Celestia Forums

(I posted this under "celestia add-ons", then realised it should probably go in this forum, so i deleted and reposted here. Sorry if you were viewing it there and suddenly find it's over here...)

Hey all,

I am trying to draw a fictional planet around a real star (specifically, Procyon A).

I've started by copying the Earth file, and changing "Earth" to "blah" and "Sol" to "Procyon A".

I've tried it a few different ways now, and Celestia will not draw the planet in. None of the searches i made on this topic brought up any troubleshooting; as far as i can see, everyone else finds it easy to do this!

These are the methods i've tried; all have the same result (i.e. nothing):

1) Making no changes to the Earth file except the planet name and star name,
2) Removing the custom orbit line and putting in orbital details from a different fictional planet,
3) Trying 1) and 2) again, but varying the star name to synonyms of Procyon A (which i took from Celestias nearstars.stc file)
4) Trying 1) and 2) again, but using the whole text of the star name as it appears in the nearstars.stc file (i.e. "Procyon A:Elgomaisa A:ALF CMi A:10 CMi A:Gliese 280 A")
5) Trying it with the star name "37279" (which appears beside Procyon A's entry in the nearstars file),
6) Trying it with the star name changed to just "Procyon" (the barycentre name), and inserting the line "OrbitBarycenter "Procyon"" (American spelling and everything...) into the file.

Any thoughts?

See Selden's List of Resources for Celestia which is located HERE.
You need to change and/or add an SSC file and perhaps an STC file.
Have a look at the link provided above.

Thanks, Brain-Dead Bob

If Celestia finds an error in an SSC file, it will not process anything from the point of the error. There is a chance (pretty likely) that you have a syntax error in the SSC file that is causing Celestia to reject it.

Also, for Celestia to recognise the file, it has to be placed into the correct location and Celestia configured to read that location. By default, that is the "extras" directory.

Here is a brief addon that works. PLace this in the Extras directory, run Celestia, and go to Procyon A. The planet "test" should be selectable as a planet around that star.

Ahh bdm, you are a lifesaver!

It turns out that it was because the *.ssc file was not in the "extras" directory; i just had it sitting in the "data" directory. Isn't it always something so close to ones nose that one cannot see it...?

For some reason i remembered putting add-ons into the data directory, but now i see none of them are in there at all. Must have misremembered.