Starry Night Pro FAQ

What telescopes can I control with Starry Night Pro?

There are different telescope controller plug-ins available for Windows and Macintosh. Please note that these programs are not written by SPACE.com, and you should contact the makers of the plugins for more information. If you are interested in writing your own telescope controller plug-in for Starry Night Deluxe or for Starry Night Pro, then you should download the plug-in SDK.

Windows

Astronomer's Control Panel: A telescope controller for Meade's LX-200 and ETX-90/125 (with Autostar) robotic telescopes that works in conjunction with Starry Night Pro. ACP is included on the Starry Night Pro CD, but you should check the ACP website to ensure that you have the latest version. See the next question for installation instructions. Basic ACP functionality for controlling your telescope is free. The advanced features cost more but are well worth the price.
DigitalSky Voice: A voice-activated control system for your telescope which can be integrated with Starry Night Pro. Digital Sky Voice is not a free product. You can use DigitalSky Voice with the Astro-Physics GTO line of goto mounts, the Meade LX-200 / 650 / 750, Meade ETX-90/125 with Autostar, the Meade DS-series line, the Celestron Ultima 2000 and NexStar 5, the Vixen Sky/Sensor 2000-PC, Quadrant Systems mounts and mounts that use the Meade ACL-Protocol (like Arcimage by Merlin). See the DigitalSky Voice website for more information. Note that you need to download a (free) Digital SkyVoice link bridge in addition to the main Digital Sky Voice program to interface with Starry Night.
NexStar 5: Phil Schumacher's plugin for Celestron's popular NexStar telescope. Click here to download the plugin in compressed ZIP format.

Macintosh

InfoGenie. Robin Casady of Casady & Greene has produced plugins for the LX-200, Magellan 1 and 2, and Digital Setting Circles that includes features for interfacing Starry Night with C&G's InfoGenie personal information manager. See Casady & Greene's astronomy page to download these plugins.
Ultima 2000: Macintosh users can also control Ultima 2000 telescopes using Tom Stamm's Ultima 2000 telescope controller.
Nexstar 5/8: A beta version of a Starry Night Pro plug-in for Macintosh to control Celestron Nexstar 5/8 telescopes. Written by Ricky Lee. Please check his Starry Night Pro Plug-in For Macintosh - Nexstar webpage.

How do I add an outline for my telescope or CCD to my screen and printouts?

From the main Starry Night Pro menu, choose "Guides | Field of View Indicators | Settings". Press the "New" button in the window that appears. You will then be asked to enter a name for your new object, choose the outline style (circle, Telrad bulls-eye, CCD or Rigel QuickFinder) and enter the eyepiece's diamter or field of view. If you do not know your object's field of view, press the "Calculator" button to calculate it. Press the "OK" button to add this indicator. From now on, your object's name will appear in the "Guides | Field of View Indicators" menu, and you can click on its name in this menu to turn the outline on or off.

How do I install ACP from the Starry Night Pro CD?

There is a file called "SetupACP.exe" and a read-me file in the "LX-200 Plugin" folder on the Starry Night Pro CD. Read the read-me file and then double-click on the "SetupACP.exe" file to install Astronomer's Control Panel.

I have installed the ACP telescope controller and it works, but no Telescope menu appears in Starry Night. What do I do?

After you have installed ACP, you need to install the Starry Night plug-in. Copy the file "lx200snv3.plug" from the "Acp\Starry Night Driver" folder into the "Starry Night Pro\Starry Night Pro Data\Plug-ins" folder. The next time you start Starry Night, you'll see that a Telescope menu has appeared on the menu bar. Make sure your scope is powered up and connected to the serial port on your PC. Then select "Open Connection", and ACP should automatically start and connect to your scope.

If you have a problem, try starting ACP first, connecting it to the (powered up) scope, then select "Open Connection" in Starry Night's Telescope menu. On very slow machines there seems to be an OLE timeout problem, especially if the voice command and response features are enabled.