Meteor Shower Guide 1.2

The latest version of Meteor Shower Guide has been submitted to the App Store. Awaiting approval it should be released by the end of the week. So what’s new?

Calendar Events: on each shower detail page is an Alert button that when tapped inserts an all day event into the default Calendar. This event has two alarms set, one and two days ahead of the meteor shower peak day.

Catalog rollover: at the end of the meteor Catalog list is a new item that increments the meteor shower list to the next year. This is handy and also eliminates the need, as far as I’m concerned, to save a starting calendar year for the app.

IAU Numbers: the meteor shower data set has been updated to include the International Astronomical Union (IAU) meteor numbers. While reviewing all the data I found two showers had incorrect IMO codes, this was corrected.

These new features combined with a few internal bug fixes brings Meteor Shower Guide development for the iPhone to a stable point. The next big phase is the design and creation of an iPad specific version that takes full advantage the screen size. But before that even gets started its almost time for the Okie-Tex Star Party!

Update 09/14: Apple approved version 1.2, its available in the app store now. Everybody should update their copy.

Warmup : C/2009 P1 Garradd

Comet GarraddA faint little comet has been cruising through the milky way the past weeks getting just a tad brighter each passing month. Pictured on the right is Comet Garradd taken Sunday night from my backyard, click image to enlarge or click here for big version. This image is cropped from original size taken with my 40D using a 200mm lens. A crisp cold front moved through over the weekend clearing the night sky.

Its about 17 days before the Okie-Tex Star Party, time to tune up my gear. Everything went pretty well so I’m fired up and ready for dark skies in western Oklahoma.