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Preferences

Preferences allow you to customize various settings throughout the product. Each tab page has additional help:

Data Formats
Date / Time	Lat / Lng	RA / Decl	Alt / Az	Weather
New Documents
Asteroid	Comet	Darkness	Planet Events	Planet Ephemeris	Deep-Sky	Star	Observing Log	Observing Plan Editor	Report Pane Splitters
Other Preferences
Atlases	Printing	Backup	Catalog	DSS	Updates

Data Formats

If you save a change to any of the data formatting options by pressing OK, the change(s) may take effect immediately on any open documents. You are asked whether you want to apply the change to each open document.

Date / Time

The Date / Time page allows you to control the formatting of dates and times on input and output. This provides you with the convenience of showing dates and times in the format most familiar to you. Use the radio buttons to select a format.

Date Format	Examples
Month/Day/Year	12/31/1998
Day/Month/Year	31/12/1998
Year/Month/Day	1998/12/31
MonthName Day Year	Dec 31 1998
Day MonthName Year	31 Dec 1998
Year MonthName Day	1998 Dec 31

Time Format	Examples
12 hour	11:59p
24 hour	23:59

Time Correction allows you to express dates and times in either universal (UTC) or local (LT) times. Local times are correct for the timezone associated with the currently selected favorite location.

Lat / Lng

The Lat / Lng page allows you to control the formatting of these angles on input and output. This provides you with the convenience of showing positions in the format most useful to you. Use the radio buttons to select a format.

Angular Format	Examples
Degrees, Minutes, Seconds	89°59'59"
Decimal Degrees	89°.99

RA / Decl

The RA / Decl page allows you to control the formatting of these angles on input and output. This provides you with the convenience of showing positions in the format most useful to you. The accuracy of equatorial positions varies according to catalog source so these formats do not increase or decrease the implied accuracy. See accuracy for suggested use of formats. Use the radio buttons to select a format.

Angular Format	Examples
Hours, Minutes, Seconds	23h59m59s ¹
Hours, Decimal Minutes	23h59m.9
Decimal Hours	23h.999
Degrees, Minutes, Seconds	89°59'59" ¹
Degrees, Decimal Minutes	89°59'.9
Degrees, Minutes	89°59'
Decimal Degrees	89°.99

¹ The accuracy of seconds is adjusted to the original catalog's accuracy. For example, the Hipparcos catalog contains RA to thousandths of seconds and Declination to hundredths of arcseconds.

Alt / Az

The Alt / Az page allows you to control the formatting of these angles on output, and the reckoning of azimuth on input or output. Use the radio buttons to select a format.

Altitude/ Azimuth Format	Examples
Degrees, Decimal Minutes	Alt: +89°59'.9	Az: 179°59'.9
Decimal Degrees	Alt: +89°.9	Az: 179°.9
Integer Degrees	Alt: +90°	Az: 180°

Measure Azimuth Clockwise From

You may choose to measure eastwards from North, or westwards from South. Use the radio buttons to select how azimuth angles are reckoned.

Weather

Use the Weather page to select either English or Metric units for weather data input and output. Use the radio buttons to select a system of weather units.

	Metric	English
Temperature	degrees C	degrees F
Pressure	hectopascals (millibars)	inches of Mercury
Wind Speed	kph	mph

New Documents

Most of the new document default options allow you to choose a default date and time for the given document type. Details for each document type are listed below.

Asteroid Ephemeris Times

The Asteroid Ephemeris Times group allows you to define a default date and time period for new Asteroid Ephemeris documents and a default ephemeris date and time for new Asteroid Search documents. An ephemeris is calculated for each time specified by the period in the Asteroid Ephemeris document; one ephemeris is calculated for the beginning of the period in the Asteroid Search document.

Comet Ephemeris Times

The Comet Asteroid Ephemeris Times group allows you to define a default date and time period for new Comet Ephemeris documents and a default ephemeris date and time for new Comet Search documents. An ephemeris is calculated for each time specified by the period in the Comet Ephemeris document; one ephemeris is calculated for the beginning of the period in the Comet Search document.

Darkness Ephemeris Times

The Darkness Ephemeris Times group allows you to define a default date period for new Darkness Text and Darkness Graphic documents. Data is calculated for each date in the period at midnight.

Planet Event Times

The Planet Events Times group allows you to define a default date period for new Planet Events documents. Events are calculated only for the selected date period.

Planet Ephemeris Times

The Planet Ephemeris Times group allows you to define a default date and time period for instantaneous ephemeris calculations for new Brief and Detailed Planet Ephemeris documents. An ephemeris is calculated for each instant in the time period.

Deep-Sky Ephemeris Date

The Deep-Sky Ephemeris Date group allows you to define a default ephemeris date and time for new Deep-Sky documents. One ephemeris is calculated.

Star Ephemeris Date

The Star Ephemeris Date group allows you to define a default ephemeris date and time for new Star documents. One ephemeris is calculated.

Observing Log

The Observing Log group allows you to define whether new Brief and Detailed Observing Log Search documents include searching by the favorite observing project by default. Note that selecting this option has no effect if no observing projects are defined in the database.

Observing Plan Editor

The Observing Plan Editor group allows you to define whether the observing plan is Run (recalculated) after an object is Added to or Edited in the plan. You may not want to recalculate all fields in a long observing plan after each Add or Edit operation performed on an object in the plan. For long plans, you may prefer to Run the plan after several Add or Edit operations. These options allows you to decide whether to recalculate automatically or not.

Report Pane Splitters

The Report Pane Splitters group allows you to define whether the positions of the horizontal and vertical pane splitters are remembered and restored from the previous use or their positions are set to designed positions. This option may be helpful if any of the report pane splitters disappear.

New Document Default Date and Time Options
Now	present PC time and date - one instant
Today	midnight of present day - one instant
Tomorrow	midnight of next day - one instant
This Week	midnight of each day beginning Sunday of present week through midnight of Saturday of the present week - one instant per day
Next Week	midnight of each day beginning Sunday of next week through midnight of Saturday of the next week
This Month	midnight of each day beginning on the first day of the present month through the last day of the present month
Remainder of Month	midnight of each day beginning on the present day through the last day of the present month
Next Month	midnight of each day beginning on the first day of the next month through the last day of the next month
This Year	midnight of each day beginning on January 1 of the present year through the December 31 of the present year
Remainder of Year	midnight of each day beginning on the present day of the present year through the December 31 of the present year
Next Year	midnight of each day beginning on January 1 of the next year through the December 31 of the next year

Other Preferences

Atlases

The Atlases page allows you to turn on and off any reference for a selected atlas throughout the product. Supported atlases are listed here. This is useful when you do not use one of the atlases. Note that if an atlas is enabled in preferences, it can still be disabled in an individual report by using the Customize function in that report. The reverse is not true - once an atlas is disabled in preferences, it does not appear in the Customize function until the atlas is re-enabled in preferences.

Use the checkboxes to control atlas references throughout the product.

If an atlas is disabled or enabled while a report is open, you are asked to confirm whether you wish to recreate the report with the new setting. When you disable an atlas in preferences, it is hidden in the report. If you re-enable the atlas in preferences while a report is open, you will also need to re-enable it in the Customize function of any open reports in order to view cross references for the atlas.

Example:
1. Enable all atlases in Preferences.
2. Open a pre-existing observing plan document. The report includes columns for all atlases.
3. Disable Sky Atlas 2000.0 in Preferences.
4. You are asked to confirm whether the observing plan report should be run again. Answer yes.
5. SA2000 column is removed from report and the Customize menu.
6. Enable Sky Atlas 2000.0 in Preferences.
7. You are asked to confirm whether the observing plan report should be run again. Answer yes.
8. SA2000 column is not visible in the report, but is is visible in the Customize menu.
9. Check SA2000 in the customize menu. SA2000 is displayed in the report.

Printing

The Printing page allows you to create preset values for printed page layouts. These values can be overridden, but serve as a convenience if you usually print pages in the same orientation or scaling.

Print Orientation may be either Portrait mode or Landscape mode. Since many of the reports created by Deep-Sky Planner exceed the width of a printed page, changing to Landscape mode can help to accommodate the report text.

Print Scaling may be either 100% or Print to Fit. Print to Fit can help to squeeze text into the width of a printed page. Some experimentation with this setting is advised - the scaled text may become too small to read!

Note: Print Scaling is not available for the Darkness Graphic or Detailed Observing Log reports. These reports are printed at 100% scale.

Backup

Show Backup Reminders At Least allows you to set the frequency at which backup reminders are shown when Deep-Sky Planner is closed. Once a backup is performed, the system will not remind you again until the reminder frequency has passed. You may choose:

▪Daily

▪Weekly

▪Monthly (default)

▪Never

Backup captures your user data and settings so that you can restore this information or synchronize a Deep-Sky Planner installation on another computer. Knightware recommends that you back up your user data at least monthly.

Catalogs

Catalog List Information allows you to control the catalog information listed in deep-sky and star documents. The listing can be either Classic (acronyms only) or Verbose (acronym and description).

DSS

DSS allows you to choose a default Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) server, survey and image size for use when assigning DSS images for objects in documents. You can also adjust the communication timeout for acquiring each image from the chosen server. The Timeout is specified in seconds and defaults to 60 seconds. Deep-Sky Planner tries to acquire an image from the server within this amount of time. It proceeds to the next object as soon as the image is acquired. If the timeout expires, Deep-Sky Planner proceeds to the next object.

You can learn more about using DSS images in Deep-Sky Planner here.

The default DSS setup (as configured here) is used when images are assigned to an object:

▪When opening deep-sky, star, asteroid (ephemeris & search), comet (ephemeris & search), and planet ephemeris documents. Image size for each deep-sky object in a report is based on the object's size (if the information is available); otherwise, the default size is used.

▪When creating a new object in an observing plan document with the Observing Plan Object Editor. Image size for each object is handled as described above, although these settings can be overridden in the Observing Plan Object Editor.

▪When copying and pasting object(s) from a Deep-Sky Planner report onto a plan document, image size for each object is handled as described above. These settings can be overridden in the Observing Plan Object Editor.

Important: Changes to any of the default settings may cause the links to images in your documents to become invalid. You may need to Get DSS Images from your documents in order to download the newly required images.

Updates

Check for Software Updates At Least allows you to set how often Deep-Sky Planner checks the Knightware web server for software updates. Software updates include new features and bug fixes. Deep-Sky Planner checks for updates (if necessary) during program startup. It always tries to check for updates after installation. Once it has successfully connected with the update server once, it checks at least at the frequency determined in preferences. You may check:

▪Daily

▪Weekly

▪Monthly (default)

If your computer is not normally connected to the Internet, you should connect it to the Internet during installation, and check for updates immediately after installation. Knightware recommends that you allow your computer to check for updates over the Internet at least monthly.