Northeast Astronomy Forum 2010 Redux

NEAF was quite busy this year. Attendance seemed larger, and there was a healthy interest in astronomical software. It was great seeing previous customers again while meeting some new ones. It may take the voice and feet a while to recover!

Answering questions for an interested customer

NEAF was more than a trade show this year. Knightware also hosted a technical meeting about OpenAstronomyLog for interested astronomy software developers on Friday during vendor setup. The purpose of the meeting was to help developers add support for OpenAstronomyLog (OAL) to their products. We discussed the technical and business merits of the OAL project, talked about support resources that are available, and explored some ideas that may make supporting OAL easier. Several other developers expressed interest in the project but were unable to attend the show.

Developers of Redshift and TheSkyX participated in the OAL meeting.

Knightware greatly enjoyed taking part in this year's NEAF and we look forward to it again next year.

TheSkyX Revealed

Software Bisque has confirmed that TheSkyX Pro will be released today at NEAF. This release contains the interface that Deep-Sky Planner needs to support its Show Chart interoperation feature with TheSkyX.

Knightware is currently testing support for TheSkyX in Deep-Sky Planner 5. Support for TheSkyX is planned for the first minor update to Deep-Sky Planner 5 (v5.0.1) which will be released in a few weeks.

If you'd like to see Deep-Sky Planner 5 working with TheSkyX, please drop by our booth for a demonstration - we're right beside the Software Bisque booth.

Heading to NEAF (April 17-18)

Knightware will be packing up and heading for the Northeast Astronomy Forum and Telescope Show (NEAF) later this week in New York. NEAF is an exciting time for attendees and vendors - there's so much happening. If you are going to attend NEAF, please stop by the Knightware booth (#343) and say hello. It is always fun to meet users who are otherwise known only via e-mail.

We'll answer your questions about our software products, Deep-Sky Planner 5 and SQM Reader Pro. Both products will be available for you to try on our demo computer, and both will be available for purchase at a special price at the show.

Please tune in to this blog for updates as the weekend unfolds. We plan to provide some photos and commentary about the goings-on.

Starry Night 6.3.8 update affects Deep-Sky Planner 5

Good news! Simulation Curriculum has released an update to Starry Night 6 that fixes a problem with changing field of view from the Show Charts feature in Deep-Sky Planner 5.

The update from v 6.3.3 to 6.3.8 is available using the Starry Night update service. You should follow their procedure for applying updates.

You may also need to update your Deep-Sky Planner 5 plug-in for Starry Night if you haven't done so since version 5 was releasd. Click Help | Community Page(online) inside Deep-Sky Planner 5. This should open your web browser and log you into the DSP community page. Next, click the hyperlink 'download the updated plug-in' towards the bottom of the web page to start the download. Once you have downloaded the plug-in and saved the file to your hard disk, copy it to your Starry Night installation. On most systems, you would be replacing the file at C:\Program Files\Starry Night Pro Plus 6\Sky Data\Plug-ins\DsSN50.plug

Also, if you are using Deep-Sky Planner 5 with Starry Night on Windows 7 or Vista, you will probably need to run both programs 'As Administrator'.

The updated plug-in will be released in the first bug-fixing update, v 5.0.1. Hopefully that will be released by late April.