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| Using 2sky 2.3 A step-by-step guide. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Contents: | 1. Fast Start Download 2sky from http://in2space.com/download.html. Install 2sky and the 9 other palm files from folder 2sky23 onto your handheld. Follow the dialogs at startup. For additional tips, tap "i" in the upper right corner of each dialog. Once you see stars, you may read about the controls by selecting "help" in the info menu. The sections below explain installation and the controls in detail; our online tech support is also available 24 hours a day. Sony Clie owners: see important note. 2sky was built from the ground up as a handheld app for use outside, under the stars. It's so tightly integrated with Palm OS that at times your hardware will seem custom-made for astronomy. Before the next person can even start up a laptop or find the right page in a field guide, 2sky can help you spot several celestial objects. With equal ease, it can go forward or backward in time, and show you the skies over distant countries. 2sky displays:
If you are new to astronomy, it will take some time at first to find your way around the sky. It's a visual skill, but easy to learn if you start with the brighter objects (the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus) and the more prominent constellations (Orion in Winter, Scorpius in Summer). 2sky makes this very easy with its built-in search engine. 2sky is named for the second sky: the body of myths, maps and measurements that helps us find our way around the original. The second sky took civilization millennia to invent. Now it fits in your pocket. 3. Acknowledgments 4. System Requirements
Download and decompress 2sky into a folder called 2sky23. You will see these instructions, another folder with screen shots used in the instructions, and ten files with Palm icons or names ending in .prc or .pdb. 2sky works best when all ten files are installed, but if storage is scarce on your handheld, here are your customization options: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| If you have an earlier registered version of 2sky on your handheld, you should have received an email from us with instructions describing how to upgrade. If you didn't get the email, please email us now. Don't install the new version until you hear back from us -- it will lock you out! To install the files in this distribution, try double-clicking the files. If nothing happens, or you get a dialog asking you to choose an application, you'll need to open Hotsync Install from the OpenPalm™ Desktop application, then drag the files into it. For further tips on installing files, click here, or see your handheld's documentation. (SONY CLIE owners only: Be sure to disable 2sky in the High Resolution Assistant in the Palm OS Preferences Panel before startup.) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In Launcher, look for 2sky's icon (you may have to choose the "All" category in the upper right corner of Launcher to see 2sky). Tap the icon. If anything essential is missing, 2sky will let you know. |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The first startup screen shows 2sky's Key Assignments. 2sky uses your hardware keys for rapid navigation. There are two schools of thought regarding hardware keys. Older versions of 2sky used keys to rotate the sky image around. With 2sky 2.0, you can do this by simply dragging the sky with your stylus. This frees the keys up for other functions. The up/down buttons were re-mapped to zoom in and out, or, when the clock was visible, to move forward or backward in time, animating the display. We prefer this new school approach, but both are illustrated below. Other options are possible, too. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| "New school" layout (default). | "Old school" layout from v. 1.2.2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| You may edit these settings later on when you're using 2sky, from the Options/Key Assignments... menu. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| The second startup screen presents a list of Observing Sites. Pick the closest one in your time zone, scrolling the list with hardware keys or Graffiti to indicate the first letter of each country. Tap the i button in the title bar for more tips. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| If you are far (more than 300 miles or 480 kilometers) from the nearest listed site in your time zone, you'll need to add your current location to the list. Tap OK to select the site and start 2sky. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 7. Getting help 2sky launches when you tap OK in the observing sites menu. You won't see that menu again unless you ask for it. |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The instructions below nearly duplicate those found in the Options Info Help menu (above). Many 2sky dialogs have an i button in their label. Tap it for background information and helpful hints. For troubleshooting assistance, visit Tech Support. 2sky is fully functional trial ware. You may use it for 30 days free of charge. After that, you need a one-time registration code to open the app. Once you enter your code, the nags will go away on startup. To register, simply visit http://in2space.com/store.html. 2sky draws the sky as you see it above you. Drag the stylus to rotate stars into view as you turn your head. Stars are plotted in exaggerated color by spectral type (color devices only). Important tip: from other apps, you may be accustomed to making short, quick strokes. For 2sky, a better method is to drag the stylus slowly around the screen. If you tap it too quickly, 2sky may assume you want to identify a star, not move the view. In this case, you may hear a lot of beeping! Dragging left pulls off-screen stars into view from the right, so it's just like looking right. To look higher in the sky, drag the display down. 2sky won't let you flip over backwards to get from North to South; use a side-side motion instead. Use Graffiti characters n, e, s, w to jump to views facing North, East, South or West. Use z, h, a to point to the Zenith, Horizon, or Anti-zenith. Enter numbers 0-9 to view altitudes from 0° through 90°. Go To RA/DEc... from the view menu. This locks the view onto any location in the sky that you specify by RA/Dec. 2sky marks the horizon with the symbol >--<, the zenith with + and the anti-zenith with X. In zoom views, the reticle shows where you're looking with simple altitude and compass indicators (on the compass, north is up and east is right). The altitude text inverts when looking below the horizon. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| To zoom in or out, tap the Field of View (FOV) popup in the upper right or, better yet, use the hardware scroll keys (if you're using the recommended key assignments). The FOV is the width, in degrees, of the "picture" displayed. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| The FOV popup includes an edit option that lets you change each field of view as well as its magnitude cutoffs for stars (*) and extended objects such as galaxies (~). 2sky will only display stars or objects as bright as the cutoff listed for each FOV. This is handy if you sometimes observe from light-polluted skies. 2sky has an upper cutoff for most views that's set by the hardware's draw speed. You can add circles for telescope fields, and flip the view to simulate telescope optics. Because you can set it separately for each view, you can set 2sky to run rapidly through a progression of instruments including reflex finders, binoculars, finder scopes, diagonals, etc. Just be sure to save these settings! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| To edit any number in this table, just tap it. When a view has been flipped, you'll see a backward or upside-down "L" just below the FOV indicator. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 10. Tap-ID and Lock Tap any object to identify it. Tap its name for more information. The information dialog may be several pages long; scroll down using the arrows or the hardware scroll keys. Tap the checkbox to Lock it in place during animations. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Tap the first letter of any constellation name to read about it. You can't lock a constellation from Tap-ID, but searching for a constellation (or anything else) automatically locks it. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 11. Search Engine |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Use the silk-screen search button built into your device's graffiti area to find 2sky objects by name (e.g. Vega, Mars, M1, NGC 2234, 64 Gem). 2sky will launch (if it isn't already on), and center the object in the display. If objects are too faint to display, just zoom in until they pop into view. Single-letter objects have no spaces: enter "M31", not "M 31" (omit the quotes). 2sky supports fill-in searching: "Bel" brings up "Bellatrix" and several other entries. 2sky uses 2-word fill-ins for the star catalogs: "a tau" brings up "alpha Tauri". (Use just one space between the words). NGC and IC catalog searches require one space between the text and the numbers. Examples: "ngc 224", "NGC 2287", "IC 332". Searching automatically locks the found object in the display. What's visible in the sky depends on where you are on the globe, as well as the date and time. If you move or travel more than 300 miles (480 kilometers), you should adjust the observing sites settings for your new location. Tap the observing site box at the top of the display (the one with the site's name in it). | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Up pops the Observing Sites dialog, with two columns. The first sets your home site. The second sets the current site. Under most circumstances, you should set both columns to the same site. 2sky's clock will use the clock you set in your handheld's Preferences (in Launcher). When the current and home sites aren't the same, 2sky adds the time difference between the two, displaying the time at the current site. In the screenshot below, the home site is Honolulu, but we're setting 2sky to show us what they're seeing in Helsinki. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| If your handheld's clock is properly set, you're in Honolulu, and right now it's 1:00 am (01:00), then 2sky shows that it's 1:00 pm (13:00, twelve hours later) in Helsinki. To add an observing site, pick a site in the same time zone as the one desired, if possible. Then open the menu in the Observing Sites dialog and select New Site. Up pops an edit dialog with your selected site's settings as a starting point. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| You can obtain geographic coordinates online: visit the Getty Thesaurus for latitude and longitude, and timeanddate.com for time zone and daylight saving time information. Back in 2sky's main screen, the home/away icon at the top of the screen is an observatory Tap the home/away icon If the time seems wrong, check to be sure that:
When date/time are showing, the up/down keys will, by default, animate the display by changing the time and date. When the clock icon To jump to any date, tap the date popup trigger When the time and date popup triggers are visible, you can use the hardware scroll keys to animate the sky's movement. The clock will turn off. Animations are fastest with lines turned off (from the view menu). The default time step is one hour. To change the animation time step, tap the time popup The sky will appear to rotate with all time steps except sidereal days if nothing is locked in the display. If an object (such as the Sun) vanishes, reverse the animation, then tap the object, tap its name, and select the locked check box . Or find it again using the search feature. Use animation to view eclipses, watch the inner planets dancing around the sun, or the outer planets going retrograde. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| .16. Preferences | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2sky's display can be customized through the Options/Preferences menu. The Palette preference sets the colors on color devices, or allows you to invert the display for nighttime observations with some monochrome devices. The Red palette in color devices can help preserve night vision. The Gray Palette makes a color device's display look monochrome, useful sometimes for viewing under difficult lighting conditions. To view the phases of planets such as Mars, it is sometimes helpful to magnify the planets in the display. If you don't plan to observe the fainter planets, you can speed 2sky up slightly and remove some clutter by unchecking the Show Uranus, Neptune, Pluto checkbox. If you're using a color device with 2red installed, there's also a checkbox to have 2red control 2sky's colors. 2red makes the Palm OS default colors black and red to preserve night vision. When this mode is selected, 2sky checks 2red's settings at startup and matches them -- no matter how you may have set it before. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 17. Saved Views Save... (in the View Menu) makes a copy of all settings including locations, direction, FOV and zoom. Go To Saved restores these settings. Use this feature to save: |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
2sky comes with 5,246 stars to Magnitude 6, plus 500 deep-sky objects. But optional stacking plug-ins can bring those totals up to 213,455 stars to magnitude 10, and 13,623 deep-sky objects (yes, the entire NGC catalog!). Visit the in2space online store for details. Alt (altitude): the angle between where you're looking and the closest point on the horizon. 90° is straight up, -90° is straight down. Az (azimuth): the angle from north sweeping east along the horizon toward where you're looking. North is 0°, East is 90°, and West is 270°. Dec (declination): latitude on the celestial sphere. 0° is over the equator, 90° is over the North Pole, and -90° is over the South Pole. Galaxy: 1,000,000,000+ stars bound together by mutual gravitation. Its shape may range from loose to tight Spiral, prolate Elliptical, oblate Lenticular, to amorphous Irregular. Globular Cluster: a tight spherical swarm of 100,000 to 1,000,000 very old stars. LST (local sidereal time): time with respect to the stars instead of the Sun. This is convenient in astronomy because, at a given observing site, the same stars will always be overhead at the same LST, which occurs 4 minutes earlier each day. Mag (magnitude): the star's brightness to the eye. A 2nd magnitude star is 2.512 times fainter than a 1st magnitude star. Meridian: an imaginary line passing through the zenith and the points directly above the north and south pole. Messier Object: One of 110 deep-sky objects noted by famed comet hunter Charles Messier. Nebula: A cloud of gas and dust; often a place where stars are born. Open Cluster: a loose grouping of up to several dozen young stars RA: Right Ascension, or longitude on the celestial sphere, measured in hours rather than degrees. The RA of the meridian is the same as the LST. Planetary Nebula: the abandoned outer layers ejected by a Sun-like star when it dies. Spectral Type: Stars were originally classified A, B, ... according to their spectral lines, but the sequence has since been rearranged in terms of color and temperature. It runs: O, W - Hot. Blue (drawn Violet). Zenith: the point directly overhead (90 altitude). 2sky marks it with a "+". Gaps in the numbering indicate development versions that were not released. 2sky Version 2.3 (2002.3.8)
2sky Version 2.0.1 (2001.11.30)
2sky Version 2.0 (2001.10.25)
2sky Version 1.2.2 (2000.12.8)
2sky Version 1.2.1 (2000.12.01)
2sky Version 1.2 (2000.11.30)
2sky Version 1.0.1 (2000.10.27)
2sky Version 1.0 (2000.10.19)
2sky Version 0.5 (beta) (2000.08.01)
Pocket Star Chart 1.0.4 (1999.04.29) -- a precursor to 2sky.
Pocket Star Chart 1.0.2(1999.02.16)
Pocket Star Chart 0.57(beta) (1999.02.09)
Pocket Star Chart 0.56(beta) (1999.01.07)
Pocket Star Chart 0.55(beta) (1998.12.23)
Pocket Star Chart 0.54 (beta) (1998.12.17)
Pocket Star Chart 0.54 (beta) (1998.11.23)
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when observing from home; otherwise it's an airplane 
is selected, 2sky's clock is on. 2sky shows what's visible now at the selected site. Tap the clock icon to turn the clock off and freeze the display. Tap it again to turn it back on When you 
. To jump to any time, tap the time popup trigger 
.