Using with Starry Night

Using Deep-Sky Planner 9 with Starry Night

This article describes some recommendations for using Deep-Sky Planner 9 with Starry Night 6, 7 and 8 on Windows 10 (32 or 64 bit) or Windows 11 (64 bit).

Starry Night Enthusiast or higher edition is required for the Show Chart interoperation feature to work in Deep-Sky Planner 9.
Deep-Sky Planner communicates with Starry Night through a plug-in that ships with Deep-Sky Planner. The plug-in can be installed automatically in most situations, or manually otherwise. You can also do a manual installation of the plug-in any time if you do not install the plug-in into your Starry Night installation when you install Deep-Sky Planner.

Automatic Plug-in Installation

The Deep-Sky Planner 9 installer can copy its plug-in into the default Starry Night plug-in directory² if you choose to do so. If you do not choose the option, or if your Starry Night installation location is NOT at the default location¹, you will need to install the plug-in manually.

Manual Plug-in Installation

Locate the plug-in file DsSN90.plug in your Deep-Sky Planner 9 installation. If you installed Deep-Sky Planner with the recommended settings, this should be C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Knightware\Deep-Sky Planner 9\DsSN90.plug where <username> is your Windows user account name. Copy the file DsSN90.plug to your Starry Night plug-ins folder².
If you use Starry Night 8 (actually 7.6.4.1436 or later) change the name of the Deep-Sky Planner 9 plug-in in the Starry Night plug-ins folder from DsSN90.plug to DsSN90_Win32.plug

Deep-Sky Planner can start Starry Night for you when attempting a Show Chart command. If you have problems connecting to Starry Night from Deep-Sky Planner, the problem is most likely one of the following:

Starry Night is not installed in its standard location¹. In this case, start Starry Night before using it with Deep-Sky Planner.
Starry Night did not load the latest Deep-Sky Planner plug-in. Check Help | About Plug-in | Deep-Sky Planner in Starry Night and verify that you are running the correct plug-in for your version of Deep-Sky Planner 9. If this menu item does not appear, Starry Night has not loaded the correct plug-in successfully. Is the plug-in present in your Starry Night plug-ins² directory? Did you rename the plug-in for Starry Night 8? For Deep-Sky Planner 9 or earlier, the plug-in should be v 9.0.0.0.
Did Starry Night pause at start up and ask you to update its files? In this case, allow Starry Night to apply updates before using it with Deep-Sky Planner.

Notes

¹ The default location for Starry Night 6, 7 or 8 installations is one of the following. Substitute your Starry Night major version number (6 7 or 8) for #. If your Starry Night installation is in a different location, you must install the Deep-Sky Planner plug-in manually.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Starry Night Pro Plus #\ (on 64-bit Windows)
C:\Program Files\Starry Night Pro Plus #\ (on 32- bit Windows)

²The default location for Starry Night plug-ins is one of the following. Substitute your Starry Night major version number (6, 7 or 8) for #. If your Starry Night installation is in a different location, you must install the Deep-Sky Planner plug-in manually.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Starry Night Pro Plus #\Sky Data\Plug-ins\ (on 64-bit Windows)
C:\Program Files\Starry Night Pro Plus #\Sky Data\Plug-ins\ (on 32- bit Windows)

³ If you are having problems communicating with Starry Night from Deep-Sky Planner, you should make sure that the Deep-Sky Planner plug-in used by SN has been installed in the Starry Night plug-in folder. If you continue to have problems, please be sure that your firewall is not blocking traffic from Deep-Sky Planner to the TCP connection that you have configured for Starry Night at Options | Star Chart Programs. By default, this is 127.0.0.1:50000.