Celestia Forums

It helps a ton. Thank you again for being so patient with me. I always forget that most of the equations I run across assume a star of 1MSol, and adjustments have to be made if that's not the case. Does calculating the orbital period/distance of fictional planets (whether they orbit a star with mass...

Yes, that's very helpful! The equations make sense to me and I can see how you got them. I like when math makes sense to me. (But then, who doesn't?) Thank you for explaining them. I appreciate it a lot. Binary stars that already exist in Celestia's data files have information about the stars' separ...

Noob math question... Period 1138 # sqrt ((a1+a2)^3) SemiMajorAxis 5 # mass ratio 0.05:1.04 (m2:m1) ..... Period 1138 SemiMajorAxis 104 # mass ratio 1.04:0.05 (m1:m2) What mathematical operation gives me a number I can use from the mass ratios? I feel like I should know how to do this, but dividing ...

Okay, cool! Thank you :3

They're not required? What about for fictional stars? The walkthrough in "A (not so) Brief Introduction..." says that Celestia needs to identify stars with HIP numbers, whether they're real (up to something in the 100-thousands) or fake (suggesting that fictional stars begin with the numbe...

Now for a new question topic: Is there a way to find out what fake HIP number Celestia uses for stars that don't have a real HIP designation? (Such as stars discovered with the OGLE or WASP projects, etc., or double stars in systems where the Hipparcos number is the same.)

I found the problem. I had a # where it didn't need to be ("500001 # "Eazurcha A:HZ 63996"). I am still a noob with Celestia. ._.; I've also been following the news on Hurricane Irene, and wherever you are in NY, Selden, I hope you're staying safe. It looks like a boatload of not-fun ...

When you provide a replacement Star definition, you have to include all of the Star's parameters in the new definition. The original definition is completely deleted. Unfortunately, unlike SSC defintions, there is no Modify statement for STC catalogs. So is there no way to rename members of a binar...

Thank you, Selden~~the altered code you provided makes both stars render in the proper place. I guess this means I have to calculate the actual variables for both stars of interest anytime I want to create a binary system, though. (At least I don't have to calculate ACTUAL star mass. It seems I can ...

I deleted the RA, declination, and distance codelines from the entries for Star A and Star B. Now only the barycentre has the 3 coordinates. My code is as follows: 500001 # Eazurcha A { ...orbital data... } 500003 # Eazurcha B { ...orbital data...} 500001 "Eazurcha A:HZ 63996 {" SpectralTy...

Yay, the brown dwarf companion is now rendering! Unfortunately, though I keep increasing the distance it's supposed to be orbiting around the system barycentre, it's still INSIDE the larger star (and exactly in its centre, at that). Do the RA/declination/distance for the two stars need to be differe...

The bigger problem I'm having at the moment is that my brown dwarf is waaayyy too big. Celestia tells me that its radius is 8.1 Rsol, which is nowhere near right. I tried changing its class from T1 to T6 (since I guess I've only ever seen brown dwarfs of class T6 or cooler in catalogues) and that ma...

After a whole bunch of tweaking (and making up absolute magnitudes that seemed to fit with the binary stars' stellar classifications), I ALMOST have it to work...the only problem now is getting the brown dwarf component to show up. I can select it and go there, it's just invisible. At first I though...

Ah, okay, thank you Selden... *looks* OH GOD MATH. Is now a bad time to point out I tried taking calculus 3 times at the university and never passed? ._.

Don't worry, reading it anyway xD I'm sure I'll figure it out.

Okay, now that I've got the basics down, I can get into the more specific questions. :3 So, I know how to make a star, and I know how to make a barycenter. I'm trying to make two stars orbiting that barycenter (using the format on the Wikibooks page), but there must be an error in my code, because I...

Ahhh, I see! *nodding* I guess that means I can just use the same .stc file to both place new fictional star systems and append fictional names to known stars. Now, as for the placement, you said that it's via the RA and declination (in other words, where they would appear as viewed from Earth). Is ...

If you expect to be wanting to share what you do with other people, you should define additional stars in STC catalogs, similar to what is done in Celestia for binary stars. See, for example, the catalogs data/spectbins.stc and visualbins.stc. Your own STC catalogs should be put in Celestia's "...

If I want to add additional names to known stars, would I do that in Celestia's stars.dat file? (I would make a backup first, obviously, which I will be doing anyway since I downloaded the additional stars addon John suggested :3)

Wow, it turns out it is VERY easy to add new stars (and planets). I had no idea it would be so simple, so thank you very much for the link :D Just one more thing I'm wondering, if I want to place stars in other galaxies, is there a more precise way than just setting a distance and then a RA/decl. th...

Awesome, another Celestia user that plays Mass Effect! xD I saw the creation date of this thread is over a year old, so I'm wondering if you've had a chance since then to work on a Mass Effect addon. I was looking for one, and the first hit on a Google search for "mass effect addon for celestia...