Celestia Forums

Started here http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=15677 ephemerides plug-in is now considered no longer be in alpha test. For Celestia 1.6 or above only.



Plug-ins:
- HUD display;
- Moon phases display;
- Sun position angle display;
- Constellations display;
- Meteor showers display;

Major changes:
- Sun position angle and bright limb display;
- Constellations display;
- Meteor showers display;
- Added the Southern Emisphere version;
- Proprietary folder;

Bug fixed:
- Fix a string formatting bug which seldom did cause Celestia to crash at start.

Meteor showers are just for the maximum days; in such a days an animated shooting star will be displayed (and the text for the event as well). Sun's position angle box and Moon's phases box must have the same dimensions and position (check ephemeris_cfg.lua for settings).

HOW TO INSTALL:
- Download the main LUA PLUG-INS engine from here:
http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=15705
- Remove or backup all the previous ephemerides alpha version files;
- Extract the zip within ..extras/lua_plugins/.. folder;
- Backup the extant "config.lua" and activate the new by removing the "new_" string;
- Add to the new config.lua file your personal plug-ins directives if any;

Check readme.txt for web credits

http://marauder.webng.com/files/ephemerides_1.0beta.zip (2.70 Mb)
Enjoy, Fenerit

Ephemerides service pack 1

- Completed planetary orbit visibility for inferior planets and added the same for superior planets;
- Restricted elongation's visibilty to > 10 degrees (considered "hard", below it the planet isn't visible)
- Removed observer based distance for planetary visibility and added Earth-Selection distance, since the moments in which the planet are in conjunction/opposition are wrong with the SS viewed far in the space, like an orrery;
- Added "visibility: orbit" when in orbit;
- Added dynamics visual magnitudes: changed Earth based distances to observer based distances;

http://marauder.webng.com/files/ephemerides_sp1.zip
Two file only, (ephemerisBox.lua/ephemeris_func.lua)

Ops! I forgot the southern version, will be ready soon (an habit issue).

South emisphere service pack 1
http://marauder.webng.com/files/ephemerides_south_sp1.zip
Two files only. There is also the proper ephemerides_func.lua for Moon's south bright limb; this file is lacking in the ephemerides beta 1 south version.

South service pack update newly. FTP problem. Sorry.

1.1 beta released (North/South versions).

http://marauder.webng.com/files/ephemerides_1.1beta.zip (2.69 Mb)

No big changes, just for "collecting" previous scattered data and to re-ship the entire pack.

- Added the setting for permanently sticking the HUD (useful whether the mouse right toggle is so intensive that can unintentionally catch the HUD and then displace it)
- Removed the light time display text when out of the Solar System.

Hello Massimo,

Thank you for the new version

Little bug to report:

If you reduce the size of the Celestia's window, your HUD cannot be moved anymore.
And if you increase it, your HUD cannot reach the right or the bottom border of the Celestia's windows.

best regards

Hallo J?el, happy you note that. Yes, I'm aware of this but it's willingly ought since the plugin is more stable. Anyhow, you can move it when the windows is either maximized or in full screen. I'm not sure whether I well caught the last part of your enquire, but being that the behaviour, the HUD must be sticked where has to be placed; it is when the window is maximized or in full screen that the HUD, now moveable, can be inadvertently carried away; for that I added the definitive stick setting (disabled by default).
Just to refine such a discourse, in the image below, in which the normal position of the window does lock the HUD's movement, it remain where is, either in resizing more or in enlarging again (whether this is what you intend) but it return moveable when the window is either maximized or in full screen.




P.S
Sinceraly, I do not like the way in which such plug-ins can be inserted within the LUATOOLS, because a small change into the main LUATOOLS code get the plug-ins under develop unworking (here mind at the obj_ set). Thus I should prefer a way for insertion more "adds" like, and for this I've decided of suspending the develop of new plug-ins until the things will be more clean.

P.P.S.
You slideshow plug-in is great, and I think that just a good help is required. What about of HTML pages linked through its button in the bar?

Of course sticking the HUD is a radical solution
In fact, I know what is wrong: the edges of your ephemefisFrame are not properly recalculated when the celestia windows is resized.

P.S
Thank you for your interest in my slideshow plugin. I am currently working on it and I release it as soon as the English manual is ready. (French is already available)

jogad wrote:In fact, I know what is wrong: the edges of your ephemefisFrame are not properly recalculated when the celestia windows is resized.

Right! And it must be not properly recalculated, or the whole ensemble of plug-ins gets unpredictable results. If I properly recalculate the ephemeris' edges, I destroy the keplerparam's layout.

Formerly, the issue above started here:

http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=15645&start=30

Just FYI.

1.1 beta released (North/South versions) update.

- Fixed bad light times' text code. (the next problem with the light time and I will remove it forever! )

http://marauder.webng.com/files/ephemerides_1.1beta.zip (2.69 Mb)

Massimo,

This is really a great add-on.
Excelent work.
Thx, Marco

Yup!

MOON additions:

- Position angle (axis)
- Selen. colongitude;
- Declination of Sun;
- Terminator at;

Ola!



Planet visibility and WinJUPOS


Note that the terminator has the items "(m.)" (morning) and "(e.)" (evening) as long as moves about, and shows the minus sign toward east (west in the image. Please check out its behaviour on the net, my language can make no-sense). "PHASE" is a work-in-progress (the same of the "illum. fraction") but not for the observer which travel in the space. The final version will be written like the others (title format).

It doesn't work with Lua Edu Tools 1.2 Beta8 ?

Lua Edu Tools 1.2 Beta8 have that example code of config.lua



in your new_config._lua is different format



Is there any chance to fix this ?

They are LUAPLUGINS only; they do not work in LUATOOLS. They could works on LUATOOLS as long as this latters doesn't change its settings, otherwise all the time I must work on both the interfaces when my main interests are developing functions to calc astrometrics features. Feel free "to port" its features on LUATOOLS, of course. Note the the next version will be a regression/enhanced version, only verbose, no CPU-consuming graphics and poor LUATOOLS addicted.

Added:
- Declination of Earth and Central Meridian (planetocentric position of Earth)
- Changed ambiguos item "Earth's subpoint" (original mean: the point on Earth where is the planet) with the correct one "[object]'s subpoint"; while in swapping positions, is got planetocentric pos.
Note: if someone knows how to retrive the position axis (equatorial) from CELX/LUA method win a virtual beer, since they should be the only feature which uses local planetary fundamentals, thing that I should like to avoid being all already in Celestia. My experiments with the reference frame vectors are failed (as usual).

Hi,

Where is the new version
It would be fine if you update it in the first post of this thread

Fenerit wrote:if someone knows how to retrive the position axis (equatorial) from CELX/LUA method win a virtual beer,

I am not sure if I understand exactly the question, but it seems that it is not a specific CELX/LUA questions
If the axes look like this:


the position x, y, z on these axes are related to the latitude and longitude and the distance R from the center of the Earth

x = cos(lat) . cos(long) . R
y = cos(lat) . sin(long) . R
z = sin(lat) . R

Does this answer the question?