Celestia Forums

Under the Semimajor line, is that distance the standard seperation from star to star, or is it the star's seperation from the barycenter itself?

Thanks!

...John...

ps... I figured out why I couldn't get any of the STC's to work. For some stupid question, I had the line "Distance" truncated to "Dist". I'm an idiot....

John,

In an STC file, Distance is the distance of the Star or Barycenter from our Sun. It's measured in LightYears.

The location of a Star or Barycenter in space is specified relative to our Sun. The three coordinates that you use to specify that location are RA, Dec and Distance.

Once you've specified an STC object's location in space, you then can make that object move around that location by putting it in an EllipticalOrbit around the location.

SemiMajorAxis specifies the size of an EllipticalOrbit. It is one of the two parameters that Celestia requires when you define an EllipticalOrbit. The other one is its Period.

(You have to provide more parameters if you want to fully define the object's position in its EllipticalOrbit around the location. Celestia provides default values for those parameters if you don't provide them.)

Does this clarify things at all?

Yup, it confirmed what I thought. Thanks, Selden!

...John...