Just purchased Sky Safari Pro 6 and installed it (on an iMac27 Retina and MacBook Pro 15). On both systems, the icons are missing from the setting "bar" across the top left of the screen. If you click on the (empty) box to adjust the settings, the icon appears, but then disappears when you click done. This is not the same behavior I saw in 5. Also, when I set the horizon to show Cardinal Points, they are not labeled on the iMac, though the labels (e.g., SE, S, SW....) do show on the MacBook Pro. Also, when I turn on Show Asteroids, Comets, Satellites and "with Names" the names do not appear on the iMac, though they do on the MacBook Pro. It appears that you need to test on a current model iMac 27.
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Dredfearn Thanks for the suggestion about fonts - Arial was in fact disabled on my iMac27 Retina system so I enabled it. Now the cardinal points are labeled and I see object names too. (Arial was not disabled on my MBP15, so the labels were present there.)
The settings bar is still blank, however, on both systems. If you select one of the settings option boxes, the icon does appear, but disappears as soon as you click done.
I took two screen shots - one as the bar shows normally, and one when I clicked the location option box.
All the icons show for Sky Safari Pro 5 but are missing for 6.
David
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Bill Tschumy This problem is caused by having "Increase Contrast" on in the System Preferences > Accessibility > Display panel. This appears to be a macOS bug. I will try to contact Apple before too long to see if they know about it and if there is any work around.
If you really need to use "Increase Contract" to have your Mac be usable, then you should probably ask Apple for a refund on SkySafari. It is not clear when we will have a fix for this.
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Dredfearn Yes, I had increase contrast on. Turning it off restored the icons. I can run without this feature. Thanks for tracking this down for me.
Good luck getting Apple to fix this or even acknowledge that it is a bug, but I think they are improving and becoming more responsive now. I reported a bug concerning displaying the Sony A7R IIII RAW image previews in the Finder - and it got fixed in 10.13.4! So there is some hope.
Also, the Tiangong-1 has re-entered over the south pacific. The application still shows it in orbit. How often do you update the satellite data?
David
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Pete Gladstein I have a 27" 2017 Retina 5K iMac and I do not have these issues. I am running MacOS 10.13.4.
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Dredfearn I am also running 10.14.4 on both systems. Still have the same problems.
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Pete Gladstein Have you tried running in Safe Mode? Perhaps there is a conflict.
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Dredfearn I uninstalled it and reinstalled and still have the same problems. My SS5 shows the icons in the settings bar but now also doesn't show the directions (SE, S, SW...etc) any more - just a small dot indicating each of the cardinal points (it used to show them).
I tried changing the scaling of the display and that doesn't make a difference.
Do the developers actually post on this forum? It is surprising that they don't even have a support email.
I hope support is not going to become like that for Starry Night - I found (and reported) bugs in that program that were never fixed.
David
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Dean Perhaps it's a font issue. That's often the case when there's missing labels. The following is from the SkySafari for Mac OS X Frequently Asked Questions:
"SkySafari on Mac uses the Arial font for its labels. If you or another application have disabled Arial, SkySafari cannot use it. Check the Font Book application to see if Arial is there and enabled."
Posting a screenshot of the problem would probably also be helpful.
As to your question about the developers:
The developers are constantly replying to questions here in the forum. They usually seem to take some time off on weekends and holidays, and since this is a weekend holiday you may not get a response until Monday.
They deal with reported bugs in a timely manner. And there are numerous contact options on their "Contact Us" web page:
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Dredfearn One other thing: I have been tracking the Chinese Tiangong-1 space station which is about to re-enter. I can find it in the apps, but when I checked Info, I got something that I don't think has been updated in several years. Launched in 2011 and expected to stay in orbit for 2 years (!). I know it is hard to keep up with the latests data on these things, but the re-entry has been widely predicted for some time now, and it seems the info in Sky Safari 6 - just released - should include that information.
Tiangong 1, a Chinese satellite, was launched from Jiuquan on 29 September 2011 at 13:16 UT by a Long March 2F rocket. Tiangong 1, which means heavenly palace in English, weighed approximately 8506 kg and measured 12 m long with a diameter of 3.3 m.
Tiangong 1 is the first Chinese space laboratory module launched on a critical test flight to demonstrate the vital docking technology required for a future space station. The new module will be mainly used to carry out the rendezvous and docking test, as well as the mastering of the technologies related to rendezvous and docking and accumulate the experience for the construction, management and operation of a space station. It will be positioned several hundred miles above Earth and is composed of two cylindrical sections with a docking port on its front-end. The two modules are known as the experimental module and the resource module.
The Tiangong 1 spacecraft is expected to stay in orbit for two years and rendezvous and dock with three different spaceships. At least one of the future launches is to be manned and the taikonaut of that launch will stay on-board for a maximum of two weeks. China's goal is to build a space station by 2020. -
Dean Wait... you say that you are running Mac OS 10.14.4?
Unless I'm mistaken, that OS version is still in beta, and has not been released to the general public yet.
That could be the problem, right there. I'm sure that once there is a stable release version of this OS, the SkySafari developers will deal with the issue (if it still exists). It may be an OS bug that will disappear by the time the public version is released.
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Dredfearn Dyslexic fingers. Its 10.13.4 of course.
David
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Bill Tschumy The data is updated every week automatically. However, you can always update manually by clicking the button at the bottom of the Solar System settings.
However, it looks like JPL and Celestrak have not yet removed the object from their databases and until they do it will appear in SkySafari.
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Dredfearn The App Store blurb says there is an in-app option to purchase more stars and more galaxies - but I don't see it. Is this coming soon? (I like to use Sky Safari to "see" things described in the Sky and Telescope and Astronomy magazines. For example, I tried to look up Tabby's star (aka Boyajian's star and KIC-8462852) and couldn't find it.) Would buying the additional stars include this star?
David
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Bill Tschumy Do to an error on our part, the In-App Purchases didn't not get approved for sale by Apple. We will have this fixed in the 6.0.2 release later this week.
KIC 8462852 is also known as TYC 3162-665-1 which is in the standard database. We just don't have if listed under the KIC catalog.
The additional stars are all pretty faint (> 15th mag) and it is sort of unlikely they would be discussed in S&T. They are most useful to help recognize objects in a star field in larger scopes.
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Keiron Smith Hi David,
The in-app stars and galaxies database purchase options will be available in the next update, due out later this week.
Thanks!
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Dredfearn Thanks for the quick response. I expect it drives you crazy when objects have multiple names!
David
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Bill Tschumy I use SIMBAD to search for objects and see what alternate catalog designations they might have. The basic search is here:
http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-fid
Note that you need to remove the "-" for it to recognize the KIC designation (i.e KIC 8462852).
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Richardlwell I too am having this issue with the "Increase contrast" option in Settings-Accessibility-Display.
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Bill Tschumy We think we have a solution for the "Increase contrast" problem. Hopefully we can submit to Apple tomorrow.
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