I’ve been using Curriculum Simulation’s “Starry Night” (Digital Download Version 6) software since I bought my Celestron C6-N telescope in 2007. There were one or two minor upgrades but when I changed my home PC, I noticed the the re-installation of version 6.3.5 wasn’t downloading updates, specifically for C/2020 F3 NEOWISE which was just starting to make its appearance. After much Googling I discovered that Curriculum Simulation are no longer releasing updates to Version 6, so I ended up having to upgrade to Starry Night Complete Space & Astronomy Pack 8, normally US$34.95 but only $24.95 (£20.60) as an upgrade to an existing licence.
First impressions are that the display is slightly clearer than Version 6, although the redesigned user interface will take a few moments to get used to. Hopefully I’ll be able to post more details in due course but I will mention one thing whilst I have my hands on the keyboard. Starry Night now has the ability to ‘Backup Data to Cloud’ and also save information on LiveSky, which allows you to share data with another device or even with other users, as long as they’re using Curriculum Simulation’s software. Because of this I’ve removed SkyMap (which I always found perfectly adequate) from my Samsung tablet and installed Curriculum Simulation’s SkySafari instead. Whether LiveSky turns out to be useful I don’t know, but I’ll post a few lines when I come to some sort of conclusion!
