ACP Planner and Starry Night not talking

[Daniel Johnson]

I'm running ACP Planner 4.2.6 and Starry Night Pro 6.4.3. Starry Night Pro does not recognize the existence of ACP Planner. A similar problem was reported by Mark Kuehner, and I read your suggestion to him. I downloaded, unzipped, and installed the plugin, and have since then restarted the computer and then started both Starry Night Pro and ACP Planner. When I click on the Starry Night Help, Plugin, it lists ACPPlan as a plugin. Yet under Options, Presets, there is no option for any ACP presets, and when I hover over an object and right-click it, there is no option for "Add target-name to ACP plan"...

So what do I do?

[Bob Denny]

Look closely on the right-click menu... do you see a dimmed out "time is in the past" item? If so then the plugin is working. The presets are separate from the plugin and just need to be put into the presets area for SNP. The installer didn't do that (and it sometimes doesn't because there are several variations on the SNP directory layout). I have attached a copy (in a zipfile). Put it into Starry Night's Sky Data\View Options folder (well, after removing it from the zip file ).

[Dick Berg]

In addition to what Bob has said above, just a reminder for you that the observation you're trying to include in a plan has to be in the future. if SNP's clock is running and showing even the current time, the AddTargetName... will not show up in the menu. I usually stop the SNP clock and then set it forward manually to my desired start time. Does this help?

[Bob Denny]

Thanks Dick, that's what I was going to tell him next if he saw the "time is in the past"... That's the largest hint I could fit reasonably into the menu. I suppose I could have left "add target" on the menu then popped up a rude "ERROR! THE TIME IS IN THE PAST! HOW CAN I IMAGE BEFORE NOW?" or something. I preferred the subtle approach :-)))))

[Daniel Johnson]

Thanks, gentlemen--if I move the clock forward in SNP, the desired options for ACP Planner do appear when I right-click on a target. As for the presets, I'll be away from my observatory computer for a few days (and I don't yet have it set up for remote access), so I'll report back later about whether the presets are working once I put the file in the proper folder.

[Bob Denny]

Very good! I apologize if you took my previous post personally, it wasn't meant that way!!

[Daniel Johnson]

OK, the presets are working. However, I am curious about one of the values specified in the ACP presets for Starry Night. Why is daylight not shown? One of the million easy ways to screw up a photography session at a remote observatory would be to schedule it for a time when the sky is a sparkling daylight blue--and one might not notice the timing error if the "show daylight" option is turned off.
It's easy enough for me to turn it on. I assume there's a reason for turning daylight off; I'm just curious what it is.

[Bob Denny]

Why is daylight not shown?

Just a personal habit. I understand your thoughts and I'll make the change:

http://gemini.dc3.com:8472/Gemini/De...spx?p=21&i=623