Celestia Forums

Hi folks, I've downloaded the Mariner 2 add-on for Celestia 1.3.2. The 14 December 1962 flyby of Venus is not even close: on that date Celestia gives a distance of about 0.5 au, whereas it should be around 5000 km. Do I need updated xyz coordinates for Mariner 2? Or could it be another problem? Than...

Hello everyone, This is following up on a previous thread on the Voyager 2-Triton encounter: I was wondering whether new CustomOrbits or EllipticalOrbits are available yet for the Galilean moons, which (as previous posters have noted) are rotated by about 20 degrees from their actual positions. Happ...

OK - nothing to do then but sit tight and wait. Thanks for the help!

Alex

Grant, how do I fix the 20-degree error in the ascending nodes, then? I'm not sure whether my orbital data for the Galileans is up to date or not. For example, here is what I have for Io; should my AscendingNode be 292.981 or 332.981? Or is there an entirely different value I can edit? "Io" "Sol/Jup...

Thanks, Selden. The other obvious problems are the V1 and V2 flybys of Jupiter; in both cases the moons are not in their correct positions, but the planet itself looks fine. I wonder whether anyone else has encountered this and tried to put together some samples for those events as well. Cheers, Alex

Grant, that looks much better; now I can reproduce Voyager 2's departure photo of Triton superimposed on Neptune's limb on 31 August. I may try downloading some samples of Neptune + moons from JPL and see if the results are similar.

Alex

Selden, do you get the elliptical orbital parameters simply by typing the body name at the telnet prompt (i.e., Horizons>TRITON)? Or is there a command I'm missing that will give further details?

Thanks!
Alex

Selden, I was using three different sets of definitions for Neptune, Triton, and Voyager 2 (i.e., Neptune pre-Voyager, then neptune-v2.xyz samples, then Neptune post-Voyager). Where, exactly, can I go to download the xyz coordinates at those times for the other Neptunian moons? I don't know how time...

I've been playing around with the Beginning and Ending directives like you suggested. Basically, I edited solarsys.ssc so that Neptune "ends" precisely when the samples begin, and then "begins" again when the samples end; the same with Triton and with Voyager 2 itself. This seems to introduce more c...

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but... Are the samples, on the one hand, and the solarsys.ssc file on the other, mutually exclusive? That is, is there any way to fold the samples into the solarsys.ssc file in a such a way that you can run a "seamless" simulation that is (relatively) correct both a...

Selden, I downloaded the .ssc and .xyz files you mentioned - but what directories should they go in? I put the .ssc files in /extras and .xyz files in /data, but that results in two sets of bodies when I run Celestia.

Thanks,
Alex

I tried Grant Hutchinson's revised data but that brings Voyager 2 only within about 75,000km. Maybe I'll try the samples - thanks.

Alex

I tried Grant Hutchinson's revised data but that brings Voyager 2 only within about 75,000km. Maybe I'll try the samples - thanks.

Alex

Thanks - I'll give it a try!

Alex

Hello everyone, I am using 1.2.5pre7, have installed the Voyager spacecraft and have been enjoying the views. However, I notice that Celestia does not reproduce Voyager 2's very close (40,000km) flyby of Triton; the distance is off by about 4x. Is there updated trajectory or orbital data available t...