Sunday, September 09, 2012
SkyTools 3 for Dumbbells
“Yeah, yeah
Unk. We know you think it’s the bee’s knees and the cat’s meow. But I had a
look at a copy running on my pal Bubba’s computer and couldn’t make heads nor
tails of it.” Which is something I hear occasionally. In truth, there is a lot to SkyTools 3, and the program’s author, Greg Crinklaw, does things
the way he thinks they should be done whether that fits the standard Windows user
interface model or not. Once you start using ST3, you’ll likely say “Yeah, I
see why he did that,” but, yes, SkyTools
is different.
What I've said before on this subject is that you wouldn’t expect to sit down and use Microsoft’s Access or Excel without a little larnin. They are powerful and complex
programs. Well, so is SkyTools. And spending
time learning it will pay off in spades. But the dirty little secret? You can
begin using the program to do useful things in just a few minutes, which is
what I am going to show you how to do today.
Let’s get
started. While I use the Pro Edition, almost everything here should also apply
to the “Standard” version. First things first:
install SkyTools 3 on your astro-puter.
Done? Cool. Fire the thing up by double clicking the little icon the install
program will have placed on your desktop. Your reaction when the main screen,
“Nightly Planner,” bursts onto the monitor? “Dang, Unk! Sure is different!”
You betcha,
Skeezix. There ain’t even the familiar Windows menu bar—you know, “file,”
“edit,” etc. Instead, you’ve got a series of tabs across the top. “Nightly
Planner,” “Current Events,” “Special Events,” “Ephemerides,” and “Real Time”
(you may or may not have that last one if you don’t have Pro). These tabs send
you to separate program modules that let you do different things, everything
from looking at a list, to finding out when the next good meteor shower will
be, to sending your telescope on its go-tos.
“But where
do you go to set up the program? You know, latitude, longitude, and that other
stuff astro-programs want to know about.” Some of that is done with the bar of
icons underneath the tabs, and we will work with them shortly, but that is not
where you go to set location. For that, you use the hypertext bar under the
icons. The first link shows the date; skip that and click the next one over,
which is displaying an observing site. It’s not your site, so you want to change it.
Set in the lat/lon
for Bugtussle, Alabama or your observing haven of choice by clicking “new” in
the window that appears. You can then choose a location from preset ones or enter
one manually by mashing the “Manual/GPS” button. You’ll usually enter position
manually so as to be precise. Type in your observing locale’s latitude and
longitude and elevation in the appropriate fields (the format is
degrees-minutes-seconds).
Once you’ve
entered the coordinates and OKed ‘em, you will be back at the main Site window
where you will choose your time-zone, accept the program’s daylight savings
time rules, and enter seeing, air temp, humidity, and set up a profile of your
horizon obstructions if’n you’ve a mind.
Only one
more thing and you are done with location: enter the condition of the sky with
the hypertext just below daylight savings time. The hypertext link will be a
mite confusing for novices—and to Unk, too, actually—something like “20mag/arc
sec^2” Don’t be a-skeered. Click it and you will get a window that
will allow you to enter the degree of light pollution in understandable terms:
“urban, suburban, country.” If you are smarter than I am, you can hit the
“Advanced” tab and enter your location’s Bortle rating.
After you’ve
got your home position in, you can continue to enter the coordinates of your
fave star party locations and the other observing venues you frequent. When you
arrive at the Possum Holler Star Party, for example, just click the location hypertext
on the Nightly Planner screen and choose the PHSP from the list in the window.
Skip the
next hypertext, the one that shows current telescope, since we haven’t set one
up yet. The tab after that is “Observer.” Click it, mash “add,” and enter your
name and age. Pushing “compute” will calculate the max pupil opening of your
eyes depending on the age you entered. Finally, indicate your experience level
from novice to expert via the pull-down and OK the window.
One thing
most planning programs do is have you enter your equipment. Most of ‘em just
use that to automatically place the current scope in observing log entries,
howsomeever. SkyTools 3 goes way
further, calculating visibility of objects for your scope and building
simulations, depictions of what a selected object will look like in a
particular telescope and eyepiece.
So it’s
important to get your equipment in and in accurately, and that is easy to do. Go
to the icon bar, to the third icon from the left that, natch, looks like a
little telescope. The window shown here will appear and will give you two ways
to enter a scope. Click “New” and another window will appear. The first entry
will be “Enter Manually,” which you should do if your scope is not in the
accompanying list. It’s fairly extensive, but mostly contains current telescopes;
I had to enter my beloved Criterion RV-6, Cindy Lou,
manually. Otherwise, just select the telescope’s name from the list.
If you have
to enter your scope manually, it’s still right easy. Type in its name,
aperture, either focal ratio or focal length, and how its view is presented in
the eyepiece (by clicking on the blue hypertext). An SCT will be “Left/Right
Flipped” and “Up/Down Normal;” a Newtonian will be the opposite. When you are
done, enter the details for the scope’s finder on the left. If you are not sure
about its field size, next time you are outside with the gear find out what it is
using a couple of bright stars whose separation you know or can find out for
reference. After setting up its finder, you are done with the telescope, but
you still need to assign eyepieces to it.
Entering
eyepieces is similar to entering the scope. Mash Add/Edit eyepieces in the
Scope window and either pick your eyepieces from the list or push the “New”
button and enter the data manually, focal length and apparent field of view. Click
OK, and highlight the new one in the eyepiece “pool” list where it will now
reside. Finally, push the “Assign to Scope” button. You can add a Barlow to the
eyepiece array by entering its magnification factor (2x, 3x, etc.) in the field
at the bottom of the eyepiece window.
“Alrighty.
Done got all that in: location, scope, eyepieces, observer.
What next?” Well, there really ain’t
no “next,” not for now. Oh, there is more data you can give the program, like the
aforementioned horizon contours, but you are good to go now to set up an
observing list and start using this dang thing you paid all that money for.
Since
planning programs like SkyTools 3 are
list oriented, that is you spend most
of your time working from a spreadsheet-like list of objects rather than a star
chart, you gotta have a list. It’s more than possible you won’t need to make one, though. SkyTools ships with some observing lists already onboard and you
can easily get more.
Go to the
observing list pull-downs on the Nightly Planner tab, right below the Night Bar,
the graphic representation of Sun, Moon, and object altitudes (which we will
talk about before long). There you’ll find “Group” and “List.” Group, as you
might expect, is groups of observing lists. Select “Default,” and pull-down the
List selector below. There you’ll find the Messier, a Best of the NGC, and a
few more. Kinda slim pickings, but it’s easy to get bunches more.
Go back up
to the icon bar and select the tenth one from the left, “Data.” On the window
that comes up select the “Import Shared Data” tab. That will allow you download
lists from the Skyhound website (naturally you have to have an Internet connection).
Click the bubble selection “Skyhound Web Site,” choose “Deep Sky Observing
Lists” (or whatever) from the pulldown below, and push the “Get Listing”
button. Shortly, a long list of lists will appear in the window. There is a
slew of ‘em, pards, everything from “Seyfert Galaxies” to the dadgum Herschel
2500, so, again, you may never have to worry about making lists of your own.
Scroll until
you find a list you like, highlight it, and hit “Import.” When the (short) download
is complete and you go back to Nightly Planner, you will find the list you just
downloaded is now in the “Current” group. Click on it and it will be displayed.
If you can’t
find the list you want/need? There are two ways to make an observing list:
automatically and manually. It is duck soup to generate a list automatically,
campers. Back on the icon bar, choose “Nightly Observing List Generator,” the
seventh icon from the left. If I ain’t said so, there is bubble help for the
icon bar (and just about everything else)—put your cursor on an icon and it
will be identified for you.
Anyhow, once
you click the icon you will be confronted with the simple and straightforward
(does it surprise you that I use words like that with the supposedly scary SkyTools 3 Professional?) choices seen here. Pick the type of list you want from
the wide range of possibilities, give it a name, size, and list group to go
into via the pulldowns on the right, and let ‘er rip with the “Create Observing
List” button. And that is just what will happen. In just a few seconds a new
list will pop onto your screen. If’n you ask me, this list generator feature is
the savior of the “almost ready to drop out-seen everything there is to see”
crowd.
The
auto-generator just don’t get it for you? Uncle Greg Crinklaw ain’t posted a
list of the stuff you really want to see? Your latest project idea, observing all the Collinder open clusters, is a
tad on the offbeat side? Never fear, you can assemble a list of exactly the
objects you want manually.
As always,
ST3 gives you choices. There are two ways to search for objects to put in a
list. The first, “Designation Search,” which is accessed with the magnifying
glass icon, is best suited to small lists. Here you can type in object
names/identifiers and search for them or select single objects from the Browse
tab after inputting some search parameters.
Once you’ve found
something you want for your list and have highlighted it, use the pulldowns near
the bottom of the window to specify the group and list it should go into. You
can use the “New” buttons to create a new group and/or new list, “Collinder
Clusters,” for example. Before you do that, you might want to make sure it is
really an object you want to track down.
To get the
straight poop on a fuzzy, push the “More Object Information” button when the
object is highlighted in Search Results. You will get another window, one that
includes just about anything you might want to know about your quarry. The
basic data in the upper part of the window helps you decide if it is indeed a
goodun, but what is really valuable is the plethora of tabs near the bottom.
Amazing and
particularly helpful is the Visual Synopsis tab, which will tell you how your
object will look with the current scope. If it seems it will be a good target,
you will want to know when it will be well placed for observing. The text
Synopsis will tell you, but the program’s famous Night Bar graph (same as the
one on the Nightly Planner screen) is quicker. The Night Bar in the Info window
will show a red line for your object indicating its elevation over the course
of the day.
One thing I
insist on with any program these days is pea-picking PICTURES. When I am going
after the hard stuff, ‘specially, it’s a big help to know what my fuzzy looks
like. ST3 is real strong here, allowing you to download Palomar Observatory Sky
Survey “DSS” images (singly or in batches). These photos will be cached for
future use after you download them, and can be accessed from the Images tab in
the Object Info window whenever you need them. To get pictures, click the
Action Menu hypertext at the bottom of the info screen and select, “Get DSS
Image.” “OK” the winder that pops up, ticking the “View Image on Completion”
box, and hit “Get Image.” If you have an even halfway decent Internet
connection you will quickly have a nice and useful picture onscreen.
Designation
Search works great, but is not well suited for building large lists, like one for
the 400 plus Collinder clusters. To do that, choose the next icon over from
Designation Search, Database Power Search. Its window does look a little scary
at first, but its basic operation is simple. Select the tab for galactic deep
sky objects (for example), the type of object you want, the catalog(s) you want
to search—Messier, NGC, etc.—and the constellations you want to include. Push
search and all the hits will be displayed in the search results area at the
bottom of the window. You can then control-click or shift-click to choose some
or all of the objects, and put them in a list just like you did in Designation
Search.
Hokay, by
hook or crook you’ve got a list and it wasn’t hard to get even if you had to
make it yourself. Now what do you do
with it? Well, that’s easy. You take your computer into the night or you print
out a list and you observe. But that’s just scratchin’ the surface. To begin, I
suggest you forget just printing out the list (hit the little blue down arrow
next to “observing list” on the upper left of the Nightly Planner screen and
mash “print/copy” to print). ST3 is great in the den, planning on a cloudy
night, but where it really shines is on the observing field.
Let’s get to
work with our list and find out what she will do. For starters, you can sort.
Hit the title at the top of a column (Primary
ID, Alternate ID, Constellation, etc., etc.), and you can arrange the list by
that column. By Rise Time or Set Time, for example. Clicking one more time will
reverse the order of the sort. I find this incredibly useful when I am trying
to decide which objects to tackle first, before they set. By the way, it’s easy
to determine which column data your list will display. Hit that blue “Observing
List” down arrow near the upper left of the screen, select “Configure Columns”
and push the button “Select Columns.” If you don’t reckon you need “Airmass,”
for example, uncheck it.
That’s just
the beginning of what you can do with a list. Right click a selected object and
you will get a shortcut menu that will allow you to do everything from downloading
images without opening the Object Info window, to opening that Info window, to
displaying charts and visual simulations of the fuzzy—and, like they say on the
TBS late at night, “much, much more.”
Before we move
on, let’s visit the Night Bar graph at the top of the screen. It sits there all
the time and maybe that’s the reason some SkyTools
users don’t seem to pay much attention to it. They should. It’s a wonderful
help in deciding what to view when and is way easier on the eyes than the rise
and set times in the list. There’s a yellow dashed line for the Sun, running
from its rise time to set time, curving up and down to indicate its altitude
vis-à-vis the time on the X axis. And there’s a blue line for the Moon. And
there is a red line for the currently selected list object. Daytime is white,
night time is dark gray. One glance at this simple graph and you know when and
for how long you can view/image your target.
Chart time.
Some planners deemphasize star charts, not offering any or simply providing
links to external planetarium programs like the ever-popular Cartes du Ciel. Not ST3. It has a powerful
charting engine that produces sky maps on a par with anything any planetarium
offers.
Highlight an
object in the list, like I did NGC 3395, and right click it. Then, select “Interactive
Atlas.” You will shortly be presented with a detailed, beautiful chart with
your object centered. What can you do with that chart? Many things. You can double
click the object to bring up the Info window with all its tools. Or you can
right click and get a menu with multiple choices that include retrieving
images, measuring angular distance and position angle, and adding the current
object to the observing list if it is not already on it.
One thing ST3’s
Interactive Atlas won’t do? Allow you
to navigate by dragging the chart around with the mouse. To center on a
different spot on the chart, right click and choose “Center View at Cursor”
from the menu. It would be nice to be able to click-drag the chart with the
mouse, but Mr. Greg says there are good reasons for not implementing that, and
he ort to know.
Then there
is chart printing. Yes, some observers still print hard-copy charts and carry ‘em
into the field. Chart printing is also where some new SkyTools owners freak out. Why? It ain’t because there aren’t enough
options for controlling how the charts look. More like there are too many. These options, found under the
“Preferences” and “View” icons at the top right of the chart page icon bar,
will indeed allow you to change almost anything. The good part? You may never
have to worry about this stuff. The defaults will produce a perfectly
acceptable printout, like the one shown in the scan here.
Looking at
the Interactive Atlas display, you’ll see there are lots of chart-specific icons
in addition to the few we’ve explored. The Atlas will dang sure do a lot of
stuff, some of it unique to SkyTools.
There’s the context viewer, for example, which with a click of its icon will
display a simulation of the view through a selected telescope. My advice,
though? Leave all this lagniappe for
later when you are comfortable with basic program operation instead of getting
bogged down with it in the beginning.
There are
other charts available in addition to the Interactive Atlas, including naked eye
and planisphere type views and what the program refers to as “simulations,”
views tailored to the current telescope selection. You can access these either
from the Nightly Planner with a right click (choose the telescope in the menu),
or by pulling down the blue hypertext text at the top of the atlas screen.
The
simulation view is a good way of quickly determining what’s in the field and
where for a specific telescope and eyepiece—use the hypertext below the
currently selected scope at the right top of the simulation screen to choose an
eyepiece. Frankly, though, I prefer the full-blown interactive atlas. But that
is just me. One thing to keep in mind: this is a simulation. If it’s daytime and you’ve got Real Time turned on on
the sim screen (with the little stopwatch icon), the sky background will be
blue and you will not see pea-turkey. If that’s the case, you can turn off the
simulation’s real time display and advance or regress time (via little
left/right arrows on the icon bar) till your object is there and looking good.
There is one
type of observer for whom the simulation is a real boon, the star hopper. It’s
possible to make three-pane naked eye/finder/eyepiece charts on the simulation
screen. Some other programs like Deepsky
can create finder charts like this, but they dang sure can’t do it as easily or
well as SkyTools 3. With the
simulation screen showing the desired object, click all three of the view
buttons on the right of the icon bar, eye, finder, and eyepiece and the program
will automatically generate a wonderful finder chart.
If you’ve
grokked the above, you are almost ready to start using this soft in a productive
fashion, but there is one other part of ST3 you will want to know how to work
from the get-go, “Real Time.” That’s the part of the program that sends a telescope
on go-tos, but that’s hardly all it does. Real Time is accessed with the last
tab on the main list screen, the one that says, yep, “Real Time.”
“But Uncle
Rod, my Real Time no workie.” If so, or if you ain’t got that tab at all, it’s
because you don’t have the Pro version of SkyTools.
If you have the Standard ST3, you need to purchase Real Time, which is an
unlockable add-on. See the Sky Hound website
for more information, but you really do want to get Real Time, trust me. If you
have the new Starter version of SkyTools,
you need to upgrade to either Standard or Pro, since RT is not an option for Starter.
Y’all go on and do that now. I’ll wait.
Hokay,
you’ve either unlocked or upgraded and now have that “Real Time” tab. Click on
it and you will be taken to a new screen, one that at first blush looks a lot
like the normal Nightly Planner list display. There are differences, however.
You’ll notice the blue hypertext on the left, “Observing List,” has been
replaced by “Telescope Control.” And you’ll also see the area below the night
bar is now taken up by “telescope targeting” and, below that, “Current
Telescope Position” and also “Current Date and Time,” a clock that is running.
That’s why this tab is called “Real Time.” It reflects the way things are right now.
What in
tarnation is that good for? You can see which objects in your list are visible
NOW and how high above the horizon they are NOW. In fact, you will see only the
objects in the list that are currently visible (or suitably high in the sky). Unlike
Nightly Planner, Real Time updates periodically to reflect how the sky changes
over the course of the evening. How often does it refresh? That is selectable
from 10-seconds to 5-minutes (via the Telescope Control blue arrow). I usually
leave mine set for 5-minutes so I am not annoyed by too-frequent screen
refreshes.
But how does
seeing your list in Real Time help (when you go to the Real Time tab, you will
have to select your list group and list; it will not automatically reflect what
is displayed in the Nightly Planner tab)? If you are working a large list that
contains objects visible at various times of the year, or just a list that has
objects in constellations that will rise and set over the course of the evening,
it is a godsend. New objects appear on the list as they rise and old ones
disappear as they set (or get too low to bother with). Too cool.
Let’s face
it, though, most people are attracted to Real Time because it allows you to
send your compu-scope to targets. Highlight an object, click the “Slew to”
button, and away you go. Which go-to telescopes are supported? Any scope that has
an ASCOM driver; SkyTools is an ASCOM
program (but also supports the Argo Navis and Sky Commander Digital Setting
Circles systems via onboard drivers). Choose your telescope or mount by pulling
down the Telescope Control arrow, choosing “Select/Configure Scope” and “ASCOM
supported telescope” and set up your scope model in the usual ASCOM fashion.
When you are ready to go, click “Connect to Telescope.”
How well
does this work? As well as it does with any other ASCOM compliant program,
which is “right well.” ASCOM is a mature and proven telescope driver system.
One thing you might like to do is enable SkyTools’
voice (by clicking the gear-shaped Preferences icon up top and then choosing
the “Preferences” tab on the window you get. You even get to pick a voice. I
chose “Audrey” for her cool, calm, and collected English accent. She tells me
when she’s slewing, when she’s arrived at a target, and other things that are
genuinely useful on a dark field.
And that is
it. “You
mean that is all there is to SkyTools 3?” Hail no. I could easily run
on for another twenty or thirty pages. Haven’t even touched on SkyTools’ wonderful logging system, to cite
just one example. Alas, we are out of time and space, Mr. Einstein.
Howsomeever, this humble set of instructions will allow you to begin using the excellent ST3 right away, tonight even.
Want to do
more? There’s plenty of assistance available, muchachos, ranging from the
soft’s excellent help system and an accompanying help feature called “How to.”
More depth? There is plenty on Greg’s web page including tutorials and users’ manuals. Have a stroll through that and you will
likely soon know more about ST3 than your computer ignernt old Uncle—and good
on you, I say.
Next Time:
Down Chiefland Way…
Comments:
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Hey Rod!
Great Tutorial on ST3. I use it too (although still on the steep side of the learning curve!) Keep up the good work!
Peace and blessings,
Donn W. (aka The AstroMonk)
http://TheAstroMonk.blogspot.com/
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Great Tutorial on ST3. I use it too (although still on the steep side of the learning curve!) Keep up the good work!
Peace and blessings,
Donn W. (aka The AstroMonk)
http://TheAstroMonk.blogspot.com/
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