Starry Night Pro FAQ

This FAQ answers questions about Starry Night Pro. If you have a different version of Starry Night, please return to the technical support page and select the FAQ for the appropriate version of Starry Night.

If you want to know what features are in Starry Night Pro, or how it compares with other versions of Starry Night, please go to the Starry Night Pro features page.

QuickTime
Information about the multimedia program QuickTime needed to run Starry Night

• What is QuickTime and why do I need it?
• Where do I get it and how do I install it?
• When I install QuickTime, what type of installation should I choose?
• I get an error message when I try to install QuickTime.
• The QuickTime 3 installer says there is not enough room on the disk, even though there is, or the QuickTime installer fails for some other reason part way through the install (Windows Only)
• I am trying to install QuickTime, and it asks me to enter a registration number. Why doesn't my Starry Night registration number work?

Registration Number
Questions about the Starry Night Pro registration number

• Where do I find my registration number for the program?
• How do I register my copy of Starry Night Pro?
• I want to move my copy of Starry Night Pro to a new computer. How do I retrieve my registration number?
• I am trying to install QuickTime, and it asks me to enter a registration number. Why doesn't my Starry Night registration number work?

Installation Problems
Installing Starry Night Pro on your computer

• How do I install Starry Night?
• I already have Starry Night Basic / Backyard / Deluxe on my computer. Do I need to remove them before I install Starry Night Pro?
• When I try to install the program, I get an "Unhandled Exception" error message. (Windows only).
• The installation seemed to go OK. How do I run the program?
• When I attempt to install Starry Night Pro using the "Custom Install" option with the Hubble databases selected, the installation aborts with the message: "Setup cannot open the source file "D:\SN\STARRY NIGHT PRO DATA\GSC(12-13).SSD."
• When I try to install the program, I get a "General Protection Fault" error message.

Support
Where to turn for more help with the program

• Have there been any updates to the Starry Night Pro User's Guide?
• My questions aren't answered in the manual or this FAQ. Who can I contact?
• Are there any other support resources?

Updates/Upgrades
Updating to the latest version of Starry Night Pro, or upgrading from/to another version of Starry Night

• How do I find out if I have the latest version of Starry Night Pro?
• Are updates free to owners of an earlier version of Starry Night Pro?
• I have downloaded Starry Night Backyard, and noticed that there are some new features not in Starry Night Pro. Will these features be added to Starry Night Pro?
• I own Starry Night Basic / Backyard / Deluxe. Can I upgrade to Starry Night Pro?

General Run-Time Problems
Problems with the way the program runs

• The installation seemed to go OK. How do I run the program?
• I get an error message when I try to run Starry Night Pro.
• When I try to run Starry Night Pro, it is really slow. The hourglass icon is onscreen as much as the cursor! (Windows only)
• When I run Starry Night, it will slow down after about 10 seconds if I am not doing anything. I need to use the mouse or keyboard to speed it up again. (Macintosh only)
• When I start Starry Night, I get the following message in a window labeled "ERROR STARTING PROGRAM". The error message is the following: "A required DLL file, WININET.DLL, was not found."
• Starry Night freezes up whenever I click on an object or use the time controls (Windows only).

Time & Date
Time zones, daylight savings time, sunrise/sunset times, eclipse times, etc.

• Starry Night Pro doesn’t display the correct time when I start up. How do I fix this?
• The correct time is shown when I start Starry Night Pro, but the sun rises and sets at the wrong time. How do I fix this?
• Do the sunrise/sunset times account for the refraction of light due to the earth's atmosphere?
• How does Daylight Savings Time work in Starry Night?
• Can I get Starry Night to show the time using the 24-hour clock?
• Can I get Starry Night to show dates in the European format?
• When I view from off the Earth, the time reads "UT". What does this mean?
• Does Starry Night use the Gregorian or Julian calendar for old dates?
• How do I find the time & date of eclipses?

Viewing Location
Setting or changing your home location or your viewing location, to places on and off the earth. Includes editing the horizon for your home location

• I’ve tried changing my home location, but everytime I restart the program, it reverts to the old location. How do I change my home location?
• My city isn’t in the list of cities in Starry Night’s location window, and I don’t know my latitude and longitude. Where can I find this information?
• How do I edit the horizon?
• Sometimes when I am editing the horizon, all the horizon nodes suddenly become undraggable.
• How do I add my own pictures to the horizon?
• How do I have more than one horizon file?
• How do I go to Mars or another planet?
• How do I go to a star?

LiveSky & Digitized Sky Survey
Starry Night's interactive Internet features

• When I choose "LiveSky Web Info" for an object in Starry Night Pro, it opens using Internet Explorer. How do I get it to use Netscape?
• Sometimes the "Digitized Sky Survey" option in the menu is greyed out. Why?
• How do I add an image from the Digitized Sky Survey (or somewhere else) to Starry Night?

Printing & Making Movies
Printing star charts and making QuickTime animation sequences

• How do I print star charts?
• How do I make my own print settings?
• Can I print images in colour?
• Can I print star charts showing the whole sky?
• Neither the "Export as Image" feature nor the "Make Movie" feature do anything. What's wrong?
• Why do the movies I made with Starry Night have distorted colors when I play them back?

Telescopes
Controlling your telescope with Starry Night Pro

• What telescopes can I control with Starry Night Pro?
• How do I add an outline for my telescope or CCD to my screen and printouts?
• How do I install ACP from the Starry Night Pro CD?
• I have installed the ACP telescope controller and it works, but no Telescope menu appears in Starry Night. What do I do?

Constellations & The Zodiac
Finding your birth sign, seeing the sun on the Vernal Equinox

• How do I follow the sun's path through the Zodiac over the course of a year?
• The sun appears to be in the wrong Zodiac constellation on a given date.
• How do I find my birth sign?

Solar System Bodies
Planets, moons, comets, satellites, and asteroids

• How do I see the phases of the moon?
• How accurate are the positions of the planets and moons in Starry Night?
• Jupiter's great red spot doesn't appear to be in the correct position. Is there someway to reposition it?
• When I view the solar system from above the sun by selecting "Go | Outer Solar System", why don't the orbits of Pluto and Neptune overlap?
• Why can't I find Halley's Comet at the Battle of Hastings?
• How do I add my own objects?
• Where can I get orbital elements for new objects I want to add using the Orbit Editor?
• Why doesn't the location of the International Space Station match what I see in the sky?
• I've downloaded the latest comet/asteroid/satellite file, but some of the objects in this file don't show up in Starry Night Pro.

Stars
Information on the star data in Starry Night

• Where does the star data in Starry Night come from?
• Can I move the stars from the Hubble Guide Star Catalog from the CD to my hard drive?
• How do I search for stars in the various star catalogs?
• After I do a search for a star in the SAO database, it displays the star with the Hipparcos or Tycho catalog number. Can I have Starry Night display the SAO number for the star?
• When I zoom far away from the earth, the stars all appear to group together in a ball around the sun. Is this the Miky Way?
• Can I add recently discovered planets around stars other than our sun?

Extra Databases
Additional databases which you can add to Starry Night Pro

• What additional databases can I add to Pro?
• Can I use my old Starry Night Deluxe databases in Starry Night Pro?
• How do I make my own databases?

Still confused?
Feel free to send us an email if you have any questions that haven't been answered here. We also welcome your feedback and suggestions.