Changes Between V3.0 and V3.1 of "The Earth Centered Universe"

Below is the list of changes resulting in ECU V3.1:

Usability:

• You can now use the arrow keys to precisely move the mouse around over the sky display (for those who like to use their keyboards). The arrow keys by themselves move the mouse 5 pixels at a time. Hold down the shift key and press an arrow key and it moves by one pixel. Also, the space bar does the equivalent of the left mouse button and the shift-spacebar does the right mouse button. Note that this works, only when the main ECU window has focus (ie. is lit up).
• A new feature called Track Coordinates (in the "edit" menu) causes the RA/Dec and Alt/Az displays to track the mouse position in real time which is very useful for quickly measuring positions or seeing how far an object is above/below the horizon without clicking on it. This feature is also activated at any time by holding down the "control" key.
• ECU now remembers the window size and mode when you exit, so when it restarts its size and position on the screen is restored. Previously it always started up full screen.
• Shortcuts were added for NGC, UGC, IC and SAO objects in the 'Search Database' dialog in that you can just use the 1st letter of each prefix.For example typing 'N3434' is the same as 'NGC3434' and so on.
• You can use the Ctrl-F key sequence (F=find) to access the 'Search Database' dialog.
• Hotkeys have been added for the field flip functions: for horizontal its ctrl-h and for vertical its ctrl-v.
• ECU is now exited with Alt-X instead of Alt-E.
• In the 'Sun and Moon Data' dialog, the date that the data pertains to is now displayed. There are also buttons to step one day forward and one day backwards - when these buttons are pressed, the data is updated for the new date.
• The 'Sun and Moon Data' dialog now has "go" buttons next to all the rise, set, and twilight times that quickly take you to those times.
• For convenience, the daylight savings flag is now setable in the 'Enter Time' dialog box
• Two new menu items were added: 'Increase fonts by 20%' and 'Decrease fonts by 20%'. These increase or decrease all screen font sizes all at once.

Telescope Control:

• New telescope interfaces supported include: Meade Magellan I and II, Astro-Physics GTO Mounts, Orion CTI, Meade ETX-Autostar, and several others previously supported, but not specifically identified.
• The 'Telescope' menu has been moved to the main level.

Databases:

• The deep sky database has been updated to the latest version of the SAC database (V7.2).
• The asteroid elements have been updated to the current date.
• Major improvements to "User Objects" files including: increasing maximum number of objects to 10000, increasing the description field to 25 characters, user labels now have their own colour and fonts, there are more symbols available, up to 5 user object files can be loaded at the same time.
• All SAO stars can now be searched.

Comets/Asteroids:

• Number of simultaneous orbits increased from 50 to 400.
• Added solar elongation display for comets and asteroids.
• Added phase angle display for asteroids.
• ECU can now show the approximate size and direction of comet tails. In the orbit dialog box you can specify a guess of the length of the comet's tail in AU units and ECU will then project that true tail length opposite the Sun and plot it on the sky display.
• You can now enable or disable all orbits at once.
• Fixed asteroid magnitude calculation bug.

Animation:

• the maximum number of "trails" has been increased from 100 to 200.

Miscellaneous:

• ECU V3.1 can read (import) cfg files created by V3.0 of ECU. This operation is totally transparent. Remember, however, that files written by V3.1 cannot be read by V3.0.
• The floppy disk version of ECU is no longer available, however, that version is located on the CD in the \floppy directory should a floppy version be needed for installation on an older notebook computer.

Back to the upgrade page.

Last Updated: November 26, 2000 by Webmaster, Nova Astronomics.