Frequently Asked Questions
Problems with installation or registration
Q: Sun rise and set are off by one hour
A: Make sure the Daylight Savings Time checkbox is set correctly in the Location screen. Use the Menu item "Options / Set Location" to get to the Location screen. The Daylight Savings Time checkbox needs to be checked during summer (or winter if you live in the southern hemisphere) and unchecked during the winter because Planetarium can not calculate the transition dates for the daylight savings time. You need to switch it on and off manually according to summer and winter time of the given location.
Q: The times for sun rise and sun set Planetarium calculates are competely off.
A: Perhaps you have confused latitude and longitude?
Also check the "High altitude correction" value in the Preferences screen. Usually you do not need to enter a value here, set it to zero. This value is for airline pilots in heights of 10 km.
Q: I understand that the "Now" button should use the current time, but it doesn't.
A: Make sure you have correctly set the time zone settings in the Palm Preferences application and in the Location screen. See the manual for a more detailed explanation how the time zones are used in Planetarium. If you want to use Planetarium for your home location, both time zone settings should have the same value.
Q: The screen is too bright when I'm out in the dark, it blinds me.
A: If you have a colour device, you can use the "Night mode" which uses only red and black. Red is said not to affect the pupils once they have got used to the dark. To switch the night mode on select the menu item "Options / Night Mode". On non-colour devices you can set the background in sky view to black with the "Inv. Colors" checkbox in the "Sky View Settings" screen.
If this is still too bright for you, you can make yourself a screen filter. Print a gray or red rectangle on a transparency film for overhead projectors and cut it to the size of the Palm's display.
If you have a black&white device, another good option is switch off the backlight of the Plam and to use a red LED-flashlight to shed some light on the screen.
All color devices have a small white border around the screen even in night mode. There is nothing we can do about that. This border is not under software control. Perhaps you can do something with red film.
Update: There is a freeware application, BlackBorder, which can solve this problem for some devices at least: http://www.canuck-software.ca/blackborder.html
To deal with the high brightness on newer palms, one can use a program such as BrightnessFix from palmpowerups.com to change the lower limit on the screen brightness.
Q: The grey lines are too light and I can hardly see them.
A: Please try to use the contrast adjustment of your Palm device to change the darkness of the lines. There is either a wheel on the side of your Palm device or a button that pops up a window with a slider. (If you can't find the contrast adjustment, please consult your Palm manual.)
There have been a few reports that on some devices the grayscale is not working as well as expected. Either the display can hardly be seen at all or there are vertical streaks or the contrast has contstantly to be adjusted when switching to and from Planetarium. If you experience these problems, you can either use the checkbox "Black & White" in the Preferences screen which will prevent Planetarium from using grayscale to draw the map. Or you can try out the freeware application"NoStreak" by Till Harbaum http://www.palmgear.com/software/showsoftware.cfm?prodID=3873. It allows to change the display refresh frequency which in many cases can cure this problem.
Q: How can I make the screen redraws faster?
A: To make the redraws in sky view faster you need to take off load of the program. Install a smaller star data base. The comets and asteroids are also time consuming, only switch on a few of them in the Sky View Settings screen. Use the magnitude filters to reduce the number of shown stars and objects.
Q: Can the program be installed on the memory card?
A: Yes, it can. Please read the notes here.
Q: Where is "Big Dipper"?
A: Big Dipper is also called "Ursa Major", the Great Bear. Search for that constellation.
Q: Why are the Pleiades not in the list of constellations?
A: The Pleiades are not a constellation in the sense of the IAU. They are an asterism in the constellation Taurus. You can find them by searching for the Messier object M 45.
Q: There are some yellow lines in sky view. What are they?
A: These are the radiants of a currently active meteor shower. You can switch this off by selecting the menu item 'View / Meteor Showers' and unchecking the 'Show in Sky View' checkbox.
Q: The sky is shown inverse, i.e. what should be on the left side is on the right side and vice versa.
A: You have acidentally selected the orientation button. 
This button is useful for observers with a telescope so that they can simulate what they see through the eye piece. Observers with the naked eye or binoculars should select the topmost variant with N at the top and E to the right.
Q: Comet Ikeya-Zhang doesn't show up in the Sky chart
A: You have your settings set in a way that the comet is not usually drawn on the display. If you search for it, it will be drawn in order to show you the search result, but on the next screen refresh the main settings will be applied again and the comet is not drawn again.
To change the settings so that a particular comet is normally shown make sure the following:
- In the comet list, the comet needs to be checked
- In the Sky View Settings screen (tap little checkbox above sky map) the switch "Comets" needs to be ckecked
- The Magnitude filter for the appropriate zoom range in the column "Objects" need to be high enough so that the comet's magnitude will not be filtered out.
Q: What are the numbers at the bottom right in compass view?
A: The number labelled LMST is the Local Mean Sidereal Time. The sidereal time indicates which part of the sky is currently visible. This depends on the time of day, the season and your location. To be precise, your sidereal time is equal to the right ascension of the stars now crossing your meridian.
The other number is the Julian Date. This is the number of the days since noon on January 1, 4713 B.C. The fractional part of the number is used for the time of the day. Astronomers commonly calculate the interval between dates of events by subtracting Julian days, eliminating the necessity to keep track of leap years and other calendar details.
Q: Is there a version for the PocketPC avaliable?
A: At this time there is no native version for the PocketPC. However version 2.4 of Planetarium runs on Windows Mobile with the StyleTap platform.
Q: Is there a German version available?
A: Yes, there is. Please check the download page
Q: How do I enter the orbital elements of a comet?
A: Please see this example.
Q: How do I enter the International Space Station ISS?
A: I'm sorry, it is not possible to track man made satellites with Planetarium. Planetarum focuses on the natural universe around us, giving you the tools and data to interpret it.
However, there is a Palm program which does a good job in calculating earth satellites. It is called "PocketSat" by Jim Berry: http://www.bigfattail.com/
Q: Can I connect to my telescope?
A: Here is some information:
Connecting to a telescope
Problems with installation or registration
Q: I have a problem with it on my Sony Clie (PEG-NR70). The program installs and runs just fine, but whenever I quit the program it causes a Fatal Exception and I have to reset the calculator.
A: It looks like this is a bug in the Sony OS of the NR70. However you can cure this problem by setting the High Resolution Assist for Planetarium (in the Sony Preferences application).
Q: I just upgraded to a new Palm, and now Planetarium stopped working, comes back with a "Fatal Exception" error.
A: Perhaps you transferred an older version of Planetarium to your new device. Older versions were not compatible with PalmOS 5. Download and install the latest version of Planetarium.
Even with the latest version we have got a quite few reports of strange crashes. It looks like something can go wrong with restoring the data to the new device. In all cases so far the problem could be cured by completely deinstalling Planetarium and reinstalling it again. (It is important that the program is deleted before reinstalling it. Just installing it again over the existing one does not have the same effect.)
There is a vast number of combinations of different PalmOS versions with different Palm devices. In theory Planetarium should work with all of them without any problems, but one never knows. If the problem persists, please let us know, so we can investigate it further.
Q: I purchased the program, my credit card has been billed but I just received some code instead of the registered version of the program!
A: If you purchased Planetarium without installing the demo version, you will have to download it from the web. If the demo version is already installed, all you need to do is to enter the code into the program to convert it from the demo version into the full version.
Q: I purchased the program, my credit card has been billed but I haven't received anything yet!
A: Sometimes this unfortunate situation arises when the e-mail address you provided doesn't work, for example because of a typing error, so that the automatic system is unable to deliver you the code. Please contact the dealer where you bought it (PalmGear.com or Handango.com) to sort out this problem.
Q: After some troubles with the e-commerce system I tried it again and now my credit card is billed twice!
A: Please contact the dealer where you bought it (PalmGear.com or Handango.com) and ask them to cancel the duplicate.
Q: Can Planetarium be moved to the memory card?
A: Yes, it can. Please read the notes here.