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A number of issues...

Posted: 22.05.2007, 09:50
by Dracontes
Peculiar thing:

Image

Maybe this'll give a new boost to the idea of merging *.stc and *.ssc by forcing a choice, though it's true I can open the files in WordPad as it was before I installed the OpenOffice 2.0.2 suite.

I'm currently bent on making a *.dsc with labels for the most famous open clusters, which I'm not aware anyone has done before. I however keep being foiled by the most unusual coordinate glitch.

Image

If it had rhyme and reason to it I could've simply done a translation. Looking closely though, it seems the shifts in right ascension are random while the declination is on the spot. I checked against the celestial grid and the data I collected is correct in RA, only incorrectly displayed.

Here's the code in case anyone's interested:

Code: Select all

OpenCluster "Hyades"
{
RA 66.75
Dec 15.86666667
Distance 151
Radius 30
}

OpenCluster "Pleiades"
{
RA 56.75
Dec 24.11666667
Distance 440
Radius 6
}

OpenCluster "Praesepe"
{
RA 130.025
Dec 19.85
Distance 577
Radius 8
}

OpenCluster "Trapezium"
{
RA 83.85
Dec -5.45
Distance 1600
Radius 10
}

OpenCluster "M6"
{
RA 265.025
Dec -32.2166667
Distance 1600
Radius 6
}

OpenCluster "M7"
{
RA 268.475
Dec -34.8166667
Distance 800
Radius 20
}


While looking to see if a funny glitch I experienced in an earlier version of Celestia would still be in 1.4.1 (it isn't, as it seems) I found that while training my view on Schulte 27, from this add-on while in wireframe mode [Ctrl+W] a pixel-wide line appeared along the lower section of the right side of the screen. Since it would be to faint to see in a thumb I'll just link the image so you can download it and do a good zooming to see what I'm talking about.

http://www.maj.com/gallery/Dracontes/Sc ... ame_ob.png

As a final note I'd like to say I'm rather fond of the scientifically correct colors obtained when toggling [Shift+%] they're rather more appealing to me in a way. I'm only somewhat dismayed that the tint of the illumination of possible planets orbiting the star doesn't change accordingly.

Thanks in advance for all help and clarification provided :)

Posted: 22.05.2007, 11:56
by selden
DSC files require RA to be in Hours: divide degrees by 15.

STC files require RA to be in degrees.

Posted: 23.05.2007, 16:40
by Hungry4info
selden wrote:DSC files require RA to be in Hours: divide degrees by 15.

STC files require RA to be in degrees.


Is it possible to make this more universal? Instead of different units of measurement for both DSC and STC files, why not have them all the same?

Posted: 23.05.2007, 18:12
by selden
Too many Addons depend on these values being the way they are for them to be changed now.

Being able to specify the actual units may be a possibility in a future version of Celetia.

Posted: 23.05.2007, 18:17
by Cham
Hungry4info wrote:
selden wrote:DSC files require RA to be in Hours: divide degrees by 15.

STC files require RA to be in degrees.

Is it possible to make this more universal? Instead of different units of measurement for both DSC and STC files, why not have them all the same?


It's too late for this. Changing the units used will broke everything in Celestia, unless we write a special code line in the DSC to tell Celestia the units are different.

Posted: 23.05.2007, 20:30
by t00fri
I also agree that it's too late.

Also I am a bit ambivalent. As an amateur astronomer over decades, I would not want to translate the hour reading of my telescope's RA display into decimal degrees each time. On the other hand most online ephemeris caculators these days offer either the

hh mm ss.s format

or decimal degrees.

So no chance to win ;-)

Bye Fridger