User Interface Improvements

• Made cosmetic improvements to several dialog boxes.
• Display a warning before parking the telescope.
• Display a warning before aligning the telescope to home.
• The Find dialog no longer hides the text insertion cursor when using the numeric buttons in the dialog.
• Adjusted the Packets, Retries, Failures window so that it no longer overlaps the horizontal or vertical scroll bars.
• Switched the RA/Dec and Alt/Az buttons on the Object Information dialog box to maintain consistency.
• When the brightness for a given field of view is increased, then decreased, the brightness values for all fields of view less than the current field of view are also decreased.
• The telescope position is updated when TheSky is not active (this is a huge departure). If TheSky is not visible, the cross-hairs are not updated.
• Manual "screen dragging" (the image link green arrow) can be accomplished by holding down the left shift key. Previously, only the right shift key could be used.
• Changed the position and wording of controls in the Mosaic dialog box to make more sense.
• On occasion the Object Information window would not close upon slew when this option the was on. This has been fixed.
• Added the "Allow nonstandard time zones" option to the Data | Options dialog box so that TheSky can accept negative time zones.
• The Update Solar System command causes the screen to redraw properly.
• The "Brighter" and "Dimmer" buttons in the LX-200 Reticle Control dialog were broken (they worked backwards). Now they are fixed.
• Several commands in the Telescope menu would display meaningless error messages if your telescope didn't support the commands. Now some more useful error messages are displayed.
• Reducing the screen resolution used to move some windows mostly off the screen, making it nearly impossible to move them back onto the screen. This has been fixed. Windows will resize themselves intelligently when the screen resolution changes.
• Selecting a new time value in the Time Skip Toolbar didn't always take effect. This has been fixed.
• Removing several comets or minor planets in a row from the Comets & Minor Planets dialog is easier now. The list selection behaves more intuitively as objects are removed.
• The Stop button in the Time Skip Toolbar didn't always pop up when it was supposed to. This has been fixed.
• The font size used for displaying Bayer designations used to be unchangeable. Now it can be changed. Use the Preferences dialog to change the font size displayed for stars, and the Bayer designations will change as well.

Improved Accuracy

• When printing standard star charts with detailed legends, the stellar magnitudes were displayed incorrectly. This has been fixed.
  
• Changed Europe's Daylight Savings. TheSky switches off DST in October, rather than September now.
  
• Iapetus' position was incorrect. This has been fixed.
  
• Proper motion vectors for stars now display correctly when specifying years in the past (negative years).
  
• Fixed two issues with the Mercator projection relating to plotting the Ecliptic and the Sun during time skip simulations.
  
• Fixed the Moon's transit time in the Solar System Report. It was one hour off under Daylight Saving Time.
  
• Sky Databases (SDB's) with variable-length text fields are now displayed correctly in the Object Information dialog box. They were truncated previously.
  
• Tycho stars no longer show a spectral type (previous versions showed a false spectral type). The tycho catalog does not have spectral information.
  
• Made a change in USNOPLOT to ignore those stars that report a negative magnitude.
  
• The genitive of the Lepus is now spelled correctly (Leporis, not Leopris).
  
• Sky Databases (SDB's) of type OBJECT now show the magnitude in the Object Information dialog box.
  
• Fixed an issue related to reading the current Epoch of minor planet orbital elements. The current Epoch is now read correctly.
  
• Extended minor planet numbers are now displayed correctly.
  
• Jupiter's moons are drawn correctly when using mirror image view.
  
• Declination telescope limit lines now work in the Southern Hemisphere.
  
• Fixed a problem with constellation labels. When constellation bounds were turned on and constellation labels were turned on, the adjoining constellation names were frequently wrong. This has been fixed.
  
• Equatorial coordinates were not displayed properly along the right side of the screen when the equatorial grid was turned on. This has been fixed.
  
• Fixed truncated text in the legends of AAVSO printouts.
  
• The Moon and Saturn didn't draw properly when "Translucent Sun & Moon" was turned on. This has been fixed.

Improved Stability

• Fixed a bug that would cause the moon to disappear after being displayed dozens of times. This also fixed a related problem where drawing the moon would use up most of the available memory.
• Fixed a bug that would occasionally crash the computer when the moon was displayed.
• Fixed a bug that would occasionally crash the computer when pasting an image into TheSky.
• Fixed a bug in the Move To dialog. Entering a value of 90 degrees, 0 minutes, and 0 seconds in the declination fields previously caused TheSky to behave strangely.
• Entering a search query in the form "A n", where n is any number, no longer causes a crash.
• Fixed some crashing bugs in TheSky Student Edition.
• The Find dialog properly finds stars from the Hipparcos/Tycho database now. Also fixed an occasional crash when searching for Hipp/Tych stars.

Miscellaneous Improvements

• Increased the maximum number of comets and local minor planets to 150.
• Increased the maximum number of extended minor planets that appear in the Find dialog box.
• Changed the Export command to use NGC, IC or PGC databases for galaxies so the find command can find all exported galaxies.
• You can now filter SDB's of object types that are added to the default list.
  Improved integration with RealSky. Previous versions of RealSky wouldn't work, or wouldn't behave properly when launched by TheSky. This has been fixed by upgrading RealSky to version 4.1.2. TheSky 5.0.6 Updater will automatically look for installed copies of RealSky, and update them.

Version 5.0.5 Changes

The following changes were included in TheSky 5.0.5. These are also a part of version 5.0.6.

• In Daytime Sky Mode, zooming to very small fields of view would crash some computers. This has been fixed.
  
• If a Sky Document was saved with the object type "Stars" turned off, TheSky would crash at startup if the Bayer Designation labels were also turned on. This has been fixed.
  
• Moving TheSky's folder would cause it to loose track of its databases. This has been fixed.
  
• The Time Services dialog box would crash on some computers. This has been fixed.
  
• Telescope communication would cause some computers to crash. This has been fixed.
  
• These dialog boxes would crash on some computers: Filters, Field of View Indicators, Toolbars, Comets & Minor Planets, and Sky Databases. They have all been fixed.
  
• TheSky would take a very long time to start (up to 7 minutes) if hundreds of fonts were installed. This has been fixed.
  
• TheSky would search for PGC thumbnail images on disk 1, but they were not located there. Now TheSky searches for them on disk 2 as it should.
  
• Importing the first comet or minor planet from a list of these objects in the Comet and Minor Planet dialog box no longer displays incorrect orbital element data.
  
• USNO stars were not always drawn when USNO was turned on, and not all of the USNO settings were saved when the program quit. This has been fixed.
  
• QuickTime movies created with TheSky's "Record Movie" command are 2 - 4 times smaller, and have higher quality.
  
• The LX200 Initialize dialog now displays local time rather than standard time. This new convention adjusts the hours from GMT to account for daylight savings rather than using standard time and leaving GMT constant.
  
• LX200 16" commands for Find Home and Align Home were swapped. This has been fixed.
  
• Added a preference "LX200 TimeoutMilliseconds" to allow a user configurable timeout time.
  
• The Altitude Limit and Declination Limit Line options can now be selected on the Telescope Line Editor dialog box.
  
• Bayer/Flamsteed labels now use the correct star radius so that the labels do not overlap the stars.
  
• The Year input for the Date of Perihelion of comets and minor planets now allows an input range of -4000 to 9999.
  
• When the Tips dialog was displayed at startup, the splash screen would remain underneath it for a period of time. Now the splash screen is not displayed when tips are displayed at startup.
  
• Fixed a bug in the Telescope/Encoder Settings dialog box that caused the Telescope popup menu to contain a bunch of garbage.
  
• Fixed several cosmetic problems on the display, and in printed charts.