Welcome to Distant Suns
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Welcome to the Distant Suns website. If you are new to Distant Suns, check out the About section. If you’re looking for high quality iPhone software for the whole family, click any of the icons on the right. If you have any bug reports (er “unanticipated features”), first check the FAQ as they may already be there with a solution. Otherwise check the bugs column below.
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In honor of one of the most beloved and sicking of all Easter temptations, Peeps, the local newspaper is having a contest of Peep inspired dioramas. Here is my entry, “Open the Peep-bay doors Hal!”
I was going to fill up my full-scale 2001 helmet replica with them and title it “My God it’s full of Peeps!” But this one was too perfect and only needed two of the things. So, what am I to do with 3 dozen extra Peeps now?
To see some other entries in the contest, go here.
Distant Suns 3 and the “new” iPad
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For those who have just received or are expecting their little bundles of iPad 3 joy, Distant Suns 3 works very well on it except for one toolbar button that is the wrong size, and some text on the Whats Up? that needs a little bit of tweaking. Those fixes should be sent to Apple in the next couple of days.
Other than those, it looks really great, hard now to even go back and look at the ‘2.
Distant Suns-Event issues
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A few folks have reported problems with the new event feature. Turns out, if there are no events in your area it goes bye-bye. Should be fixed and uploaded tomorrow, but will take another few days to get approved by Apple.
Distant Suns 3.3 released
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I am pleased to announce that Distant Suns 3.3 has just been pushed to the Appstore. This has many UI enhancements, lens flare and integration with the Night Sky Network. The NSN is a service co-sponsored with NASA and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific to bring you a monthly calendar of space and astronomy related events in your area (US only for the preset though). Enjoy the new release, and please leave a review if you have time. And here is the official press release.
Venus in Daytime
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You may have heard that it is possible to see Venus during broad daylight if you know exactly where to look. And as it is near it’s maximum brilliancy and near a more visible object, today was a perfect time to amaze your friends with your eagle-sharp eyesight. The moon serves as a marker of sorts to bring you to the vicinity, while a pair of binoculars will help you zoom in on the target.
Today, Venus was about 5 moon diameters away in the 5 o’clock position. I parked myself in the shade to avoid direct sunlight, found the still fairly young moon, and was able to quickly find Venus. First with my 20x Celestron binoculars to align things with the tip of a tree branch, then with my naked eye. When you know just where to look it’ll pop out at you.
Through my scope it was very clear, and actually better then at night when it is almost too bright to see without glare washing out any details.
Look ma! I am on Chinese TV!
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A couple of weeks ago I participated with “Hack the Future,” in San Jose. HtF brings computer professionals together with a bunch of kids to let them get a better understand of programming, robotics, hardware and so on. You can see me at the same table as Al Alcorn, inventor of Pong.
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For anyone wanting to get the eBook edition of OpenGL for iOS, note that the publisher inadvertently sent out a black&white copy, and not the color version as intended. Yes, it is really lame to have a book on GRAPHICS (!) in black&white. Note however that the version ODT (On Dead Tree) has to be in b&w just because ODT color books are way too expensive.
I’ll update this when the color version is ready, which should be any day.
Now it can be told…
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The reason why Distant Suns has not received too many upgrades over the past 6 months has to do with Apress contacting me to write two books. One on programming OpenGL on iOS and the other on Android. Over 6 months and countless Red Bulls later, the iOS version has just be released.
Pro OpenGL ES for iOS is now available from Amazon.
Now to complete the Android one, along with a nice Distant Suns enhancement at the same time.
More astrophotography
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Pretty good seeing tonight, as opposed to last night which was awful. This is my favorite phase of the moon, as it highlights Copernicus, Clavius and Tycho. This was shot completely handheld so I could use my 35 mm eyepiece that gave me a fighting chance to capture the entire disk in one shot. The Magnilux didn’t come with the larger bracket needed for the 1.25″ eyepiece barrel. I should get that shortly so I don’t have to shoot 40 images just to get one or two good ‘uns.
Gibbous moon
Astrophotography with an iPhone 4
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I recently received a Magnilux adapter that mounts an iPhone on a telescope and have had fun seeing on what kinds of photos it can manage. So last night I took it out and mounted it up on my Celestron 6SE. And below are the results, at least when talking about the moon. Not bad. eh?
1st Q moon with iPhone 4 and Celestron telescope
Tbe photo above was with a 25mm eyepiece, while the second was using a 15mm. I wanted to use my 35mm which would make it easier to capture the entire disc, but as it turns out I needed to order the larger bracket separately.
Southern limb of a 1st quarter moon
Distant Suns is primarily produced by a group of one, Mike Smithwick, the original author and designer,under the informal name of "First Light Software".
Mike is available for contract work in C/C++/Java, focussing primarily in the 3D arena but can also handle server side jobs, SDK and tool development,
and much much more!