User`s guide

170 Starry Night User’s Guide
not need to download the files again). If
you wish to delete these downloaded star
data to free up space on your hard drive,
choose
LiveSky->Preferences for Auto Updates
from the main menu and press the
Clear Star Cache button.
Adding Objects 4 (Databases)
You can do more than add individual
objects to Starry Night, you can add entire
databases! In fact, many of the databases
described in
“Databases 4 (Other)
” on page 83 were
originally created by Starry Night owners.
The recipe for creating a custom database
is simple:
1 Create a plain text file in the approved
format (see below for format
examples).
2 Run Starry Night and choose
File->Build Data File from the menu.
A dialog box will open that prompts
you to choose a file. Select the original
text file from your hard drive. Starry
Night will build a new data file based
on your text file. This data file will be
optimized for the rapid access the
program needs to quickly plot out the
thousands of objects displayed
onscreen. If your original text file was
not in the correct format, Starry Night
will display an error message at this
stage.
3 Once the data conversion process is
complete, Starry Night will prompt you
to name the new data file and save it to
your hard drive. By default, the new
data file will be saved in the same
folder as your original text file. Change
this so that the new data file is saved to
your "Starry Night\Sky Data" folder
(on the Macintosh, you will need to
Ctrl-click on the Starry Night
application icon and choose Show
Package Contents, then open the
“Resources” folder to view the
“Sky Data” folder).
4 Exit and restart Starry Night. Open the
Options pane. Your database will be
listed, in the “Other” layer.
Once you have created a database, all of
the regular database options can be used to
control the display of your database. In
addition, you can use the Find pane to
locate any object in your database, and
open the Info pane for any object to get
more information.
Database Format Examples: The "Extra
Databases" folder on the Starry Night
DVD contains several sample text files.
Each file is in the proper format for Starry
Night's Build Data File command to build
a database. The file "Simple.txt"
shows a very basic database, while the file
"NGC-IC.txt" shows the actual text file
which was used to create an older version
of our NGC-IC database. This file is
extensively commented, to help you
understand exactly what each section of
the file is used for. You should look at the
"NGC-IC.txt" file before attempting to
build your own database. A few highlights
of building databases are described below.