Voyager 4 Updates

This page contains links and instructions for downloading the latest updates to Voyager 4. To install these updates, you must already have Voyager 4 release 4.0 or higher installed on your computer.

Click on one of the following links to download the appropriate version of the Voyager 4 updater application:

Instructions for Mac OS X users

This package updates any previous release of Voyager 4 to release 4.1.0.

The Mac OS X versions of the update are distributed as compressed disk image files. After you've downloaded the disk image file, double-click its icon to mount the image on your desktop. Then double-click the Voyager 4 Updater package icon inside the disk image, and follow the updater's instructions.

Make sure you install the update in the same folder where you installed Voyager 4! For example, if you installed Voyager 4 in /Applications/Voyager 4, make sure you also install the update in /Applications/Voyager 4!

Instructions for Windows users

This package updates any previous release of Voyager 4 to release 4.1.0.

The Windows version of the update is an executable file. After downloading the update, double click the .exe file and follow the on-screen instructions to update your existing Voyager 4 installation.

Make sure you install the update in the same directory where you installed Voyager 4! For example, if you installed Voyager 4 in C:\Program Files\Carina Software\Voyager 4, make sure you also install the update in C:\Program Files\Carina Software\Voyager 4!

Problems with the Download?

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 4.1.0

• Fixed problems with computing times of astronomical dusk and dawn in Time Panel.
• Time steps that are multiples of a year are now treated as exact multiples of 365 days, not multiples of the Tropical year (365.2422... days).
• The Info Panel now displays transit times of objects to the nearest second.
• If a chart is locked on an object, clicking on the chart no longer causes the lock to be lost.
• Built Mac OS X version with Xcode 2.5.

Release 4.0.8

• Fixed communication problems with Meade telescopes on Windows.
• Fixed problems with sun/moon rise/set times that could amount to errors of several minutes.
• Fixed problems with saving the ephemeris of the wrong object in Export Ephemeris dialog.
• Fixed incorrect daylight savings time for parts of southern Florida when the "Automatic Daylight Savings Time" correction was turned on. Added automatic daylight savings time correction for New Zealand.
• The Voyager user manual now has Windows XP/Vista screen shots in addition to Mac OS X screen shots.
• The asteroid, comet, and spacecraft data files have been updated to contain more current orbital data for these objects.
• Added M24, the Sagittarius Star Cloud, to deep sky object database. We have associated M 24 with NGC 6603 (a small open cluster within the Sagittarius Star Cloud) because it is closer to the center of M 24 than IC 4715, the other object sometimes identified as being M 24.
• In the "Solar System" window, the checkboxes for asteroids and comets now work properly. The Solar System window can now be printed correctly.
• In the "Solar Neighborhood" window, stars can now be selected by clicking on them.
• Fixed problems with displaying planets when view is mirror-imaged horizontally and/or vertically.
• Built Windows version with MS Visual Studio 2005. The Mac OS X version is now built with XCode 3.0.
• The planet Uranus is now displayed with a texture-mapped ring system.
• Several cosmetic problems in Location Panel in the Windows version have been addressed.
• In the Coordinates panel, the name of the currently-selected object, and its separation and position angle from the previously-selected object, are now properly displayed.
• The Windows Voyager 4 QuickTime Link DLL (Voyage4QT.dll) now has a VERSIONINFO resource to indicate its version number (4.0.4 currently).

Release 4.0.6

• Mac OS X minimum system requirement increased from OS X 10.2 to OS X 10.3.
• Windows installer built using InstallShield Express 2008 for better Windows Vista compatibility/awareness.
• On Windows, error messages at program startup caused by searching for non-existent CD-ROM drive letters have been eliminated.
• The Windows version can now read GSC2 files directly from the Voyager 4 DVD. On both Mac and Windows, GSC2 files are now preferentially read from the hard drive first, then from the DVD.
• In the "Display Constellations" dialog, constellation group popup menu item separators now appear correctly in the Windows version.
• LibTIFF code has been updated to version 3.8.2, allowing Voyager 4 to properly interpret alpha masks in TIFF files created by Adobe Photoshop.
• Problems with some scroll bars in the Windows version have been addressed.
• Default fonts have been changed to Tahoma on Windows XP and Segoe UI on Windows Vista for better conformance to Microsoft User Interface guidelines.
• In the Windows version, drawing in most windows is now double-buffered, eliminating a "flickering" or "pulsating" appearance when animation is turned on and windows are rapidly redrawn.
• Miscellaneous time delays have been removed and performance improvements have been made to provide generally faster and smoother animation.
• Improvements have been made to the code which draws planet and moon shadow cones, and comet tails. Comet tails are now not drawn when the "show comet tail" option for particular comets (in the "Asteroids and Comets" display options dialog).
• Horizon coordinates and the Earth's rotational axis are always computed assuming precession to the current chart date. The precession epoch specified in the "Set Precession" dialog now applies only to Equatorial and Ecliptic coordinates.
• This version contains updated asteroid, comet, and spacecraft orbit data. When importing asteroid/comet/spacecraft data, Voyager now asks if you wish to delete your existing data first.
• Widened Planet Panel to show longer asteroid/comet/spacecraft names and asteroid numbers. Location Panel now correctly updates information to show information for the front Sky Chart window when a new Sky Chart window becomes active.
• Panel windows now hide themselves when a non-Sky-Chart window becomes activated, and show themselves when a Sky Chart window becomes active again.
• The settings file description "Banner" Panel window now contains a scroll bar. Miscellaneous problems with settings files have been addressed. Updated and improved settings files are included. The program now displays a warning message before overwriting the Startup settings file.
• Labels for various reference points are now drawn correctly when the corresponding boxes are checked in the "Reference Lines" display dialog.
• For list boxes in the "Planet Display", "Asteroid & Comet Display", "Chart Fonts", and "Select Asteroids and Comets" dialogs which allow multiple items to be selected, the correct options are now modified after clicking the dialog's "OK" button.
• In the "Preferences" dialog, the behavior of the Right Ascension and Declination format buttons in the "Angle" tab has been fixed.
• The "Set Location" dialog now saves the seconds portion of latitude and longitude for user-defined locations.
• The "Conjunction Search" dialog now finds conjunctions more accurately and reliables, and saves/restores control settings properly after hitting the "Set Time" and "Cancel" buttons.
• The "Satellite Map" window was erroneously displaying a "Satellite orbit data is no longer valid" message even if the data was valid. This has been fixed; also the Satellite Map window is now automatically redrawn after impoting new satellite orbit data.

Release 4.0.5

• First release of SkyGazer 4 for Windows and Mac OS derived from the Voyager 4 code base.

Release 4.0.4

• First public release of Windows 2000/XP/Vista version. SkyData files are now in Big-Endian format for Intel CPUs. Many other internal changes for Windows compatibility.
• New sky background cursors for improved visibility, especially on Windows.
• Fixed initialization problem in the "Find and Center..." dialog which prevented preview charts of the found object from being drawn correctly. Fixed problem which prevented searching for galaxies by IRAS number.
• Fixed communication and computational problems with Encoder systems. Fixed Telescope button in Display panel not being enabled when telescope is connected. Fixed enabling/disabling of Slew, Stop, Align buttons in Telescope Panel.
• Implemented localized Daylight Savings Time rules for USA+Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Europe, Russia, and Australia. Rewrote Automatic Daylight Savings Time correction code to guess which set of rules apply, based on user's longitude/latitude.
• Fixed crash in Location button in Info panel when setting location to a Star Path on Intel Macs. when selecting Solar System/Star Path locations in Location Panel, the field of view is now locked on the home object (as in Voyager III). Fixed logic for dealing with locking the field of view on the home object when at +/- 90 degrees latitude or zero distance from home object.
• Fixed "Orbit" button in Info Panel; fixed crash in drawing binary star components with zero separation.
• Fixed problems with importing newer ASTORB.DAT asteroid database files from Lowell Observatory.
• Fixed user-reported errors in simulating the long-term precessional motion of the Earth's rotational axis; Earth planet texture and map drawing code now uses the correct long-term precession routines.
• Settings files can now be opened by double-clicking their icons in the Windows shell.
• Deep sky object images can now be auto-identified without deep sky object symbols having to be turned on. Added deep sky object labels to the "Magnitude Limits" dialog.
• "Meteor Showers" dialog and "Time Step" dialogs are now fully Carbon/Aqua compliant.
• Added Sun to Earth Map and Satellite Map. Fixed crash in Satellite Map if Time Panel animation is turned on and no chart windows are open. Fixed bugs with clicking on user-defined locations and displaying user-defined location coordinates in the "Set Location..." dialog box.
• Fixed incorrect planet separations from sun in Planet Report window.
• Removed grow limits on Image Gallery, Image, Image Text, and other auxiliary windows; fixed scroll bars in Image Gallery and Planet Panel code; converted Image Gallery images to JPEG format.
• Fixed location of dates/times in Data Bar.
• Mac version (Universal Binary) built with XCode 2.4.1.

Release 4.0.3

• Intel Mac version could generate a corrupted Startup settings file after clicking "OK" in the "Set Location..." dialog due to incorrect byte-swapping in the code that saves user-defined locations. This is now fixed.
• Now sends correct time to Meade telescopes during Daylight Savings Time when using the "Set Telescope Time" command (previously, time was off by one hour).
• Planet/Asteroid/comet/spacecraft paths are now turned off properly when the "Draw Path" button is left unchecked (previously paths would also be drawn if the "dates on path" option was checked). If dates are shown on the path and the currently-selected time step indicates a spacing of less than one day between date marks, the date marks are now shown with the local time-of-day.
• Fixed crash on Intel Macs when drawing planet drop lines with polygon fill (i.e. drop line spacing of zero).
• In the "Field of View" dialog, you can now set a field of view width angle less than 1 degree.
• Buttons selected in the Display Panel now correctly match the display buttons in the upper right section of individual Sky Chart windows.
• The "Auto" button in the Time Panel now behaves as it did in Voyager III. Specifically, it increments time forward for the front Sky Chart window in real time, at the interval specified in the "Auto Update" field in the Preferences dialog. In previous versions of Voyager 4, Auto Update simply kept the front Sky Window synchronized to the computer's system clock.
• After selecting "Link Chart Centers" in the "Chart" menu, all chart windows are now redrawn to match the field-of-view direction of the frontmost chart window. Chart center link is also enforced when this item is selected and the chart center is moved using the arrow keys.
• After selecting "Link Chart Times" in the "Chart" menu, the simulated times of all chart windows are now reset to match the time of the frontmost chart window.
• Mac version (Universal Binary) built with XCode 2.3 instead of XCode 2.2.1.
• Miscellaneous internal changes for Windows compatibility.

Release 4.0.2

• Voyager 4 is now a Universal Binary application. It will run natively on Intel-based Macintosh computers.
• The Redshift Distribution window now displays galaxies from the NGC-IC.vdat file (in the SkyData folder). It does not use data from the obsolete Z catalog file (mzcat.bin); running the Voyager 4.0.2 Updater will automatically delete that file.
• The mean daily motions of objects whose orbits are entered manually using the Orbit Editor dialog are now computed correctly. (Previously, mean motions of objects entered this way were not being computed, causing their positions in the sky to be computed incorrectly.) This is not a problem for mean motions and positions of object imported from text files.
• For Meade telescopes, the sign of the target declination coordinate is now being sent to the telescope correctly. Previously, the sign of the declination was not being sent, causing the telescope to slew to coordinates only in the northern celestial hemisphere. This was not a problem for Celestron telescopes.
• When importing asteroid/comet/spacecraft orbits from a text file, Voyager 4 now updates the "installed" selection of asteroids/comets/spacecraft, in addition to those in the SkyData files Asteroids.vdat, Comets.vdat, and Spacecraft.vdat.
• The slide show button in the Image Gallery picture window now works properly. Previously, the picture failed to update when this button was pressed; now it updates every five seconds.
• Full Screen mode is now working properly. Put the front sky window into full screen mode by clicking the "Full Screen" button in the Display Panel; restore the window's normal size by clicking the button again, or by pressing the Escape key.
• Voyager 4's QuickTime movie playback window should now work properly. When making a movie, QuickTime files are now saved using JPEG compression instead of RLE compression, resulting in much smaller movie file sizes. You can now record multiple QuickTime movies simultaneously in different sky chart windows.
• Performance in the Conjunction Search and Planet Report windows has been greatly improved. Now, light time is temporarily turned off while calculating planetary positions in these windows, resulting in much faster computation and display. The corresponding loss of accuracy is negligible for the precision shown here.
• Position computation for artificial earth satellites has been accelerated by caching satellite-specific parameters used by the SGP4/SDP4 orbit models, instead of recomputing them every time the satellite's position is updated. Position computation for comets and asteroids has been accelerated, particularly for objects with high-eccentricity orbits.
• Voyager 4 can now import asteroid/comet files from the Minor Planet Center (MPC) at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astro-Physics (CfA). The MPC's complete MPCORB database can be imported, as well as the selection of freely-available of asteroid and comet orbit update files on the MPC's website.

Release 4.0.1

• Telescope communication problems for non-Meade telescopes have been fixed. The telescope does not spontaneously disconnect after the first position update.
• Clicking on the telescope display and rotate buttons in Display Panel does not crash the program if the telescope is not connected.
• The home star for star path locations is now correctly saved to and read from settings files.
• The full version of Voyager 4 should be able to understand object references in settings files generated by the Demo version, and vice-versa.
• The object type for the Sun is displayed as "Star" instead of "Planet"; its perihelion date is not listed (as opposed to being displayed as garbage data).
• After creating a new asteroid/comet/spacecraft via "Define Orbit", display parameters for the object were not getting created, hence the object was not visible and could not be made visible via the Planet Panel. This is now fixed.
• Fixed horizon and milky way drawing overflow problems when using 360-degree projections (Equidistant, Mercator, etc.) in small fields of view.
• The "Conjunction Search" dialog uses the start/end years as entered in the dialog correctly.
• The "Define Orbit" dialog now properly remembers the epoch (date) of orbital elements as entered.
• The maximum number of installed asteroids/comets/spacecraft has been increased from 1000 to 16384 - hopefully, in a future release, the solar system object table can be made unlimited.
• If the Display Panel buttons for planets, asteroids/comets, and spacecraft are turned off, orbits for those objects are no longer drawn.
• When viewing from Solar System locations, the offset ecliptic longitude is now sun-relative, rather than absolute (as it was in Voyager III) - for example, an offset longitude of 180 degrees always places you between the object and the Sun; an offset longitude of 0 degrees places you behind the planet from the Sun, etc.
• Saturn's shadow on its rings is now being drawn to the correct length.
• Voyager 4 should not crash after deleting the first user-defined location, and then pressing the "OK" or "Cancel" button (in the Set Location dialog box). The longitude and latitude of user-defined locations should be displayed correctly.
• Default Auto Update time is now 1 second instead of 6 seconds. (You'll need to change this in the "Preferences" dialog if you have already created your own Startup settings file.)
• If the "photorealistic" horizon display option is selected, but the horizon image file is missing, Voyager 4 draws an opaque (Voyager III-style) horizon instead of a transparent horizon.

Known Bugs and Limitations

• Pictures may not be displayed for certain objects in the Info Panel even though pictures are actually present for those objects. (You can still access all pictures through the Image Gallery, however.)
• Clicking on the "Center" button for an Image Gallery picture may occasionally center the wrong object in the sky chart.
• Certain sections were omitted from the printed user guide but included in the on-line PDF versions. These sections include documentation on the Preferences dialog, instructions for how to create custom horizon panoramas, and directions how to add pictures to the Image Gallery. Certain screen shots in the manual may differ slightly from the actual appearance of the program.
• In the Windows version, Full Screen display for Sky Chart windows is not yet working.
• In the Windows version, all modal dialog boxes with "Cancel" buttons should have the close (X) box in the title bar enabled, but do not.
• The list box in the "Observing List" Panel window has some cosmetic problems.

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This page was last updated on 18 March 2008.