Fall observing returns!

The fall brings decent observing conditions back to North Carolina. Gone are the hazy, humid skies of summer.

Jupiter has been bright and stunning in the evening sky. Early morning has featured Orion in the south - a sure sign that transparent Winter observing will return soon.

The moon never fails to impress. This photo of the moon was taken on 6 October about 32 hours before new moon - a very old moon indeed. The bright earth shine in the morning twilight have a way of kick-starting the day. So much for the diversion. Now it's back to work!

Deep-Sky Planner Featured by Embarcadero

Deep-Sky Planner has always been developed in C++, most recently in C++ Builder from Embarcadero. C++ Builder is an excellent rapid application development solution for creating rich GUI Windows applications. C++ Builder is one of the development languages included in Embarcadero's RAD Studio, along with C, Delphi and PHP.

Each year, the new version of the development system is introduced worldwide at "Launch Events", where Embarcadero promotes the newest features in RAD Studio. This year's Launch Events highlight Deep-Sky Planner as a success story produced with C++ Builder. It's an honor to be recognized in this way among software professionals worldwide. If you are a developer of Rich GUI applications for Windows, you might want to have a look at RAD Studio XE.

The Great Unicode Migration

The last 2 months have been spent migrating program code for a compiler upgrade. It has been tedious work, affecting over 900 source files in Deep-Sky Planner alone. The bulk of the migration changes has been related to supporting Unicode. Unicode accommodates characters in most any language. System testing of the changes is in progress.

While the migration has seemed like non-productive work, it will permit Deep-Sky Planner and SQM Reader Pro to take advantage of new technologies that are supported in the new compiler. These technologies will be used to develop some exciting new features and to satisfy some user-requested ones - more on this later. These features will appear in a free update (v 5.1) to Deep-Sky Planner 5 that is scheduled for release in Q1 2011.

In the meantime, some minor issues surfaced in Deep-Sky Planner v 5.0.1 during the migration. Code reviews have a way of doing that. These issues will be fixed in a minor update (v 5.0.2) to be released soon - in Q3 or early Q4 2010.

Darkness Poll Closed - Results Are In!

The final results are in on the question How do you rate sky darkness?

19% don't rate darkness at all.
12% use the Bortle scale (read about this scale here).
48% estimate the naked-eye limiting magnitude (NELM).
19% use equipment that detects darkness in magnitude per square arcsec.

Sky darkness is a key component in planning visual and imaging observations. It is also an important statistic to include in logging observations. The 19% that don't bother to rate darkness could benefit from using one of the other scales.

Rating sky conditions could (should) be a matter of habit when setting up for a night's observing (or when imaging remotely). Including this metric in visual or imaging logs can help to identify conditions that work for you. If you aren't rating darkness, give it a try!

How do you rate darkness?

A poll has been running on the Deep-Sky Planner web page for several weeks that asks the simple question 'What scale do you use to rate sky darkness?'

The results as of now are a bit illuminating (pardon the pun).

• 20% don't bother with rating darkness at all. Observers really should rate darkness somehow.
• 12% use the Bortle scale. It is a very coarse scale but it is easy to use.
• 45% use NELM - the naked eye limiting stellar magnitude at the zenith. This is an easy test to conduct during observing but is subject to one's visual acuity and experience. It is a finer measure than Bortle, but subjective.
• 20% use magnitude per square arcsecond. This is very likely to be measured by equipment such as a Sky Quality Meter. It is easy to acquire this value during observing but only if you have the equipment. It is also a very objective measurement so it is the most precise measure of darkness, but it does require an investment.
• 0% just make up a number on their own scale. This is a surprise because observers often say something like 'darkness was 8 out of 10'. Maybe the poll is missing respondents on this question.

If you'd like to participate in this non-scientific poll, visit http://knightware.biz/dsp/ and look in the left column for the Observer's Poll. Please vote only once.

Importing Planet Events into Google Calendar

Deep-Sky Planner 5 can produce reports in various file formats. HTML is popular for users that have a website for their planning information or observing log. Text and CSV are popular for moving data into spreadsheets, but another use popped up recently that I'd like to share.

I wanted to plan some summer camping trips around new moon dates. Since I use Google Calendar, I looked into the possibility of importing moon phase information generated in Deep-Sky Planner's Planet Events report into my Google Calendar. Since Google publishes the import file format, it was easy to convert the CSV format file produced by Deep-Sky Planner into the CSV file format required by Google Calendar. The script could also be used to produce a file with the dates of eclipses, the dates of opposition, greatest elongations, etc.

I wrote a simple script that performs the conversion. I use Python for most scripting tasks like this, so I have made the script available on the Files section of the Deep-Sky Planner Yahoo group. The script is written for Python 2.6 and can be run from a command prompt. If you use Python, that would be something like:

python EventToGoogleCalendar.py

The script prompts you for input and output files. Once you've converted the file, you need to log into your Google Calendar and import the file.

If you prefer a different script language, you can use the Python script as an example in writing your own script. Of course, the idea of sharing planet event information with a personal calendar is applicable to other calendar services. The key is having a calendar service that has import capability and publishes import file format.

Use Deep-Sky Planner 5 with TheSkyX Pro

Deep-Sky Planner 5 has been updated to support TheSkyX Professional edition. Deep-Sky Planner 5 now provides smart interoperation through its Show Chart feature with these planetarium software products:

• TheSkyX Professional edition
• TheSky6 Professional and Serious Astronomer editions
• Starry Night 6 Enthusiast, Pro and Pro Plus editions
• Redshift 7 Premium, Advanced and Compact editions
• Redshift 6 Premium edition
• Cartes du Ciel 3

Users of TheSkyX Pro must have version 10.1.6 or later to use this feature. Users of Starry Night must have version 6.3.8 or later to use this feature.