Starship Asterisk*

The 2015 APOD Wall Calendars are available here: http://friendsofapod.org/?page_id=42 .

Enjoy! If you have any comments about the calendars or would like to report any errors you have found on a calendar, please reply to this post. Below is a thumbnail image from one of the calendars.
- RJN for the APOD Team

It's tough to read the text on the page featuring "Globular Cluster M15 from Hubble" in the nebulae calendar. Yellow isn't very legible against the stars, or very legible against anything in general.

By the way, since it is only September 2014 at the time of this writing, it is still possible to download a 2014 APOD Calendar to get you to the end of this year. These are available here: http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=32474 .

- RJN

What software was used to create the calendar?

dwilson wrote:What software was used to create the calendar?

Different software was used for this year's calendars than for last year -- and who knows about next year! Please forgive the dodge -- we don't always disclose our secrets. We hope you like the calendars!

- RJN

RJN wrote:Different software was used for this year's calendars than for last year -- and who knows about next year! Please forgive the dodge -- we don't always disclose our secrets. We hope you like the calendars!

- RJN

One must have some secrets. Without them, where is the intrigue?

I do like the calendars. I have downloaded all the versions. Now I must convince the 'decorating committee chair' that I must have a wall of calendars.

What I really want is to hang the glorious APOD calendar on my wall, printed in big wall calendar size, in high quality. I've been trying to dig around on the web to see what it would cost me ... and I can't even find anyone who'll do that! FedEx/Kinkos and a couple of other places will print it at 8.5x11.

Has anyone else here tried to print out wall calendars? If so, how'd you do it?

Amazing. Beautiful. Great work!!!

I have printed the calendars at Kinko's following the specific recommendations. But 8.5 x 11 is way to small to enjoy the beauty of these calendars. In addition, when they were printed it is too dark and a lot of the detail is lost. I went back to Kinko's and they tried printing lighter on a different printer but then you lose the pictures on the dates. Anyone have suggestions?

Hello Everybody!

I try to print the 2015 calendars and I tried 2 printing companies in the city were I live (in Europe), but I encounter difficulties, as they cannot print it as it is on the pdf file, and they need to configure the whole calendar for a quite big price....Do you have any instructions how this should be done? Please note also that the printing paper in Europe is a bit different then the one in US.

Looking forward to any good advice!
Thank you!

This may not be the answer some would like about printing out the calendars but it's what I've done in the past and achieved reasonably good results. I work in GIMP since I don't have Photoshop. I won't give a detailed answer as the process is simple to understand.

I size the individual images/pages so they're basically 4X the size of an 8 x 11 paper and print 1/4 of the image on each sheet. I include a bit more than 1/4 of the image so I can overlap the sheets to give a smooth look to it. Using a good quality paper glue (in moderation so none oozes past each sheet), I attach the four sheets to a heavy paper, like card paper as suggested to use. Once I have all the calendar pages finished and completely dry, I have Staples bind them for me.

It doesn't take any real skill to do this - just some preparation, forethought, good quality printer paper (we've got a colour laser printer too) and care. I regularly check the paper as it dries on the heavy card paper, smoothing out any wrinkle that might appear. When decently dry, I weigh the page down to dry perfectly flat. You can even iron the page on a low setting with a tea towel covering it (no steam!).

Maybe too much work for some but I enjoy creating things so I enjoy doing this. And it feels satisfying to know you made it yourself!

Thank you Jude for the explanation! I thought it will be easier than this, but it's worthy to try it

Hey Jude- (Sorry. Couldn't resist.) I think if I tried that, I'd just make a mess of it. I've found out I can't even easily resize the pdf up to a larger size. I don't have Adobe Acrobat, and what I do have (gimp...) just chokes on it. (I have a core i7 with 8GB RAM and bags of video memory, so I thought that wouldn't be a problem.)

Next time, dear APOD, can you please please provide us with an option for a larger format pdf?

Searching around, the answer is, of course, simple. You use Windows (I use Debian, but have Win7 in a vm) and Adobe Acrobat Reader. Tell it you want to print it out, select .xps as the format so it prints to file, select the larger page size you want (tabloid in my case), say "fit to page", and under an advanced tab somewhere, select lossless compression of graphics (default is medium jpg), and interleaving "on" (default is off). Sorry this isn't more exact, but I'm doing this from memory and it's not too good.... You'll need to hunt around for those options in the print wondow because they're buried. Then you right-click the resulting .xps file and select "convert to pdf". And at least on the monitor it looks like it should work nicely. I'll try printing out at the shop tomorrow and report back how it actually worked. wish me luck.

A wonderful calendar....
Half world start the week on Monday.
It would be nice to have two options:
starting the week on Sunday, but also in Monday.
Any way, congratulations !

(Update to my previous comment:) The result came back, printed on good but not superb paper, and it worked very well. Good resolution, colors came out well. So that works.

What is the cost of the printed calendar?

cost of calendar wrote:What is the cost of the printed calendar?

There is no printed calendar. You take the free file and either print it out on your own equipment, or take it to a printing service (such as offered by many office supply stores).

Chris Peterson wrote:
There is no printed calendar. You take the free file and either print it out on your own equipment, or take it to a printing service (such as offered by many office supply stores).

You can order printed calendars: http://www.apodcalendar.com/

bystander wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:
There is no printed calendar. You take the free file and either print it out on your own equipment, or take it to a printing service (such as offered by many office supply stores).

You can order printed calendars: http://www.apodcalendar.com/

Well how about that. Very convenient. If that's what the poster was referring to, I'll amend my answer: click on the order button and the prices are presented.