Dear Distant Suns user. We'll show you how to use Distant Suns to find the Moon and Spica as they occult each other. You can choose to see it in two ways....

The old fashioned way, looking at our screen shots below. Or you can see the whole still image sequence in a AVI movie. Be sure you have Windows Media Player, RealPlayer or another program capable of showing AVI movies installed.

CLICK HERE --> A movie guides you through the steps.. (9 Mb)

***STILL IMAGE SEQUENCE***

Point your mouse towards Tools in the menu and select CLOCK --> FREEZE.

By doing so, you prevent Distant Suns from constantly updating the sky and you will be able to better find your objects.

Now go to VIEW --> WHEN and WHERE and select it to open up the When and Where dialogue.

Below you see the "When and Where" window. Click on "TIME" to select "9". Go to "DATE" and select "JUNE". If "PM" is ticked, untick it like in our example, then click "TRY" and next "OK". The window disappears.

Next, go to PLANETS --> CENTER --> MAJOR PLANETS and click to open the "Center Planet" bar.

This is the Center Planet bar. From here you can center the planets in the Solar System or Hover over one of them, spinning the sphere around with your mouse. In our example, we just need to locate the Moon button to be able to click on it.

When you have found it, click it!!!

After you have clicked on the Moon button in the Center Planet bar, the Moon should now have been centered in Distant Suns. If planet names is turned on, it might be a bit difficult to actually read the names. In order to see more clearly, go to PLANETS --> NAMES and untick this option. You should now be able to read the name Spica just fine.

In our last example, zoomed in to about 30 degrees, you can now see the Moon as it is about to occult Spica. If you observe the Moon at a greater distance, you will notice Spica to be completely covered by the Moon.

Image credit:  Mike Smithwick/TwinLight Online