User`s guide

Appearance of the Sky 39
There are two reasons for this. First,
several databases are very large. It would
be impossible for Starry Night to show all
of the millions of stars in its database
onscreen at one time! Second, Starry Night
strives to present a realistic representation
of the sky, so it only shows those objects
bright enough to be visible. As you zoom
in to a smaller field of view, dimmer
objects are automatically shown
(remember that zooming in is equivalent
to looking through a more powerful
telescope). Many databases have options
that let you adjust how many objects are
displayed. See
“Celestial Object Display Options
” on
page 40 for more information.
By default, all databases are turned on,
with the exception of those databases in
the “Other” layer, which are turned off
because they may overlap with the core
databases. See “Databases 4 (Other)
” on
page 83 for a listing of these “other”
databases.
Labeling Celestial Objects
In “Labeling Objects
” on page 22, you
learned how to turn on labels for all types
of objects. You can also selectively choose
which types of objects to label. To the
right of each database listed in the
Options pane is a “labels” checkbox.
Checking this option will label the
brightest members of this database.
Labeling certain object types makes it
easier to identify these objects. For
example, deep space objects may be hard
to identify among the glare of the brighter
stars and planets. By labeling only deep
space objects, these objects will be easy to
locate.
Tip: You can also turn database labels on/
off by choosing Labels from the main
menu and checking the appropriate
database.
Labeling Select Objects: If you only want
to label a few specific objects, point the
cursor at the first object, and click the left
mouse button. This “selects” the object,
and its label will appear, along with an
arrow pointing to the object. For
subsequent objects, hold down the Shift
key and click on the object. You can
deselect all objects by choosing
Edit->Select None from the menu. You
can change the label colour for selected
objects by choosing Preferences from the
File menu (Windows) or the
Starry Night menu (Macintosh), choosing
General from the dropbox in the upper
left corner of the Preferences dialog box,
and clicking on the “Selection colour”
rectangle.