Hi Steve,

In your tutorials you show a dark cycle "calendar" to demonstrate that Navigator calculates such things. I really like the full year view and would use such a complete list to add items to my Outlook calendar so I could plan trips and such accordingly.

I think it would be great if CCDNavigator had such a function to create a full year report that I could then print or export and use for that purpose.

If you don't want to add something like that, can you recommend a spreadsheet or other such tool for creating what your tutorial shows?

Thank you,
Jonathan

Jonathan,

I just write the dates down and put them on my calendar. The tutorial had a spreadsheet I made up just for that.

I recommend paper and pencil. Sky & Tel sells a nice calendar, get one and write the dark cycle dates down on it. Ballpoint pen technology works pretty well on those.

This would be a nice feature. Next version....

How do I advance CCDNavigator to look beyond the current month?

Thanks,
Jonathan

Jonathan:

Go to Criteria and you can change the date, for future planning.

I agree with you about the dark cycle calendar - it would be nice if someone would program this up. I suggested it to Software Bisque at AIC2008. Sky6 already generates the data, seems it would be easy to make a plot of it.

The way I do it, is use Sky6 and the DATA WIZARD to generate a file with the rise and set times of the sun and moon (and other objects if I want). Then it can be imported into Excel and graphed. However, I think Excel's graphing is awful and counter-intuitive(has anyone at Microsoft made more than just a simple graph with this thing?). I used to use pen and paper. Now I put it in Adobe InDesign, which has extensive graphics capabilities.

It is cloudy in Jackson Hole from December to March, so I utilize days which are not "dark cycle days," but have periods when the moon is down for 3 or more hours. The way I chart it, the hours without a moon are called "darkest night." I've attached one in Adobe pdf format for you to look at, for February 2009.

RiseandSetFeb2009.pdf (193 KB, 122 downloads)

That's a very nice graph Arlo (and yes, I remember you from AIC). I didn't know about TheSky6 capability either, so I'll look at that too.

I did figure out the criteria advancing trick in CCDNavigator so I got what I needed. But it sure would be nice if Steve would make this easier on us, which is of course his whole objective behind this great program!

Thanks,
Jonathan