Speaking of comets...

[Bat]

Has anyone seen Hale-Bopp anywhere?

[Thilo]

Yep .... if it was really hale bopp, but it must've been a while ago.

[Bat]

I was hoping to throw it in my solarsys.ssc file, but I'm not quite up to the task of figuring out what some of the critical values are. So far all I have is:

Code: Select all

Period 2380 # Original orbital period before
            # entering planetary system = 4206 years
            # Future orbital period after
            # exiting planetary system = 2380 years
   
Eccentricity 0.995112269
Epoch 2450571.5000
Radius 20.0
RotationPeriod 11.47
Albedo 0.04 #this one's just a guess

but even with the enormous amount of data available, I'm still not remotely close to knowing what the following values are for Hale-Bopp:

AscendingNode
ArgOfPericenter
Inclination
SemiMajorAxis
MeanAnomaly


Any help would be appreciated.

[selden]

A full set of orbital elements for Hale-Bopp (comet 1995 O1) and a current ephemeris are available on the Web at
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/Ephemeri ... 995O1.html

The current elements have a smaller eccentricity, it seems.
Here they are in units that Celestia understands:

EllipticalOrbit
{
Period 2502.405 #calculated: (q/(1-e))**1.5
PericenterDistance 0.924553
Eccentricity 0.994984
Inclination 89.4443
AscendingNode 282.2315
ArgOfPericenter 130.7493
MeanAnomaly 0.0
Epoch 2450538.5026
}

I hope this helps.

[Bat]

Bless your soul! Thank you!

[selden]

You're quite welcome.