File Menu

The File menu includes the following options

• New Chart
• Open
• Save As
• Save Image...
• Close Chart
• Calendar
• Print
• Printer Setup
• Exit

The new V3 of Cartes du Ciel allows you to open different windows with separate sky charts. The advantage is that you can visualize at the same time charts for different locations, time or even display configuration.

After creating a new chart you can arrange them throgh the Window menu, maximize, minimize, close or even resize each chart by dragging the right and bottom edges.

This option allows you to open a previously saved sky chart with its own configuration of location and time

It saves the currently active sky chart into a file that can be loaded in the future with Open option

The active sky chart is saved as an image. It is possible to select PNG, JPEG or BMP format for the file

It will close the active chart in case you have more than one sky chart open

This function lets you know the astronomical phenomenon for a given time period.

You can select start date, end date and number of days between each calculation, and the time when position are calculated. By default the calculus are from current date for five days at 0h UT. Beware of the calculation time if too much date are selected.

It is possible to click the table to display the corresponding chart. The program shows a chart using the selected date and time, and centered on the concerned object. If the selected column contains the time for a specific event as the planet rise time or the twilight time, this time is used for the chart.

Twilight

This screen shows you the morning and evening twilight time for each date you select. Nautical twilight is when Sun is 12 degrees below horizon. Brighter stars are visible. Astronomical twilight is when Sun is 18 degrees below horizon. Sky is dark and all stars are visible.

Planet

Shows the position, magnitude, apparent diameter, illuminated fraction, rise, culmination and set time, and current azimuth and altitude for the planets, the Moon and the Sun for each selected date.

Comet

Shows the position, magnitude, Sun elongation, phase, rise, culmination and set time for the selected comets.

The elevation above horizon and azimuth at the twilight time are indicated to help observing comets near the Sun. This indicates if the comet is best on the morning or evening.

Solar Eclipses

All the information in this page comes from Fred Espenak, NASA/GSFC. You can visite his web site by clicking the large button at the top of this page. The list shows the Solar eclipses for the current century. This shows the date and time of the maxima, the availability of the detailed map, the type of eclipse, the saros number, the gamma value, the eclipse magnitude, the location of the eclipse maxima, the altitude of the Sun at this point, the path width in kilometer, the duration of the total or annular phase. See a detailed explanation of this values. The data from 1800 to 2100 are included, you can download additional data from the web page.

A mouse click on the list shows the eclipse from the curent observatory location. If you click on the Latitude or Longitude column, this shows the eclipse from the maxima location on the World. If you click the Map column this shows the detailed map for this eclipse if available.

Lunar Eclipses

All the information in this page comes from Fred Espenak, NASA/GSFC. You can visite his web site by clicking the large button at the top of this page. The list shows the Lunar eclipses for the current century. This shows the date and time of the maxima, the type of eclipse, the saros number, the gamma value, the magnitude of the penumbra and umbra, the duration of the partial and total phases. The data from 1800 to 2100 are include with the basic version, you can download additional data from the web page.

A mouse click on the list shows the eclipse from the curent observatory location as in Solar Eclipses.

Print screen contents to a selected destination. Printing can be done in colour as in the screen, in black&white or in reversed black&white (with black background sky). The orientation and the paper margins can also be selected.

Configures the printer to print the screen content. There are three options:

1. System Printer: It allows to configure the typical printer
2. Postscript: It allows to print to a postscript file. It requires having the Ghostscript and the GsView32 installed and correctly configured in the path. It will only work with version 7.xx of GsView32
3. Bitmap file: It allows to print the chart to a BMP file. It requires to configure correctly the path of MsPaint

Just that, exits the program Cartes du Ciel