Celestia Forums

Hello. This is my first post here. Looking information for a conference, I've seen that on year 7541 Jupiter will occult Saturn. Celestia shows them very separated (Jupiter on Libra, Saturn on Gemini), and another programs (e.g. stellarium), although don't show the occultation, show a very close encounter. Why Celestia doesn't put both planets on the real positions? Could I be doing anyrhing wrong?

Thanks in advance. Sergio.

Celestia uses elliptical orbits for the planets after 4000 CE. While ellipses are much less accurate than the VSOP87 theory used for times closer to the present, they have the advantage of not 'blowing up' at times in the distant past or future. Based on your experiments, it seems that we could increase the range during which the VSOP87 theory is used, as Stellarium also uses VSOP87 for planet positions.

--Chris