $8.95? Backyard
is a pig that dies if you leave it alone for an hour...

Chris

On Wed, 1 Oct 2003 00:27:29 -0700, "Doink" wrote:


What's incredibly lame about backyard is that you can't print any of the
information or the planner!!!!! Can you do this with Pro?

SNP will exoprt the planner into tab or comma delimited. Then you can
import say into database or a spreadsheet and massage the data to how
you want to view it. Very cool.

Is there a better program? Why can't you copy/paste any of the verbiage in
SNB????? Am I asking too much? These seem like simple features.
Has anyone received Enthusiast? Is it a further waste of $8.95? Backyard
is a pig that dies if you leave it alone for an hour...

Same with SNP (atleast for me).

Chris