The settings window:
For Lunar Calculator to work correctly for your location, you will need to enter your home latitude, longitude, altitude, and time offset from UTC. You can save several different settings, for example: your backyard, your out-of-town observatory, and a geocentric one for ephemeris comparisons.
It is probably simplest to modify the values and click on "Save as". Otherwise, if you want to start with a blank set, click on the down arrow 
and choose "new".
Enter your lat/lon in degrees, minutes, seconds. Longitude is either E (east) or W (west), latitude is N (north) or S (south).
Choose metres or feet. When you select metres (feet), then other Lunar Calculator output is in metric (imperial).
This is the offset of your time zone from UTC. Lunar Calculator does access your timezone from the Windows Local Settings, but you should to check this. NOTE: western hemisphere is negative!! If there's one thing that will give you bizarre or strange results, it is not getting this correct. Eastern standard time (EST) is -5, but daylight time (EDT) is -4. You can enter in part time zones, but please use a point (.) not a comma (,) as the decimal separator. If you want to force the computer to use a different time zone, then make sure under the Edit menu, that "Use PC Timezone" is not checked.
Indicate your preference for time output throughout Lunar Calculator. Even if you choose UTC, you still must enter your time zone offset, because Lunar Calculator reads your system time, then adds the offset to create UTC in the display. For example, if you choose Local time, and click on "Current Time" in the main window, you will see the current time used. If you choose UTC and you are at 21:00 EDT July 23, then Lunar Calculator will place 01:00 July 24 in the datetime box.
Most users will not need to modify this number. Precise calculations of planetary positions require a uniform time scale. UTC depends on the rotation of the Earth, which varies. In order to avoid this, astronomers calculate positions with this uniform scale, then convert to earth time at the end. The uniform scale currently in use is TD (Terrestrial Dynamical time). To me TD seems to be a poor choice of terms, but it wasn't my selection to make! To convert between TD and UTC, astronomers use the following equation:
DeltaT = TD - UTC
In 1950, DeltaT was +29.1 seconds. By 2003, DeltaT was 64.184 seconds. Because Earth is generally slowing down, astronomers typically need to add 1 additional second to DeltaT every year or two. These "leap seconds" are usually inserted in the last minute at the end of June.
If you know DeltaT (it is given in Sky and Telescope and the RASC Observer's Handbook) or if it is within a few years of 2004, then you should use "User specified". "Calculated" will use the formula in Jean Meeus' "Astronomical Algorithms" for dates removed from 2004.
TD is usually expressed in the Julian Day (J.D.) system. However, we must be very clear to differentiate between the UTC Julian Day, and the TD Julian Day, so in Lunar Calculator, I use JDE (Julian Day Ephemeris). You can switch to it through the menu "Utilities --> Switch to JDE" when you want Lunar Calculator to produce output to compare to ephemerides. Check the JDE section for more information.
USGS relief uses the United States Geological Survey shaded relief "texture map". Clementine uses imagery from the spacecraft mission (with full Moon illumination), but takes longer to simulate. "Wire" is the simplistic, but faster, line drawing. The newest feature in Lunar Calculator v2.0 is the "USGS-Clementine blend" which can be triggered from the view menu. In the settings menu, leave the selection as "USGS relief".
You will likely choose the topocentric view of the Moon because you want to simulate what you see "cent-ered from your topo-graphic location". Remember that when you compare someone else's image of the Moon to your view that there will be a difference caused by this topocentric perspective: someone observing south of you will see more of the Moon's southern area and will see less of the Moon's northern area compared to you.
A geocentric view is fine if you are using Lunar Calculator to demonstrate something to observers around the world. I have tied it in with an orthographic projection, which is used on most lunar maps. More information can be found here: Geocentric-Orthographic.
Libration is the up-down side to side apparent rocking motion of the Moon in its trip around the Earth.
Click on the button to find the color that you prefer. Darker colors are better against the lighter lunar background.
If this is off, then Lunar Calculator will skip the processing required to generate the grid system. You will be able to generate it on demand from the main window.
Although you can change the orientation at any time via the View menu, you will probably want Lunar Calculator to start up the same way each time. Make your choice here:
Your choice of earthshine is purely for aesthetics. If you put in true values it would be too faint to see; the eye has a remarkable dynamic range at the eyepiece, much more so than a computer screen. You can change this at any time in the main window. Just remember to save settings on exit.
In wire view, craters are always plotted. In realistic mode, you can turn the craters off so that the image is "clean" after each calculation. Should you wish to plot the craters, they can be generated at any time from the main window by clicking the craters button.
In the lower left of the Settings window, there is a corner of an image including Tycho. By moving the slider or clicking on the up/down arrows, you can modify the brightness of the craters to suit your taste.
As you move the mouse pointer/cursor over the Moon, there is a continuous readout of the lat/lon at the upper left. When it comes close to a crater, the crater's name, position and size is displayed at the upper left. You can set how close it has to be to the crater center before it displays. If you have "Floating label" turned on (factory default), the name will show up next to the crater.
In order for the system to work smoothly, the label and crater identification function on a subset of the database. For example, if you have the whole Moon visible, the database will identify craters down to a diameter of about 100 km (60 miles), and ignore the tiniest ones. If there is a feature on the Moon you are interested in that is not automatically identified, do a right-click to search the complete database.
The concept here is straightforward: as you zoom in, you should see more detail, and as you zoom out only the larger features are plotted and labeled.
If you want more craters to be plotted at a particular zoom, then decrease the size. e.g. if at low power you want lots of craters, then change the value of 100 to 60 or 70. Unless you have a specific reason, leave the smallest craters plotted at 0.0. Objects like landing sites for spacecraft have a diameter of zero in the database. Lunar Calculator plots these with a radius of 1 pixel no matter the zoom level.
Certain small craters, like Kepler and Aristarchus are always plotted because they are so prominent.
Zoom and magnification are tied together. Zoom of 1 = 50x; Zoom of 3 = 150x; Zoom of 10 = 500x.
The standard view shows the lat/lon grid at 10 degree intervals. You can choose whether to always stay this way (fixed) or to have a denser network of lat/lon lines as you zoom in (automatic). Latitude and longitude intervals can be specified separately.
In the view pictured above, the fixed interval values are greyed out because the choice is set on automatic. To change the fixed values, click on the "Fixed interval" circle at top left. The fixed values become black, while the automatic interval values are turned light grey. You can specify decimal values if you wish, e.g. 0.4 degrees between grid lines. In this example, at magnifications between 400 and 599.9, the grid will have a 2 degree interval. It may take you a few iterations to find the values that you prefer.
The default is a one pixel wide set of grid lines for latitude/longitude. You can increase this if you wish.
The startup low power view of the Moon can be modified to have more or less dark space around it. If you set this to 2.0 for example, then the view will be two times wider than the Moon.
By clicking on the buttons you will see a standard pop-up dialog box allowing you to choose the color for these individually. Don't forget to save when you exit!
There are other settings you can change directly from the Edit menu:
If you save settings on exit, Lunar Calculator will start up with the choices you make here.
"Crater label" menu item toggles on/off the "floating" crater label 
.
"Switch to decimal degrees" or "Switch to deg min sec" allows you to toggle between the two modes.
"Zoom Factor x" lets you modify the amount of zoom that happens when you click the icon 
on the toolbar at top. The zoom out button has the same factor but opposite.
"Custom Zoom Group" lets you toggle the panel on/off: 
"Modify Custom Zoom In" and "Modify Custom Zoom Out" lets you specify each zoom factor individually. Note that you must leave one space between each value, and you must have ONLY 3 values.
"Modify image size" lets you specify the size of the lunar window. This is useful if you want it an exact size for saving, or copying and pasting into a different application or document. You can also ask for a huge image size, to a maximum of 2000x2000 pixels, bigger than most screens as of 2003.
There are three settings relating to libration searches which are found only that window. These are:
More detail can be found in the libration search section.
You can adjust the overall contrast and brightness of the image. In addition, you can apply a variation in brightness in the terminator region, to simulate how the brightness decreases towards the terminator. To modify and save your preferences in the configuration file, you must use the contrast/brightness window.
This setting turns on or off the dynamic shadow modification of the USGS texture map. Most of you will probably want this on, as it provides a more realistic simulation - however, it does take more computation, so it is a bit slower to display.
Most users will want this item checked on. This way you don't have to worry about changes from daylight to standard time. However if you are using Lunar Calculator to simulate views from distant locations you do not want to use the current PC timezone, but the one appropriate for the location. Make sure under the Edit menu that "Use PC Timezone" is not checked.
You can choose to automatically label the large scale features or the numbers of the IKW Lunar Program. Click to adjust your favorite font and color.