From page 8 of the SNE8 Users Guide: "Tip: If you wish to open Starry Night with different search results other than the default pane, choose Preferences from the File menu
(Windows) or the Starry Night menu (Macintosh), press the General tab at the upper left corner of the Preferences dialog box, and type in a new default search. For example, typing “SkyGuide” will show the SkyGuide pane by default the next time you open a new Starry Night window. To open Starry Night with the search results pane closed, leave the default search field blank."
Leaving the default field blank DOE NOT remove the search pane from SNE8 Therefore SNE8 is useless to me.