STAR Atlas:PRO™ Release Notes
September 2005

STAR Atlas:PRO™ Version 6.2 software upgrade.
STAR Atlas:PRO™ Version 6.2 includes numerous improvements and new features described in the following release notes.

More Deep Sky Objects !

Version 6.2 introduces thousands more deep sky objects, each of the new celestial objects are described

The Sharpless Catalogue of H-II Regions

This is the original catalogue by Sharpless of 313 H-II regions north of declination -27°.  There are 313 H-II regions identified by the designation Sh 2-nnn where nnn is a number. These objects appear as elliptical shaped areas on charts.

H-α Emission Regions in Southern Milky Way

The Catalogue of Rodgers, Cambell, and Whiteoak (RCW), was the result of a survey of emission nebulae carried out at Mt. Stromlo Observatory from December 1957 to April 1959. The entire region of the Milky Way southward of the Palomar sky survey with a latitude of plus or minus 15 degrees of the galactic equator was photographed in the light of hydrogen alpha with comparison plates obtained in yellow light. This work roughly complements the Sharpless (Sh 2) catalogue.

There are 181 H-a regions with Notes data identified by the designation RCW nnn where nnn is a number. These objects appear as rectangular shaped areas on charts.

Lynds' Catalogue of Bright Nebulae

Lynds' Catalogue of Bright Nebulae adds an additional 1,125 bright nebulae, the objects are identified by their designation LBN nnn where nnn is a number. These objects appear as rectangular shaped areas on charts.

Lynds' Catalogue of Dark Nebulae

Lynds' Catalogue of Dark Nebulae adds 1,791 dark nebulae, the objects are identified by their designation  LDN nnn, where nnn is a number. These objects appear as rectangular shaped areas on charts.

Note: A majority of these objects do not have an actual Magnitude. STAR Atlas:PRO™ will not display these objects until you set the [Magnitude Limit] to [No Limit], or until it is automatically set by STAR Atlas:PRO™ to [No Limit], when small chart Field of Views are reached.

Symbol Colour Settings

On the chart [Legend], where you may alter the colours of chart symbols, there are now new colour settings to set the colour of the new deep sky objects.

The default colour for Planetary Nebulae is modified to a pinkish colour to more easily distinguish these objects on STAR Atlas:PRO™ charts.

Galaxy Position Angles

Galaxies which appears large on a celestial chart now have their Position Angle marked with a line. The line represents the angle the major axis is titled from the North - Eastwards.

The Galaxy, pictured at right, has a position angle of 115º represented by the angle of the indicator line that appears from the centre of the galaxy to its edge.

Galaxies without position angle data do not have a position angle line indicator.

Astronomical Database Manager improvements

The [Locate] command, which opens the Astronomical Database Manager, now includes additional database screens for each of the new deep sky object catalogues found in this version of STAR Atlas:PRO™.

You may also lookup the new objects by entering their designations into the Find Object input field, STAR Atlas:PRO™ will then locate the object for you. Here are four examples of what you could enter ;

LDN 12
LBN 345
RCW 123
Sh 2-100

Observation List Generator improved

The default for the [MAX NO OF OBJECTS] is set to a lower value of 2,000 rather than the previous setting of 10,000.

This is mainly to cater for the new Hyper-G:Atlas™ add-on which easily finds more than 100,000 galaxies in constellations like Virgo. There have also been many other minor improvements to the [Observation List Generator] which will result in improved operation.

Removal of certain setting options.

Previously STAR Atlas:PRO™ setup required that you configure the following two settings:-

1. the location of your Adobe PDF File Viewer application (i.e. Adobe Acrobat),
2. and your Web Browser Application (i.e. Windows Explorer, Mozilla, etc).

Both of these settings are no longer required by STAR Atlas:PRO™ and now removed from the setup screen [Chart Prefs]►[Setup & Configuration]►[File Locations].

STAR Atlas:PRO™ now uses the Windows® operating system to open Adobe Acrobat files (i.e. the STAR Atlas:PRO™ User Manual) and HTML Web files (i.e. a comet ephemerides and observation lists).

Other notable improvements