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From Start-to-Finish, It's Easy to Find, Capture and Process Beautiful Images

Share your passion for astronomy with others by capturing beautiful astrophotographs. Starry Night AstroPhoto Suite will help you every step of the way, from identifying objects to controlling your computerized telescope and imaging equipment to capturing and processing images. The AstroPhoto Suite combines essential features of Starry Night Pro astronomy software with MaxIm DL Lite digital imaging software in one comprehensive, easy-to-use package. Your astrophotos will reveal the colors of faint objects your eye cannot detect and details that elude even the best-trained eye in real-time viewing with a telescope. Capture images of celestial objects that rival those from professional observatories.

Key Features in Starry Night AstroPhoto

• Plan observing sessions with Event Finder that instantly displays celestial events, such as lunar and solar eclipses and conjunctions, for months far into the future
• Create Observing Lists of astronomical objects using a variety of filters such as magnitude, altitude above horizon, type or database. Quickly see what objects you have observed and which ones you still need to hunt down
• Find targets effortlessly with three-view starhopping charts customized to your equipment
• Select your equipment and FOV indicators from expanded default database of over 300 Orion, Meade, Celestron and Vixen scopes, binoculars, SBIG, Apogee, FLI and Starlight Express CCD chips and more
• Controls most popular brands of computerized telescopes including Orion SkyQuest Intelliscope, Meade LX-200 and AutoStar and Celestron Nexstar series (additional cable required)
• Easily import pictures captured and processed with MaxIm DL Lite back into Starry Night
• Receive automatic updates of new discoveries and orbital data of satellites, comets and asteroids

Features in MaxIm DL Lite

• Includes the basic tools you need to produce stunning astronomical images
• Smooth and sharpen images by filtering out hot spots or dead pixels
• Calibrate images for crisp shots of the same image
• Combine up to 4 monochrome images into a single full-color image
• Supports webcams and DSLRS, including
• Canon EOS Digital line (1D, 1Ds, 1Dmkll, 1Dsmkll, 10D, 20D, 20Da, 300D/Rebel/KISS, 350D/Rebel XT, D30 and D60)
• Lumenera
• Meade DSI and LPI
• Nikon D70
• Olympus E1, E-300, E-500
• Orion StarShoot Deep-Space
• Set exposure sequences and durations with auto-save to capture images automatically

Starry Night AstroPhoto Suite upgrade includes:

• DVD-ROM for Windows XP containing Starry Night AstroPhoto, astronomy software plus plug-in for MaxIm DL Lite
• CD-ROM for Windows 98/ME/2000/XP containing MaxIm DL Lite imaging software
• Exclusive SkyTheater” DVD with over an hour or original movies about space
• Starry Night Companion, a 192-page illustrated astronomy book
• New, comprehensive 210-page User's Guide

What's the difference between Starry Night Pro Plus and AstroPhoto Suite?

Starry Night Pro Plus is the only version of Starry Night which contains the full-color AllSky CCD mosaic of the entire night sky.

The reason that Astrophoto Suite is more expensive than Pro Plus is because it comes with a (Lite) version of MaxIm DL imaging software.

Please note that the Starry Night product that comes in AstroPhoto Suite is the equivalent of Starry Night Pro, NOT Starry Night Pro Plus.

The AstroPhoto version of Starry Night does NOT, for example, have the AllSky image and other features exclusive to Pro Plus.

Also note that Starry Night Pro Plus 6 comes complete with the plugin necessary to interface with any version of MaxIm DL but does NOT come with a version of MaxIm (Lite or otherwise.)

If you're already an owner of the full version of MaxIm DL, you want Pro Plus (which will interface with MaxIm DL for importing images, etc.)

Starry Night Astrophoto Suite is meant for people who do not have MaxIm DL, but would like to do some imaging with webcams and select DSLR cameras.

What's the difference between Starry Night Pro and Starry Night AstroPhoto Suite?

The Starry Night software included in Starry Night AstroPhoto Suite is a special edition of Starry Night Pro version 6 that interfaces with MaxIm DL Lite. Unique to Starry Night AstroPhoto Suite is MaxIm DL Lite, image processing software that gives you the basic tools to create stunning astrophotography from image acquisition to final processing.

What's the difference between MaxIm DL Lite, MaxDSLR and MaxIm DL/CCD?

MaxIm DL Lite included in Starry Night AstroPhoto Suite contains simplified yet powerful tools for creating astrophotography.

MaxIm DL Lite controls the same equipment as MaxDSLR. MaxDSLR also includes bulb cable support for DSLRS and additional features such as:

• Autoguider and Focuser Control
• Batch Save and Convert
• Edit Pixels
• Clone Tool
• Bin 2x2 and Bin 3x3
• Information Window, Zoom Window, FITS Header Window and Command Sequence Window
• Animate,
• Equalize Screen Stretch, Remove Bad Pixels and Remove Bloom,
• Double Size, Half Size, Curves, Pixel Math and Digital Development,
• Flatten Background, White Balance, Adjust Saturation, and Color Adjust.

MaxIm DL/CCD is the premiere package for astronomical imaging and includes:

• Complete observatory integration - control your CCD camera, filter wheel, autoguider, telescope, focuser, and dome. Includes auto-center, auto-focus, and link to planetarium program.
• Supports your equipment - works with more equipment models than any other package.
• Comprehensive image processing tools dozens of filter and processing options, full image preview, filter by brightness level.
• Image analysis tools includes photometric analysis, astrometric reduction, supernova hunting, line/area profile, statistics, and more

What happens if I only have OpenGL 1.4 and not OpenGL 2.0? Will Starry Night version 6 run?

In Starry Night version 6, the graphics default settings are not any more graphics-intensive than version 5.

The 3 things that are new and may not be supported are:

1. The AllSky Image shader . This is OFF by default and is only used when the user selects to use it from the Preferences. All this does is speed up the AllSky image at large FOVs (the lowest two resolution levels). The AllSky is ALSO sped up by Starry Night's use of DDS images, which every video card should support.
2. The daytime sky shader. This is also OFF by default. All this does is give that pretty gradient sky look during daytime/twilight.
3. Animated horizons. Again, this is OFF by default, and Starry Night will automatically determine if it'll work on your machine (and then disable -gray out- this option). If it IS enabled and it does not work well, this option will be automatically disabled the next time the program is started up.

The ONLY new features which require a better video card than Version 5 are the three eye-candy features listed above. Overall, the other graphics in the application will not be affected if you only have an OpenGL 1.4 card.

A DVD-ROM drive is required for the installation of Starry Night AstroPhoto (2006 edition) on your computer.

Requires: Windows XP, 500 MHz or higher processor, 128 MB RAM and 2 GB of hard disk space. 64 MB OpenGL 1.4 capable graphics card (OpenGL 2.0 is required for features like shaded sky and animated grass). Minimum recommended monitor resolution of 1024x768. DVD-ROM drive required for installation.

Starry Night 6.0.6 will run on a Windows Vista computer provided the latest graphics card Vista drivers supporting hardware-accelerated OpenGL are installed. At present, there are Vista drivers that do not support hardware-accelerated OpenGL to the extent required by Starry Night. This is beyond our control.

The following graphics cards have been successfully tested against Starry Night on Windows Vista using latest manufacturer's drivers:

nVidia: 7600, 7300, 6600, 6200
ATI: X1900, X1650, X1550, X1300, X800 (non-AGP only)

By no means is this an exhaustive list. We are certain there are many more cards that will work and we will add more cards to this list as we are able to fully test them.

MaxIm DL Lite, MaxDSLR and MaxIm DL/CCD copyright 1997 - 2005 Diffraction Limited, Inc. All rights reserved. MaxIm DL and Cyanogen are registered trademarks of Diffraction Limited.