Animating the upcoming eclipse in 2017 and saving it so that I can share it on FB with Simulation Curriculum acknowledgement included! This is why I bought SN7 because I could do so in SN6 years ago and there is not a way to do this apparently. Would appreciate an official answer because I can't figure it out; BUT' you left it out? What is that about?
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Tim Campbell Which specific version of Starry Night do you have? Is this CSAP, Enthusiast, Pro, or Pro Plus?
I do this using the following steps:
1) Set your location to a place that you know will be along the path of totality if you want it to simulate a full eclipse. You you don't happen to live in the path of totality (as most of us don't) but want to show friends what it would look like from home, you can do that too. Casper Wyoming is in the location list and happens to be along the path of totality -- so you can always pick that town for demonstration purposes.
2) Set the date & time to the date of the eclipse... August 21, 2017. If you are using Casper Wyoming then I'd set the time to something around 9am (which is before 1st Contact).
3) Set the field of view. If you are zoomed well out then the sun will appear as a bright flare of light. If you zoom in enough (usually the transition happens somewhere around a 25º wide angle of view) the sun will appear as a dimmer disk without the bright flare appearance and it's easier to observe. I might suggest setting the field of view width (the lower left corner of the display) to around 15º wide (e.g. mine reads 15º x 7º)
4) Using the time-flow controls in the upper-right corner of the display area, press the square 'stop' button, then use the 3 horizontal lines (I call this the "sandwhich") to open the menu and set the time-flow rate to something that moves a bit faster than real-time. For example, the 300x speed will help you get through the demo a bit faster).
5) Start the recording by picking (off the main menu) "File" -> "Export Sky View..." -> "As Movie..." and this will open a window asking you to provide a location and name for this file (I think it defaults to the "movies" folder in your home directory).
This will cause a "Record" and "Stop" button to appear near the bottom of the display area.
6) Press "Record"
7) Press the play button (upper-right corner in the time-flow controls) to start time moving forward. This will cause Starry Night to start simulating the fast flow of time showing you the eclipse as the system records this to a video file.
8) When you're finished, press the "Stop" button to stop the recording (and you can stop the time-flow as well).
During the recording, Starry Night will not record your mouse (so don't worry about moving the mouse across the screen to click the time-flow controls... that wont show up in your movie. Also if you had the right or left side-panels exposed, it wont record those either.
You should now have a .MP4 movie file on your computer and you can open and play that back to make sure you're happy with the video.
Good luck!
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