Well, some of you may have gotten a new bike or Barbie, but I got a Meade 60mm (2.4") refracting telescope for Christmas from my wife Laura (http://www.meade.com/).  It was a surprise, but I couldn’t be much happier with the selection. This reaction was augmented greatly when I got a peek at the software that came with the telescope. O.K., O.K. the name sounds a bit hokey, but the program is not. Certainly not for someone such as myself who cannot consistently differentiate the Big Dipper from a large redneck with a lip full of Copenhagen. At one point in time I had a schoolboy level of familiarity with the constellations, etc., but this faded, and once I began trying to keep track of MBRs, FATs, EXEs, ASPs, et alia, lots of things got jettisoned to make room in my old melon for subjects currently in the forefront.

The software includes an Ephemeris which allows the user to see data for the Sun, Moon and all major planets. The information provided covers the Right Ascension (celestial counterpart to the Earth’s longitude) and Delination (celestial equivalent to Earth’s latitude), the rise and set times for the object and transit time. Also listed are Apparent Size in arc seconds, Disk Illumination in %, and Geocentric Distance/ Heliocentric Distance (distance from the Earth or Sun) expressed in Astronomical Units, Kilometers, or Miles. By clicking the Auto Update On button, the data will be updated in real time.

The Moon Calendar feature, which is located near the bottom of the Ephemeris drop down menu, shows the phases of the Moon for any month and year and may be printed out for use as a calendar.

I would have to say the most impressive part of the package from the strictly visual standpoint is the Star Map. Once this feature is activated, options to print the map, toggle it on and off, zoom in and out, change the view of the current zenith (a snapshot of the whole sky centered overhead) become enabled. Other items such as star and constellation names, grid lines, etc. can be turned on and off. The Star Map can be animated, allowing you to track the orbits of objects such as the moon, the planets and so on for hours, days or years. You can select the interval time to see what the sky will look like in subsequent hour by hour steps, or day at a time intervals. The Star Map can be set up to show you what the sky looked like on the day and year of your birth and you can set down and plan an observing session for a given day and time a month or more in advance if you like.

The Viewing Log which is accessed by left clicking anywhere on the Star Map lets an observer enter the time, date, object being observed, camera used & comments about an observation session. You can also select and attach an image (if you have a camera and the interface attached) to the log entry.

The program has dialog boxes to let the user enter data to make the software work for the specific location and time that observation is taking place. Various dialog boxes ask for latitude and longitude down to degrees, minutes and seconds. You can deal with time via the Gregorian or the Julian calendars.

Now all I have to do to utilize all these features is find a primer on basic telescope orientation and navigation to answer some questions that have occurred to me. For instance, in terrestrial mapping the variation between Grid North and Magnetic North can be sizable depending on your location on the geoid. So exactly where do you set 0 degrees before you start spinning angles both horizontal and vertical to look for Galaxies and Fairlanes (wait a minute that’s something else again) in deep space. Never fear, I’m searching the Internet as we speak on these topics. u