Version 4.2.1 - 6th October 2020
The following information is intended for existing users who are already familiar with AstroGrav and want to quickly find out about the main changes.
Version 4.2.1 of AstroGrav is an upgrade containing a large number of improvements and bug fixes. It is a free upgrade for customers who have already purchased a license for AstroGrav 4, so that all you need to do is to download Version 4.2.1 and use it in place of your old version. If you have any problems with this new version, please don't hesitate to contact us so that we can help you out.
Version 4.2.1 of AstroGrav has the following new and improved features.
Importing Objects
Version 4.2.1 of AstroGrav includes the following improvements to importing asteroids and comets with the Edit / Import Objects... command.
- The four MPC asteroid choices have been replaced with the two MPC Asteroids and MPC Asteroids (Daily) choices.
- A Sort Designations By Time checkbox has been added to the asteroid and comet tables. This allows you to sort designations by time of discovery instead of lexicographically.
- The Magnitude Slope column has been added to the comet tables. This only contains meaningful data in the case of the MPC Comets, with the JPL Comets containing a default value of 4.0.
Time Units
Version 4.2.1 of AstroGrav includes the following additions to the time units.
- The mean solar days and sidereal days units have been added, with the mean solar days unit being identical to the old days unit.
- The julian years, gregorian years, sidereal years, tropical years, and anomalistic years units have been added, with the julian years unit being identical to the old years unit.
Other Improvements
Version 4.2.1 of AstroGrav also has many other minor improvements and bug fixes, including the following.
- A bug has been fixed that could cause view windows to draw extremely slowly at high magnifications on Windows. This bug only manifested itself when constellation names were displayed.
- The user interface components that allow you to specify an object now show all objects that match whatever you've typed in a scollable popup menu. In particular, the popup menu now contains all objects in the simulation before you type anything.
- The dents that could be observed between adjacent objects in a view window have been eliminated.
- A bug has been fixed in the Edit / Add Object... command that caused the object editor to be displayed after a non-existent parent had been specified.
- The unwanted and useless alpha component has been removed from the RGB color chooser.
- A tool palette no longer moves when its owning window is resized.
- A bug has been fixed in the View/Trajectory Size... command that caused weird error messages to be displayed.