=========================================================== UPDATES.TXT =========================================================== CyberSky 3.2.1 Shareware Version February 15, 2001 ----------------------------------------------------------- UPDATES ----------------------------------------------------------- Changes introduced since the release of CyberSky 3.0 include: CYBERSKY 3.2.1 (FEBRUARY 15, 2001) - CORRECTION: The orientation of the rings of Saturn was sometimes not being calculated correctly. - CORRECTION: The beginning and ending times of civil, nautical, and astronomical twilight were not being calculated correctly. - CORRECTION: The ending times of civil, nautical, and astronomical twilight were under certain circumstances not being displayed correctly in the Twilight Data dialog box. CYBERSKY 3.2 (SEPTEMBER 28, 2000) - ENHANCEMENT: Added the Initial View command to the Options menu, which allows the application's initial view to be set. You can now specify whether you want CyberSky to start up with the standard north, east, south, west, or zenith view. - ENHANCEMENT: Added the Deep Sky Objects section to the application's Help file. The first topic in this section provides information about the deep sky object catalogs used by CyberSky. The other five topics describe the classifications of galaxies, globular clusters, open clusters, bright nebulae, and planetary nebulae displayed in the Deep Sky Object Data dialog box. - CORRECTION: The proper motions of stars were not being calculated correctly. Specifically, the right ascension components of proper motion were too small. - CORRECTION: The magnitude of Saturn displayed in the Planet Data and Planets Data dialog boxes was not correct. The code used to calculate this value did not take into account the light reflected by the planet's rings. - CORRECTION: The position of the galactic equator was not being calculated correctly. The galactic equator was not fixed with respect to the background stars, but would instead move across the celestial sphere over time. - CORRECTION: Searching for horizontal coordinates near the horizon when in horizon mode failed to center the correct coordinates. Atmospheric refraction calculations were being performed when they should not have been. - MODIFICATION: Various commands that were previously disabled during full screen mode, animation, or real time mode are no longer disabled. If you use a command that requires that full screen mode, animation, or real time mode be turned off, CyberSky will alert you with a message box, and you will have the option to continue or to cancel the command. - MODIFICATION: If animation was left running for a while, or the animation time step was set to a large value, the date could reach a value far outside CyberSky's allowed range of 4000 BC to 4000 AD. This not only resulted in completely incorrect sky charts, but also could cause the application to crash. To prevent this from happening, animation is now automatically turned off if the date goes too far outside the allowed range. CYBERSKY 3.1 (FEBRUARY 24, 2000) - ENHANCEMENT: Increased the speed at which stars, constellation figures, deep sky objects, and solar system objects are drawn. This is especially noticeable at high zoom levels. When only stars and solar system objects are displayed, animation at 32X is about five times faster than before. When locked on Jupiter, animation at 512X is about seven times faster than before. When locked on Saturn, animation at 4096X is about four times faster than before. - ENHANCEMENT: Added the Zodiacal only box to the Constellations dialog box, which allows only zodiacal constellation figures to be displayed. - ENHANCEMENT: Added the Copy button to the Planets Data dialog box, which allows the data displayed by this dialog box to be copied onto the clipboard, pasted into an editor or word processor, and then saved to a file or printed. - CORRECTION: The equatorial coordinates at the center of the sky chart were not calculated correctly when horizon mode was turned on and the horizon was displayed. This was due to a bug in code that reverses the effects of atmospheric refraction. This caused a number of problems that became noticeable at very high zoom levels, especially when the viewpoint was near the horizon. Objects that should have been displayed were not displayed. Grids and lines were only partially displayed, or were not displayed at all. The equatorial coordinates displayed in the Pointer bar were not correct. - CORRECTION: The lines that make up the constellation figures were sometimes not displayed correctly. This was due to a bug in code that performs line clipping, and occurred only at very high zoom levels. - CORRECTION: The sun and moon were sometimes displayed when they were in fact not visible in the area of sky being displayed. This was due to a bug in code that converts equatorial coordinates to screen coordinates, and occurred only at very high zoom levels. - CORRECTION: The dark parts of solar system object disks were not printed correctly. When the sky chart was printed in black and white, the dark parts of disks were not filled, which allowed objects, grids, and lines to be seen through them. When the sky chart was printed in color, the dark parts of disks were filled with the same colors used to fill the light parts, which caused the objects to always appear as if they were at full phase. CYBERSKY 3.0.3 (OCTOBER 14, 1999) - ENHANCEMENT: Added the Keyboard Shortcuts, Ordering Information, and Registration Benefits commands to the Help menu to make it easier to access the associated topics in the program's Help file. - CORRECTION: The Save Bitmap command on the File menu was disabled if the program could not find an available printer at startup. - CORRECTION: The popup menu that appeared when a Messier object fainter than magnitude 8.5 was right-clicked did not include an About command for that object. This made it impossible to display the Deep Sky Object Data dialog box for that object. - MODIFICATION: When the program starts up in horizon mode, it now displays the sky above the south horizon if the location is on or above the equator, or above the north horizon if the location is below the equator. Previously, the program always displayed the sky above the south horizon at startup. - MODIFICATION: When the animation time step is set to one or more years, the size of each step is now adjusted so that the year changes during animation but the month and day remain the same. Previously, the size of each step was constant, which caused the month and day to change during animation due to the addition of leap days to the calendar. CYBERSKY 3.0.2 (JULY 29, 1999) - CORRECTION: The Deep Sky Object Data dialog box did not correctly classify open clusters; they were instead classified as globular clusters. CYBERSKY 3.0.1 (JUNE 10, 1999) - CORRECTION: The Left and Right commands did not scroll the sky chart correctly when atlas mode was turned on. The Left command scrolled the sky chart to the right rather than to the left, and the Right command scrolled the sky chart to the left rather than to the right. - CORRECTION: A system resource leak occurred when the path of a solar system object was displayed with date or time labels. This caused the amount of free system resources to drop each time the sky chart was drawn. If this system resource leak continued, it eventually caused the program to stop functioning correctly. - CORRECTION: The data displayed in the Seasons Data dialog box did not reflect the fact that the four seasons start at different times of the year in the Southern Hemisphere than they do in the Northern Hemisphere.