Displaying stars in daytime Finder Chart

[theskyhound]

Hello Bob,

The finder charts are primarily meant for finding, so they accurately present what you will see to the eye, in your finding device and in your eyepiece. That includes the brightness of the sky, so you must have turned that off or you would see a bright sky. If so, I urge you to turn it back on. You do that via the Chart Preferences, Basic Style tab, set the background to Simple or Natural complex sky.

Sure, I do understand. However, as I initially explained, even with a bright daylight sky, I still see an open cluster being displayed as well. No stars, but an open cluster. In fact, zooming out, it appears all DSOs are visible. I presume this is just a bug then, albeit insignificant.

The polar finder uses these same finder charts. This feature is meant to be used at the scope in real time, so normally it would be dark and lots of stars will show. There normally isn't any point to using it during the day because you can't see enough stars to recognize the field. Can you even see Polaris during the day?

Since I am south of the equator, no chance! 
While I understand you have designed things like the polar finder with a specific purpose in mind, that doesn't mean to say that we users cannot find additional uses for things. For this specific example it would be great if you could implement a "ignore daylight" switch at some point in the future.

Thanks
Bob

Hello Bob,

I'm sorry, but I'm just not following you. I don't understand what you are trying to do. It would really help if you would explain it. You say that people may want to use a tool in a different way, but when someone tells me that, 99 times out of 100, there is already a different and better way to do it. So please explain why you are trying to use a polar alignment chart in daylight so I can better help you out.

Phil, no, you are quite wrong about the clusters. SkyTools does a full simulation in the charts based on what is visible. That includes everything, not just stars. But every simulation is limited by the data available and although I am not aware of such a problem, it is possible that a cluster could have a very bright, unrealistic, integrated magnitude associated with it. This could, under the right conditions, result in a cluster that was incorrectly calculated to be visible.

Bob, please advise me which cluster this is so I can have a look at it.

But then... on the other hand, Bob, you also said that all DSOs are visible? That just isn't right, not most of the time. Maybe you have something set incorrectly? Maybe in your location, light pollution, etc? If you have the sky background turned off then how do you know its really daylight? There are some special situations where you can force objects to be visible, but these require enabling settings that are turned off by default. At this point it would be best to send a screen capture.

Lastly, you appear to believe the polar finder chart won't work for the southern hemisphere, but in fact it does. That's why this feature starts with a choice of hemispheres...

Again, I think its time to tell me what you are trying to do so I can help you do it.