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 every time you set
Q: The times for sun rise and sun set Planetarium calculates are competely off.
A: Perhaps you have confused latitude and longitude?
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 Location screen. See here for a detailed description how the two time zone settings work. If you just want to use Planetarium for your home location, set both time zones to 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 / Preferences". 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 to bright for you, you can make yourself a screen filter. Print a gray 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.
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 for the program. The comets and asteroids are very time consuming, only switch on a few of them or switch them off altogether in the Sky View Settings screen. Another time consuming factor are deep sky objects and stars when there are very many of them the program has to draw. Use the magnitude filters to reduce the number of shown stars and objects.
Q: How can I make the program use less memory?
A: There are several possibilities to reduce the memory needs:
- Planetarium comes with two star data bases. To reduce memory install the small one (PlnStars1600.prc).
- If you don't travel around, delete the locations list.
- Perhaps you don't need the double stars list or the Caldwell list, so delete them as well.
- If you don't need the Comets and Asteroids, they also use space.
Q: Where is "Big Dipper"?
A: Big Dipper is also called "Ursa Major", the Great Bear. Search for that constellation.
Q: Why aren't the Plejades not in the list of constellations?
A: The Plejades 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: 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 thus the comet left out 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 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: No, I'm sorry. I will look into porting it to the PocketPC, but I cannot promise anything yet.
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: I have problems connecting to my telescope
A: Here is some information:
Sony Clie: These devices need a special cable with built-in level converters that are powered from the Palm side. Many such cables are intended to connect the Palm to the PC and they power the converter electronics from the PC side. However, from the telescope there is no power and therefore these cables won't work. (see below for a source of cables).
Tungsten E: The Tungsten E does not have a serial port. The USB-to-serial converter avaliable for the PC won't work here either, as the Palm USB port is something different than the PC USB. There is no way to connect the Tungsten E so far. In a future version of Planetarium it will be possible to connect via BlueTooth. This would require a BlutTooth SD card for the Palm and a BlueTooth-to-serial converter for the telescope side.
Tungsten T3 (and possibly Palm m515): There is a bug in the PalmOS of the T3. It requires hardware handshake even if Planetarium sais it should not. The result is that the Palm waits for a CTS signal that it does not get from the telescope and therefore it does not send any characters. Hopefully PalmOne will bring out an Update Patch in the near future. (You can check this at http://www.palmone.com/us/support/tungstent3/). Another option would be to solder a little adapter that routes the RTS signal of the T3 back to its own CTS input, so that it gets the signal it needs. Carsten Kurz (see below) will also be able to add this bridge directly into the Palm connector in his cables. In the wiring diagram of this adapter below I put the bridge on both sides, so it will work with any setup, but in fact you will need it only on the Palm side. Put this adapter just after the Palm cable, before any null modem or gender changer.
Here is a German manufacturer (he speaks English) of all kinds of cables. He will be able to recommend you a suitable cable for your device:
Carsten Kurz
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 my Palm Vx to the latest OS, 4.1, and now Planetarium stopped working, comes back with a "Fatal Exception" error.
A: I have got a quite few reports of such strange crashes. It looks like something went wrong with restoring the data after the upgrade rather than a bug in Planetarium that would cause this problem. In all cases so far the problem could be cured by completely deinstalling Planetarium and reinstalling it again.
There is a vast number of combinations of different PalmOS versions with different Palm devices. In theory they all should work without any problems, but one never knows. If the problem persists, please let me know, so I can investigate it further.
Q: I wanted to connect my Sony PDA to the telescope, but I had no success so far..
A: We are aware of this problem and we are sorry to say that at this time we do not have a solution. It looks like the serial port of a Sony device is somehow different that that of an ordinary Palm.
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 us via 
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 run in flash memory?
A: Yes, it can. But you need to keep the files PlanetariumDB.pdb, UserObjsDB.pdb and PlnCometsDB.pdb in RAM. The files planet20.prc and PlnStars1600.prc or PlnStars9096.prc can be installed in the flash.
Q: Can Planetarium be moved to the memory card?
A: Yes, partially. Please read the notes here.
Q: The program uses so much space, how can I delete the large star data base to install the small one?
A: You don't need to delete the large star data base, just install the small one. This will replace the already installed star data base..