Additional Files for Starry Night Backyard ESD
Starry Night ESD is the version of Starry Night Backyard that is downloadable over the Internet. The CD-ROM version of Starry Night Backyard comes with 1 million stars. If we were to ship the entire CD-ROM version of Starry Night Backyard over the Internet, the download would be about 40 MB. This would take several hours to download with a modem. To make the ESD version faster to download, we do not include the dimmer 9th to 11th magnitude stars. These dim stars are only visible with binoculars or a telescope.

This page allows owners of Starry Night Backyard ESD to download the extra files needed to add to the ESD version in order to get the full 1 million star database of CD-ROM version. In order to use this update, you have to know how to move and copy files from one location to another on your computer.

Follow these steps:

  1. Download the file from the SPACE.com ftp server at:

    Extra Stars for Macintosh (23MB)
    Extra Stars for Windows (23MB)

    The minimum download time with a 56k modem is about an hour, and it will take longer if there is heavy Internet traffic. The download will be much faster with a cable modem or ADSL.

  2. The downloaded file is in a compressed format. You need to unzip or unstuff it. After the download and unstuff or unzip procedure, you should have a folder with the following files:

    HT (10-14).ssd
    HT (9-10).ssd
    HT Index.dat
    SAO Index.dat

  3. Find the "Starry Night Backyard" folder on your hard drive. On the Macintosh, this folder is located wherever you dragged the disk image of the Starry Night Backyard download. On Windows, this folder is inside the "Program Files\Starry Night" folder.

  4. Inside the "Starry Night Backyard" folder, look for the folder "Starry Night Backyard Data". Move all of the files you downloaded and uncompressed onto your computer into the "Starry Night Backyard Data" folder. Move these 4 files over:

    HT (10-14).ssd
    HT (9-10).ssd
    HT Index.dat
    SAO Index.dat

That's it! Note that you should not notice much difference in the way that Starry Night Backyard runs after this, until you zoom in, at which point there will be many more dim stars visible.

Still want to know more?

Feel free to send us an email if you have any questions that haven't been answered here. We also welcome your feedback and suggestions.