Products

Voyager 4.5 Downloads

Use this page to download updates, patches, trial versions, and other software items related to Voyager 4.5, our premier sky simulation and telescope control program.

Voyager 4.5.7 Update

The latest official release of Voyager 4.5 is 4.5.7, released 26 May 2010. This section contains links and instructions for downloading the Voyager 4.5.7 update.

Voyager 4 Users Please Note: To install this update, you must already have Voyager 4.5 installed on your computer. This update will not work with Voyager 4.1 or any earlier version. To purchase an upgrade to Voyager 4.5, click here. To download free updates to the older version, Voyager 4, click here.

To update Voyager 4.5 from within the program itself:

Launch Voyager 4.5 on your Mac or PC if is not already running.
Select Updates... from the Voyager 4.5 menu (on Mac OS X) or Help menu (on Windows).
In the dialog box that appears, under What to Update, check the Program Files box and un-check all other boxes.
Click the Update Now button at the bottom of the dialog.
Voyager 4.5 will then download the updater and open it. Voyager will then quit; follow the updater's on-screen instructions to install of the update.

If for some reason Voyager 4.5 can't download or open the updater, you can use the following links to download it yourself. Then use the instructions below to install the update after you have downloaded it.

Operating System	Download	Size	Description
Mac OS X 10.4 - 10.6	Voyager 4.5.7 Update	77,978,523 bytes	Compressed disk image (.dmg)
Windows XP - 7	Voyager 4.5.7 Update	80,034,771 bytes	Windows executable (.exe)

Instructions for Mac OS X users

This package updates Voyager 4.5 to release 4.5.7.

The Mac OS X version of the update is a compressed disk image file. After you've downloaded the .dmg file, double-click its icon to mount the image on your desktop. Then double-click the Voyager 4.5.7 Updater package icon inside the disk image, and follow the updater's instructions on screen.

Make sure you install the update in the same folder where you installed Voyager 4.5! For example, if you installed Voyager 4.5 in /Applications/Voyager 4.5, make sure you also install the update in /Applications/Voyager 4.5!

Instructions for Windows users

This program updates Voyager 4.5 to release 4.5.7.

The Windows version of the update is an executable file. After downloading the .exe file, double-click its icon to launch it, then follow the updater's instructions on screen.

Make sure you install the update in the same directory where you installed Voyager 4.5! For example, if you installed Voyager 4.5 in C:\Program Files\Carina Software\Voyager 4.5, make sure you also install the update in C:\Program Files\Carina Software\Voyager 4.5!

You must run the updater executable from an account with Administrative privileges, or it will not work! To do this, log out from Windows and log in again as Administrator, then run the updater program. If you are still having trouble, contact your system administrator for help.

Test Drive Voyager 4.5

Want to try out Voyager 4.5 before buying? You can download an unregistered copy of the Voyager 4.5 CD-ROM version. The downloaded version is identical to the version that we ship on CD-ROM. However, until you register your copy, Voyager will only display a small portion of the objects in its database, will not control a telescope, and will not recieve data or program updates. Check out the Getting Started pages in our Support section for a guided tour.

Operating System	Download	Size	Description
Mac OS X 10.4 - 10.6	Voyager 4.5.7 CD	644,773,147 bytes	Compressed disk image (.dmg)
Windows XP - 7	Voyager 4.5.7 CD Setup	633,927,431 bytes	Windows executable (.exe)

You can also download the Voyager 4.5 User Guide in PDF format (about 11.5 MB, 171 pages). A printed copy of the User Guide is included in every Voyager 4.5 retail box, and a PDF copy is included with the downloads above.

Order

Instructions for Mac OS X users

The Mac OS X version is a compressed CD-ROM image file. After you've downloaded the .dmg file, double-click its icon to mount the CD-ROM image on your desktop. Then copy the entire Voyager 4.5 folder from the CD-ROM image to the /Applications folder on your hard drive.

Instructions for Windows users

The Windows version is an executable installer file. After downloading the .exe file, double-click its icon to launch it, then follow the installer's instructions on screen.

You must run the installer executable from an account with Administrative privileges, or it will not work! To do this, log out from Windows and log in again as Administrator, then run the installer program again. If you are still having trouble, contact your system administrator for help.

Problems with the Downloads?

If you have problems downloading these files, please check to make sure that the exact size of the file you've downloaded (in bytes) matches the file sizes specified above. If they do not match, the download was incomplete or corrupted. Send e-mail to support@carinasoft.com, let us know which version you need, and we'll try to send it back to you by email.

If you have any other questions, comments, or problems with the installation, please don't hesitate to send us an e-mail, or call us during West Coast business hours at +1 (925) 838-0695. If you find any bugs that are not addressed in this release, please tell us!

Release Notes

We welcome your input! If you find a bug, or have a suggestion for an improvement, please let us know. However, before reporting a bug, please check the list of "Known Bugs and Limitations" below - we may already be aware of the issue you've found. The following section lists the specific bug fixes and/or enhancements that have been made made in the current (and previous) releases of the program.

Release 4.5.7

Fixed problems with connecting to Orion and SkyWatcher telescope controllers. Fixed problem connecting to Takahashi telescope controllers with USB-to-serial adapters on Mac OS X. Fixed disabled GoTo, Align, and directional motion buttons for SkyTracker controllers in the Telescope Control panel.
Restored code which displays the current position angle and separation of visual binary stars in the "Physical" tab of the Info Panel.
The compass and altimeter displayed in the lower right corner of sky chart windows now update correctly if the chart is dragged while scroll bars are hidden.
A crash that occurred while displaying planet trails has been fixed.
If the "Correct for Atmospheric Refraction" option is turned on in the "Precision" dialog box, the refracted horizon line now appears at the same location as the standard horizon line.
Descriptions for all Constellations, all Messier objects, and a few others, have been updated; Messier 40 and Caldwell 100 have been added to the database. A few common names for deep sky objects have been added and/or corrected; duplicate entries for NGC 7582 have been removed.
The Mac version is now built with Xcode 3.2.2. Dropped support for Mac OS X 10.3.9; the required minimum Mac OS X version is now 10.4. The Windows installer is now built with InstallShield Express 2009.

Release 4.5.6

Improved compatibility with Astro-Physics GTO telescope controllers. Fixed communication problems with Sky Commander and clones, and Tangent Instruments-based encoder systems.
Fixed problem with GoTo commands not being properly formatted for original Celestron NexStar 5 & 8 telescopes. With other Celestron telescopes, using the directional arrows no longer causes the telescope to stop sidereal (RA) tracking.
Digitized Sky Survey images now fade gradually in and out of view.
The Import Files folder now contains a description of the Voyager 4.0 - 4.5 import file format, as a PDF file.
Improved descriptions for the brightest and best-known Messier objects. A few minor corrections and additions have been made to other object descriptions as well.
Fixed a number of graphic "glitches" that occurred when correcting for refraction: planet & moon shadow phase areas, Moon orbits, planet paths, trails, and drop lines are all now drawn correctly with refraction turned on. Centering on planets with refraction on now centers the correct position.
The computation of Delta-T now uses the Stephenson & Houlden 1986 algorithm, as with versions of Voyager prior to 4.5.5. This makes no difference for years after 948 AD.
The full date and time (not just time) is now put into timestamps in QuickTime movies.
In the Opposition Dates planet report, the constellation in which a planet is said to be is now correct.
A few redundant asterisms (e.g. The Baseball Diamond = Great Square of Pegasus), as well as a few objects which are not really asterisms (e.g. the Pleiades, the Southern Cross) have been removed from the Asterisms list.
The most current asteroid orbits are now imported from the Minor Planet Center. ADS, Hipparcos, and Tycho catalog numbers have been added for a large number of double stars which were missing them. A few hundred duplicate deep sky objects in the database have been cleaned up.

Release 4.5.5

Added support for Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and Windows 7 in the registration code.
Added remote telescope control via TCP/IP, and ability to accept remote control connections via TCP/IP. Voyager can now act as a WiFi-to-serial relay, allowing telescope control from our iPhone application, SkyVoyager. It can also use our forthcoming SkyFi wireless-to-serial relay to control a telescope wirelessly.
The Align command is now enabled for Celestron telescopes running NexStar protocol version 4.1 and higher. The "Send Time" and "Send Location" commands are enabled for Celestron telescopes running protocol version 2.3 and higher.
Fixed a problem which resulted in the chart being re-centered on a random location while double-clicking the sky with the default mouse action set to zoom the sky chart.
When the "Correct for Atmospheric Refraction" option is turned on, in the "Precision" dialog box, the altitudes for alll objects reported in the "Object Info" window is now corrected for refraction. In addition, if the chart is using Horizon (Alt-Azimuth) coordinates, objects are now drawn at their apparent (refracted) positions, rather than their true (geometric) positions.
Fixed a bug which sometimes prevented an object's description from appearing in the Object Info panel. Added and/or updated descriptions for 36 more stars, and corrected numerous spelling/grammar errors in all descriptions. This brings the total number of star descriptions to 508, and the number of deep sky object descriptions to 514. Every Caldwell object now has a description.
Much better map of Mercury, created by Steve Albers, using MESSENGER data to fill in most parts of the planet not observed by Mariner 10. This new Mercury map has twice the resolution of the previous version.
A few corrections to the basic stellar and deep sky object data: Marsic is Kappa Herculis, not HR 7008; Thor's Helmet is NGC 2359, not NGC 6451; NGC 6451 is the Tom Thumb Cluster.
Fixed crash in the Windows version when exporting an ephemeris as a text file.
Proper motion values for stars are now shown correctly in the Info Panel when the "Proper Motion" correction option is checked in the Set Precision... dialog box. Binary star system component separations and position angles are now given for the current date in the Physical properties tab of the Info Panel.
The Mac version is now built using XCode 3.1.3.

Release 4.5.4

Added support for Celestron CPC series telescopes and SkyWatcher SynScan telescope controllers. Coordinates from these telescopes are now sent and recieved for precession epoch j2000 instead of the current epoch, resulting in higher pointing accuracy than previous versions.
Slew rate slider in the Telescope control panel is now working correctly for Meade telescopes.
Fixed communication problems with AstroPhysics GTO controllers. For Takahashi mounts, added dialog to confirm whether or not the telescope is the west side of the mount at startup.
After disconnecting the telescope, Voyager no longer removes the lock and sets the sun as the locked object, unless the chart was previously locked on the telescope.
The maximum number of asteroids, comets, and spacecraft that can be installed at once has been increased from 16,384 to 32,765. in the Mac OS X version, the list boxes in the display > Asteroids and Comets dialog and Tools > Select Asteroids and Comets dialog now correctly display the names of all asteroids (up to 32,765) which are currently installed. On Windows, only names of the first 4096 installed asteroids/comets/spacecraft are displayed; this is a limitation in our third-party Windows UI toolkit, which we are desperately trying to work around.
Ability to add images to the User Pictures has been restored, in both the Mac and Windows versions. Images must be in JPEG format (not PICT), and have the extension .jpg in their filename; otherwise, this feature now works as described in the user manual. An updated ReadMe file and a few new images have been added to the User Pictures folder.
The "next image" and "previous image" arrow buttons in the image window now properly slideshow through the correct set of images: the images of the selected object if the image window is showing an image that was clicked in the Info Panel, and the images in the currently-selected image gallery group if the image was clicked in the Image Gallery window.
Registration is now required in order to display full-sized images in the Image Gallery and in the Info Panel's "Images" tab.
Reopening settings files containing an Observing List no longer causes the program to crash.
When you right-click on a planet, the contextual menu that appears now contains items that let you show the planet's major moons, minor moons, moon names, moon orbits, and moon shadows.
When a moon's shadow passes across a planet, or vice-versa, that shadow is now always drawn, regardless of whether or not the planet's (or moon's) shadow cone is turned on. Eclipses and transits do happen, whether we like them or not! The "show shadow cone" option now shows the planet or moon's umbral shadow cone, which is a mathematical construct that is not actually visible.
A bug with drawing Sun and Moon glow circles which caused a crash under certain circumstances has been fixed.
In the preferences dialog, Chart tab, the sky chart zoom factor can now be set from 1.0 to 3.0 as advertised, without an error message.
When selecting the Julian calendar system in the "Set Time" dialog, Voyager now properly shows that selection after hittining the OK button and reopening the dialog.
The Full Screen button in the Display Panel now works correctly in the Mac version. Full screen display is not yet implemented in the Windows version.
Fixed possible crash in Mac OS X version registration code which determines system serial number.
Window menu items which select Panel windows (and their keyboard command equivalents) now bring those windows to the front of all other panel windows, in addition to just making the panel window visible.

Release 4.5.3

Removed the erroneous beta version expiration message from the Mac OS X versions.
When the "Auto" time update option is turned on in Startup file, the time now stays properly synchronized to the computer's system clock after the program launches.
Removed startup check for the Voyager 4 DVD-ROM, which caused an unnecessary error message on some Windows computers.
The "Open Clusters" checkbox in the "Deep Sky" display options dialog now works properly in the Windows version.
Fixed communication problems with AstroPhysics GTO controllers. For Takahashi mounts, added dialog to confirm whether or not the telescope is the West side of the mount at startup.
Updated the deep sky database using data from the latest (31 Dec 2008) Principal Galaxy Catalog. This fixes some mis-identications and removes an erroneous cluster of bright galaxies in Eridanus.
Fixed problems in importing data for asteroids with numbers greater than 100000 and/or semi-major axes greater than 100 AU from MPC orbit files.

Release 4.5.2

Fixed problem with finding times of lunar eclipses in the Conjunction Search dialog box.
The Windows version can now correctly export TIFF and JPEG files.
When saving a settings file with the Windows Shell "hide file extentions for known file types" option turned on, the horizon image file path is now saved correctly.
The Deep Sky magnitude up/down buttons in the Display Panel are now working correctly.
The "Go-To" and "Align" telescope commands in the right-click menu should now function correctly. "Flip Horizontal" and "Flip Vertical" commands have been added to this menu.
In the Planet Report, precession is now used properly when listing the equatorial positions of the planets.
Custom labels for hidden solar system objects are now drawn in the correct position.
Preferences for Angle and Time formats are now used more consistently throughout the program.
Fixed problems with Takahashi telescope control: arrow buttons and stop buttons in Telescope Panel should now function properly; Send Location and Send Time Telescope menu items are now enabled. Latitude and Sidereal Time are sent to the Temma controller when communication is established.
The "demo" telescope interface is now fully functional. Registration is now required in order to connect to a real telescope.
When downloading import files, Voyager now properly handles HTTP redirect responses, and lets you continue downloading files if a particular file fails to download.
The on-line registration code has a longer timeout, to avoid "unable to connect to on-line registration" errors, and now defaults to retrying rather than displaying the register-by-phone dialog.
In the Windows version, error message dialog boxes can no longer inadvertently be moved behind the application's main frame window.
Graphic artifacts when drawing the Info Panel's tab control in the Mac version have been removed. In both the Mac and Windows versions, the Description tab now always appears when selecting an object that has a description.
The Jupiter map has been modified so that the Great Red Spot appears near its current (2008) longitude of 130 degrees, producing more accurate GRS transit times.
With the "Auto" time button turned on in the Time Panel, simulated sky chart times now stay in sync with the computer's system clock.
When drawing the Earth without a textured surface image, the Earth's night side shading is now drawn properly when the Earth's "Show Phase" option is turned on.
A potential crash in both the Mac and Windows versions when drawing horizon, planet disk, or constellation figure polygons has been fixed.
A problem with setting the screen gamma table to uninitialized values on program exit has been fixed.
Data for the as-yet-unnamed irregular outer moons of Jupiter and Saturn has been added to the program, bringing the total solar system moon count to 180. Incorrect values for moon rotation periods have been fixed. Improvements to orbit drawing code have been made.
A few new-and-improved settings files have been added. Performance problems in the Windows version have been addressed.

Release 4.5.1

Improved stellar and deep sky data:

Created a new option in the Preferences dialog, under the File tab, to pre-load data files at program startup. This will be OFF by default, allowing faster startup times and lower memory usage, but somewhat slower performance later. Turn this ON to pre-load all data files at startup, which will result in longer startup times and higher memory usage, but faster performance on machines with lots of RAM.
New bright star data file, based on version 5 of the NASA SKY2000 Master Star Catalog, with RECONS and SIMBAD data added for the 100 nearest star systems. Bayer latin letter star identifiers and Flamsteed numbers missing from SKY2000 (e.g. b And, 82 Eri) have been added from the Hipparcos catalog. Missing and/or incorrect variable star and multiple star identifiers in SKY2000 v5 have been fixed, using data from the latest GCVS and WDS catalogs. A few incorrect proper names (e.g. Shaula, Lesath) have been fixed, and many additional proper names have been added from research on Jim Kaler's STARS, Wikipedia, and other sources.
Voyager now includes vastly improved "plain-English" descriptions of nearly 500 star systems, developed in conjunction with professor Jim Kaler at the University of Illinois. Click on nearly any bright star, and select the "Description" tab in the Info Panel for a few paragraphs on that star's cultural and historical significance, astrophysical properties, evolution, and planetary system (if known). The deep sky object descriptions have also been "beefed up" for several constellations, including Virgo and (our favorite) Carina.
The new RECONS data on the 100 nearest star systems is also included in a Voyager import file (Nearby Stars.txt) in the "Import Files" folder. This information is now included in Voyager's basic stellar database.
This version includes a new deep sky object data file. The new file includes the latest open cluster data from the Wilton Dias 2008 catalog, and adds 132 clusters (e.g. Collinder 399 and M 73) from his 2002 catalog which were removed from the latest catalog. Galaxy data has been updated from the 2008 version of the Principal Galaxy Catalog, with missing information filled in from the earlier 2002 PGC. Distances for PGC galaxies in the Local Group (e.g. the LMC, SMC, M 31, M 32, M 110) have been corrected using values obtained from other sources. All objects in the NGC and IC catalogs have been revised with data from Wolfgang Steinicke's 2008 Revised NGC & IC lists.
Voyager should be better at identifying deep sky object images embedded in sky chart windows when the mouse is moved over them (Auto Identify) or clicked on them, even which deep sky object outlines/symbols are turned off.

Improved telescope communication:

Added support for the Orion Sirius and Orion Atlas Go-To mounts, and the Orion Intelliscope encoder mounts. Added support for iOptron SmartStar mounts.
The Windows version should now find be able to find COM ports numbered higher than COM9, enabling telescope communication with a StarryNight BlueStar bluetooth adapter. Telescope commands will now be retried if the first attempt fails, resulting in more robust communication and fewer "Can't communicate with the telescope" errors.
Enabled the "Double-click to slew option" for ServoCAT Argo Navis telescopes. When connecting to BBox encoder-like systems, the encoder count is now sent to all models except the Orion SkyWizard.
If red screen mode is turned on, the screen is restored to normal display when the program exits.

Improved settings files:

Added ability to read Voyager II settings files. Not all Voyager II settings can be interpreted correctly, particularly spacecraft orbits, variable stars, and some issues related to planet scaling. However, most settings should be imported correctly.
Fixed crash in importing Voyager III settings files. Fixed problems with importing object references from Voyager 4.0 settings files. Fixed problems with interpreting Flamsteed numbers for stars in constellations with two words in their names (e.g. "46 Leonis Minoris").
The "Open Settings" dialog box in the File menu now defaults to the "Settings Files" directory. The "Save Last Settings" option in the "File" tab of the "Preferences" dialog now correctly saves the last program settings as the Startup file so they will be restored the next time the program starts up.
The "Overwrite Startup File"? warning message no longer appears if no Startup file is actually present.
Custom labels which are attached to moving objects (such as the Sun, Moon, and Planets) should now stay attached to those objects when they move.

Improvements to Panel Windows:

In the Mac version, Panel window locations outside the main monitor can now be saved in settings files (including the Startup file); this allows panel windows to be positioned on secondary monitors.
In the Windows version, the Info Panel now properly resizes when minimized. Problems with the Info Panel appearing with its title bar outside the application's main frame window (and hence immovable) have been fixed. Flickering and spurious bold re-drawing of description text in the Info Panel in the Windows version has also been eliminated. Problems with the description text scroll bar in the Info Panel resetting to the top have been fixed.
In the Windows version, the Display Panel is no longer moved to positions outside the application's main frame window when it is maximized/minimized running on a second monitor.
Fixed crash in Windows version caused by deleting items from the Observing List panel.
Settings files containing descriptions will show Banner window when opened. Settings files containing observing lists will display Observing Panel when opened.
Fixed problems with displaying the Clock hand positions not matching numerical time displays when switching between Local Time and Universal Time in the Time Panel's time menu.
Increased the number of user-defined locations from 32 to 1024.
New Mac2Win DLL resolves problems with minimize/close buttons appearing incorrectly in resizable panel windows (Info Panel, Planet Panel) in the Windows version.

Improvements to graphics and computation:

Mouse wheel zooming support: you can now zoom in and out on the centered part of the sky chart window by using the mouse wheel (if you have one) - just like with Google Maps, or some other astronomy programs.
Fixed problems (particularly in non-Sterographic projections) where sun glow was not being drawn to the limb of the Sun, leaving a black "ring" around the Sun's disk. Also fixed problems related to drawing the limb of very enlarged planets/moons whose centers are offscreen.
The IAU standard expression for local sidereal time as a function of universal time has been modified to cap quatratic and cubic terms with respect to time at +/- 10,000 years from the present epoch (J2000). The correct expression for LST as a function of UT at times farther out than this is really a matter of speculative guesswork, but this modification at least prevents confusing situations like the Sun appearing below the horizon at 10 AM in the year 76,000 A.D.
Daylight Savings Time in Australia for 2008 and after now ends the last Sunday in March, instead of the first Sunday in April.
Experimental option for showing the Earth as viewed from 200 miles up in the main sky chart window while dragging your location on the Earth Map in the Location Panel. This is to provide a sensation of motion and make more clear what is happening in the sky when you change your location on Earth.
When using a path to show an object's apparent motion across the sky, and simultaneously moving around the solar system, Voyager now corrects the path for your new position, instead of leaving an abrupt discontinuity in the path.

iOptron GOTONova VCP Drivers

Voyager 4.5.1 now includes support for the iOptron mounts with GOTONova 8402A and 8402G controllers. These controllers contain their own built-in USB to Serial adapters, based on the Silicon Labs CP2102 USB-to-UART chipset (8402A) or the Prolific Technologies PL-2303 USB-to-serial chipset (8402G). In order to get Voyager to communicate with these controllers, you'll need to download and install the appropriate "Virtual COM Port" (VCP) driver software for the CP2102 and/or PL-2303 chipset. You can get the latest versions from the Silicon Labs or Prolific Technology web sites. Here are some copies that we've made available on our site:

Operating System	Controller	Download	Size	Description
Mac OS X 10.4 - 10.6	8402A	CP210x VCP driver v2.1	10,485,760 bytes	Compressed disk image (.dmg)
Mac OS X 10.4 - 10.6	8402G	PL-2303 VCP open-source driver v0.3.1	126,715 bytes	Compressed disk image (.dmg)
Windows XP - 7	8402A	CP210x VCP driver v5.4.29	6,891,472 bytes	Windows executable (.exe)
Windows XP - 7	8402G	PL-2303 VCP driver v3.2.0.0	2,065,563 bytes	Windows executable (.exe)

Also, make sure that your GOTONova controller is running the latest iOptron firmware. Check the Support section of iOptron's website to download the latest firmware version for your controller.

iOptron 8402 "G" users please note: Incredibly, as of June 2010, the latest PL-2303 driver versions on Prolific Technology's website appear not to work on either Windows Vista - 7 or Mac OS X 10.4 - 10.6! The latest PL-2303 driver which is known to work on Windows Vista - 7 (both 32- and 64-bit editions) is version 3.2.0.0. Mac OS X users have reported much better luck with the Open Source PL-2303 USB to Serial Driver for Mac OS X than the official Proflic Technology version - so those are the files we've included in the table of links, above.

In addition, the 8402G controller does not appear to support the command to change its speed, so the directional-motion arrows in Voyager's telescope control interface may not appear to work. This seems to be a bug in the current version (080801) of the 8402G firmware, and we are currently working with iOptron to resolve this issue. In the meantime, you can use the "speed" button on the 8402G hand controller to change the motion rate.

Vixen StarBook Notes

Voyager 4.5.6 now includes support for Vixen mounts with StarBook controllers. These controllers use an ethernet interface and TCP/IP for communication. For Voyager to communicate with these controllers, you'll need to connect an ethernet cable from the ethernet port on your Mac or PC to the LAN port on the StarBook. You can also use a wireless router, like an Apple AirPort Express, for a wireless connection to the StarBook.

This document from Vixen explains how to set everything up. You also need to configure Voyager to communicate with the StarBook controller by a TCP/IP connection to 169.254.1.1:80.

Asteroid, Comet, and Satellite Data

This section contains links to downloadable asteroid, comet, and satellite data files; and instructions for how to import them into Voyager 4.5. You can do this if Voyager 4.5's updates function can't download these files automatically. But this should not be necessary under ordinary circumstances - we reccommend using Voyager's automatic updates function whenever possible.

Asteroids and Comets

To make sure that Voyager 4.5 provides accurate positions for asteroids and comets, you should use the most current orbital elements possible. The following diagram illustrates the difference between the actual position of the asteroid Ceres, and its position predicted with an out-of-date set of orbital elements (specifically, its orbital elements for 1997 Dec 18.0). As you can see, the error grows dramatically after about 1 year from the epoch of osculation. By two years, Ceres is more than 600 arseconds from its predicted position - 1/3 the width of the full moon!

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics provides sets of current orbital elements for asteroids and comets suitable for loading into Voyager 4.5. The following files are currently available. Please note that the links below connect directly to the files on the CfA's web site; to view the original page which contains them, click here:

Observable comets
Critical-list numbered asteroids
Distant asteroids (including Centaurs and trans-Neptunians)
Unusual asteroids (including Near Earth Objects)
Bright asteroids at opposition in 2010
Bright asteroids at opposition in 2009
Bright asteroids at opposition in 2008
Bright asteroids at opposition in 2007
Bright asteroids at opposition in 2006
Bright asteroids at opposition in 2005
Bright asteroids at opposition in 2004

To import these files after you've downloaded them, start Voyager 4.5 Select the File menu > Import submenu > Asteroid Orbit File or Comet Orbit File command, and open the file you just downloaded.

Please note: importing the asteroid data may take a few minutes - there are over 400,000 known asteroids as of this writing (October 2008)! Comet data should only take a fw seconds to import. Also note that the MPC asteroid orbit files do not contain diameters or color index values. Thus, Voyager 4.5 will report diameters and color indices for asteroids imported from these files as zero or unknown. This is not true of the Lowell Observatory ASTORB database (see below), which does contain asteroid diameters and color indices.

The Lowell ASTORB Database

Voyager 4.5 can also import asteroid data from the Asteroid Orbital Elements Database (ASTORB) provided by E. Bowell of Lowell Observatory. Dr. Bowell provides two versions of the ASTORB database. The complete version contains data for over 400,000 objects and is more than 100 MB in size. The smaller version contains only additions/changes that were made in the previous 30 days.

The links below connect directly to files on Lowell Observatory's web site:

Complete ASTORB Database, in GZip-compressed format.
Complete ASTORB Database, uncompressed.

After you've downloaded one of these files to your computer's hard disk (and decompressed it if necessary), start Voyager 4.5. Select the File menu > Import submenu > Asteroid Orbit File command, and open the file you just downloaded. Voyager 4.5 will then import the file into its object database.

Please Note: We suggest that you delete your existing asteroid data before you import the complete ASTORB database. (Voyager will ask you if you want to do this when you import the file.) This will force Voyager 4.5 to completely rebuild its own internal asteroid database, instead of trying to search for/update existing asteroids - a task which could take an extremely long time for the complete 400,000+ object ASTORB file!

Artificial Satellites

It's important to use up-to-date elements to make accurate satellite predictions - orbits no more than 30 days out of date are reccomended. For artificial satellite observers, Dr. T. S. Kelso's CelesTrak.com web site is a good source of current orbital elements. The following links will allow you to download the latest satellite orbit files directly from CelesTrak.com:

All of these files are in standard NASA/NORAD two-line-element format and can be imported into Voyager 4.5. To do so, download these files to your computer's hard disk, then start Voyager 4.5. Go to the File menu, and select the File menu > Import submenu > Satellite Orbit File command. Voyager 4.5 will then import the satellites in that file into its database.