We've tested TheSky with new Macintosh models to ensure a pleasing experience for customers who own the latest equipment.

All Macintoshes created in recent history have USB ports instead of serial ports, so how do you connect a serial telescope? It's easy! Just purchase a USB-to-Serial adapter. We've tested adapters built by KeySpan that work well.

Now you can display a slide show of your favorite pictures. You can change pictures at the click of a button, or at timed intervals.

Now TheSky saves a preview image into each Sky document. Later, when you are trying to find a particular document, you can see the preview in the Open dialog.

Now you can download the latest comets and minor planets (asteroids) from the Internet. Just click a button, and TheSky will do the rest.

Don't bother trying to count all of the minor planets! The Minor Planet Center has more than 100,000 minor planets in it's database. You can download this list from the Minor Planet Center web site, and load the minor planets into TheSky.

A new option in the Comets and Minor Planets dialog lets you display the 24-hour path of extended minor planets. This makes it easy to see where a minor planet will be on a given night.

TheSky 5.0.7 adds the ability for some telescopes (like the LX200) to be controlled with push-button style controls. You can choose to move the telescope a given amount (perhaps 10 degrees), or you can hold down the button as long as you want the telescope to keep moving.

TheSky 5.0.7 adds some extra goodies related to the Meade LX200 telescope. It works better with German equatorial mounts, provides support for the LX-200 "long format," and lets you adjust the speed of your electronic focuser.

When your taking pictures with a telescope, it's handy to know the "air mass" and "hour angle" of the objects that you're photographing. Air mass is the number of atmospheres you are looking through (1.0 is straight up, and it gets much larger near the horizon). This lets you take pictures with the least amount of interference from the atmosphere.

TheSky 5.0.7 has more Field of View Indicators than you can shake a stick at! We added indicators for several popular optical configurations. Of course, you can add your own custom indicators as always. We also increased the maximum size allowed. Now you can create indicators that are absolutely huge!

Software Bisque has an online discussion group called BisqueMac that is devoted to our Macintosh users. It's a great place to ask questions, get technical support, chat with other users, and learn about TheSky and RealSky. To join the group, just click the button below.

Click to subscribe to BisqueMac