Celestia Forums

I was taken by surprise comet NEOWISE evolved into a naked eye comet out of nowhere. Naturally, Celestia is a good way to check where to look for the comet, so I made this quick addon.

Comets being comets have somewhat unstable orbits, so I couldn't figure out a way to make a precise ssc orbit definition, so a sampled orbit it is. The comet is rendered with an ssc orbit definition far out from the solar system.

I adjusted the nucleus radius so Celestia renders a tail length that fits observations, nothing more to it.

and I already downloaded it

I downloaded it and it works perfectly fine in my new computer!

nice

You cannot give the simple name of NEOWISE to this comet because NEOWISE is the name of the space telescope of the WISE satellite which observed it first. All comets are designated by the year of discovery, a number, the name of the telescope. There are other "Neowise" comets.

gironde wrote:You cannot give the simple name of NEOWISE

That's a bit bold no?

Well. Feel free to change that. I have no other NEOWISE comets in my data files so there are no conflicts. First time anyone ever pointed that out to me, I have been using this naming scheme for years. Lucky you that no comet in Celestia's default data base has this conflict. Whatever happened to giving comets a consecutive number like Hartley 2, Shoemaker-Levy 9...

Would you rather type out "C 2020 F3..." just to find the damn comet? In a couple years time people might have forgotten what year the comet even appeared. I certainly don't remember the designations of some recent comets like Panstarrs, Catalina or Ison.

here are the "NEOWISE" comets that I have in celestia

"Sol/C-2014 C3 NEOWISE",
"Sol/C-2014 N3 NEOWISE",
"Sol/C-2016 B1 NEOWISE",
"Sol/C-2016 C2 NEOWISE",
"Sol/C-2018 N1 NEOWISE",
"Sol/C-2019 H1 NEOWISE",
"Sol/C-2020 F3 NEOWISE",

if we call them all by the simple name NEOWISE, it will be difficult to navigate.

After everyone does as he pleases !