I have the very basic version of Starry Night v8 that came with my telescope. Wanting more and looking @ Enthusiast 8 and Starry Night Pro 8. When I look at the comparison there are a lot of features that I most definitely do not understand. Is there some place to get information on the features in the Pro version without having to Google each and every one that I don't understand? Thanks, Joe
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Warnerem Well, no one has answered... soooo... I don't think that Starry Night is being maintained anymore. I'm surprised they are still selling it considering there has been no update in several years. There are a number of bugs -- features that worked really well in previous versions that simply do not work in newer versions. I have SNPP8... I had SNPP7 but upgraded sometime back but kept using SNPP7 on a particular computer until that computer died. Now, I'm having to use SNPP8 but am getting very frustrated very quickly.
Field of view indicators default to 0deg rotation in alt-az only. Must manually rotate them. And they don't rotate with the sky.
Even though I had set up custom settings (how my stars appeared, etc) and exported the file, the new version did not import the settings.
Critical databases (asteroids, comets) have not been updated in several (!) years! I managed to figure out that the Asteroids.txt file is basically the astorb.dat file but with all of the info at the beginning trimmed out. In addition, SN simply can't handle the number of lines (nearly 1.4 million asteroids) so you have to manually delete most of the lines. I trimmed it down to 25000 but that still causes issues. Which means that if I want to add a newly named or recently discovered asteroid, I'll have to find it in the astorb.dat file and copy/paste it over Asteroids.txt.
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Keiron Smith Hi Joe, Warner,
Indeed, SN8 is long overdue for an update, but while there are a couple of bugs there are no showstoppers, the app is working fine on Windows 10/11 and MacOS.
Regarding the differences between Enthusiast and Pro please see the comparison chart here:
https://starrynight.com/starry-night-8-comparison-chart.html
If you want to control a telescope you need Pro or Pro Plus.
If you don't need scope control then Enthusiast is a great choice.Regarding asteroids, comets and satellites, these are always up to date, however you do need to update these files in the app.
The data files should update automatically when you start SN8. If they don't update automatically try using Help > Update Data
And, if that doesn't work you can always download the files manually and add them to the preferences folder.
Thanks for your post and reply.
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Warnerem Thanks Keiron,
I beg to differ... the asteroid and comets databases HAVE NOT been updated in years! There are multiple threads across various forums asking how to update those. In addition, there is no documentation that says what the limit is on the number of asteroids that SN can actually handle. Within the software preferences you can in theory upload up to 99999 (or maybe just 9999, I'm not at that computer now... and that number is not stated in the UM), but when I converted the astorb.dat file, I had to seriously trim it ortherwise SNPP8 crashed. When trying to find FOVs for occultations, many asteroids recently discovered are not in the database.
And frankly, the issue with the field of view orientation is a major bug. It worked properly in earlier versions! What broke so that it doesn't work properly in SNPP8?
~Elizabeth
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Keiron Smith Elizabeth,
Please see here:
If required, you can replace the asteroid.txt, comets.txt, and satellite.txt files manually.
https://support.simulationcurriculum.com/hc/en-us/articles/231535007-Adding-Comets-to-Starry-Night
Latest working links are confirmed here:
Asteroids - data.starrynight.com/updates/61/data/Asteroids.tx
Comets - data.starrynight.com/updates/62/data/Comets.txt
Aatellites.txt - data.starrynight.com/updates/60/Satellites.txt
I think the maximum number is 99999, however, the maximum that can be supported depends on your graphics card. Loading too many asteroids will, indeed, crash SN8, or bring it to a very slow crawl if your graphics card can't handle the demand. The only way to know is through experimentation.
Whenever there is another SN8 update we can review the FOV, but I cannot say when that will be.
Thanks!
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