User`s guide

110 Starry Night User’s Guide
Celestial Pole directly overhead and the
South Celestial pole beneath your feet.
If you set your orientation to ecliptic,
Starry Night gives you a view as though
you were standing on the
ecliptic plane, on
which all of the planets in our solar system
revolve. If you choose a galactic
orientation, your view of the sky is the one
you would see if you were standing on the
same plane as our galaxy, the Milky Way.
A supergalactic orientation aligns you with
the plane of the band of nearby galaxies
that surrounds the Milky Way.
In all orientation options except for local,
the horizon is automatically turned off.
Tip: There may be times when you want to
use a non-local orientation even though
your location is on Earth’s surface. Most
star charts that you will find in astronomy
books use an equatorial orientation. You
could switch to an equatorial orientation
in Starry Night to match your onscreen
view to these charts.
Orbits
For any body in the solar system, Starry
Night allows you to draw the orbit of this
body onscreen. This is of limited value
when your location is on the surface of
Earth. However, now that you know how
to change location, the ability to show
planet orbits can come in very handy.
Object orbits are most useful when you are
at an elevation high above the north pole
of the parent body of the orbiting object.
For example, to view the orbits of the
planets, an ideal viewing location would
be at an elevation high above the north
pole of the Sun. To view the orbit of the
Moon or the orbits of artificial satellites,
an ideal viewing location is high above
Earth’s north pole.
To display the
orbit of any object
in our solar
system, open the
Find pane, and
clear the text box.
This will display
the list of solar
system objects. The Orbit column is the
first column to the right of the object
name. Checking this box for a particular
object turns on the orbit for this object, and
unchecking the box turns the orbit off. You
can turn on orbits for more than one object
at the same time.
Tip: You can also turn on the orbit of a
solar system body by right-clicking
(Ctrl-click on the Mac) on the object and
choosing Orbit from its contextual menu.
This image shows the orbit of Jupiter. Key
points in the orbit are marked with special
indicators.