Astromist 2.4 Palm 1.1 OBJECTIVES Astromist is complete astronomy tools which helps Astronomer to organize efficiently their observations. Astromist helps Astronomer during sessions by answering usual questions: - Could I see this object tonight ? If not was is the best period this year to observed it ? - What will be the galaxies visible tonight with my scope ? - Could I fully see M31 using my 18mm radian ? - I plan to do tonight an observation session of one hour. What will be the objects I could see during this time frame ? - Is this object easy to see or not ? - Which object will be visible higher in the sky me tonight considering I have this mountain in front of me ? - What are the easiest object to observed tonight ? And the more difficult ? - How can I find this object if my mount is not align ? - What object could I see easily with my Ploss 10mm and my scope ? Astromist is able to answer quickly to all them and even more one if observer need to mix all the constraints together : - I would like to point my scope during the next hour to see all nebulas visible inside Uma constellation and that best fit in my Nagler 20mm eyepiece? 1.3 ASTROMIST FEATURES Astromist provides a great set of features with no equivalent on personal assistant: - Up to 2,5 million of stars and 18200 deep sky objects using full catalogs, - Hi res support to display tremendous sky charts : - Equatorial or Azimuthal SkyChart, - Real time map scroll, - Object size, shape and orientation, - Stars colors and sizes, - Optional eyepiece field of view, - Optional CCD field of view, - Several zoom level, - Grid with fine graduations, - Star magnitude legend, - Optional Telrad, - Several scope utilies to control, GoTo, improve pointing etc. - Support many scope drivers (Meade, Celestron, Losmandy, Takahashy, etc), - Provide Bluetooth (and infrared) control of telescope (special rebate available for Astromist register users for the complete bluetooth hardware solution). - Display user object images stored on memory card (more than 8000 images), - Moon map with 3 level of zoom (up to 960x960 pixel) including all craters bigger than 4km, - More than 14200 object descriptions (based on Dreyer code) and an interpretor to translate them in readable sentences - GPS compatible to get observer position and elevation using cradle or bluetooth port, - Scope Assistant to control your scope using palm keys, - Sun and Lunar Eclipse Assistant to see path of the shadow on the earth and find greatest time for observation, - Mars Assistant to see Mars satelites, View of the planet, map of the surface (more than 900 features), - Earth Satellite assistant (next AOS and LOS, sky position, globe position, etc), - Jupiter Assistant to get red spot, satellites or events (shadows, eclipse, etc) ephemeris, - Saturn Assistant to see satellites or ring evolution, - Comet and Asteroid Assistant with solar 3D and sky view, - Twilight Assistant to see best period to observe an object, - Planet Assistant to quickly see and get position of planets and many more, - DayLight Assistant to see the position of the sun and the night over the earth, - Alignment Assistant to help you to align your equatorial mount, - CCD Assistant to compute your CCD field of view and display it inside SkyChart, - CheckList Assistant (based on SAC checklist) to brig everything with you each time, - Location Assistant to set up to 3 prefered location settings, - Finder Assistant to easily browse objects, - ObserverLog to trace your night session and link your shots to your personnal notes, - High precision computation algorithm based on the famous Novas library for refraction and topographic position correction (earth aberration, precession and nutation) considering temperature and pressure, - Two stars alignment feature to quickly go to object even if you don't polar align your mount, - Two of N stars alignment process to point better than one minute, - Messier and planets photos, - More than 7 selections criteria to drill down sky objects databases, - Multiple stage selection process to refine selected objects, - Visual charts to see rise and set, - Visual chart to see best observation period in the year, - Visual chart to see if object is easy to see or not considering its size, magnitude, scope dimensions and sky brightness, - Rise, transit and set with adjustable horizon constraints, - Magnitude, type, constellation of planet and objects, - Equatorial, Azimuth position, - Several Night mode, - And many more... The latest version of Astromist can be found at: http://www.astromist.com 2 CONFIGURATION AND INSTALLATION See Install.txt file 2.3 FIRST USE Before using Astromist, please think to setup all the preference information and location information. If not you could have wrong result during computation. 3 DISCLAIMER Important Notes and Limitations regarding this version: - Please see the LICENSE included in this document for important terms and limitations. If you do not agree with the license you are not authorized to use Astromist. - Astromist demo version is a complete version with no expiration date but you are limited to : - select no more than 5 objects at a time, - you can access to less than 1100 objects, - optional catalogs are not provided, - bluetooth scope control is disable, - preference settings are not saved. - This application is still being tested to find and remove bugs in the application and errors in the documentation. Please be sure to make backup copies of all your important data prior to installing and using this application. - The documentation is still preliminary, is subject to change without notice, and may not completely or accurately describe the current version of Astromist.