More Messier objects

[DBrant]

I've made a file with a whole bunch of Messier objects (about 100 more). If anyone's interested:

http://dmitrybrant.com/galaxies.zip
(just replace the old galaxies file)

The data is based on the following:
http://www.seds.org/messier/xtra/marathon/marath.html
(i wrote a tiny parser app that went through and generated the galaxy file)

The data seems to be pretty good. Just check out how accurately M45 represents the Pleiades.

Notes:
- Many of the objects are open/globular clusters, nebulae, etc.; these will all be shown as tiny 'E0' galaxies.


-Dmitry Brant

[Paul]

It's a real shame that Celestia won't read in spreadsheet-friendly tables - sure, the structured record thing is more flexible and readable, but it means that to create significant amounts of data for Celestia you either need to be a programmer, or have superhuman tolerance for data entry...

[chris]

Sorry about this . . . It doesn't seem like a spreadsheet format would be very practical given the large number of fields that can be used to describe an object. What about a tool that would allow you to specify a template for converting from table formatted data to an .ssc file?

--Chris

[bruckner]

I've been holding my breath all the time since you (->Chris) said you were working on XML support for Celestia configuration files. With XML support, transformations from-to any data format should be made much easier. For instance, the VizieR service (http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR) is able to respond to queries in XML (Astrores XML), and from that building an XSL transformation sheet to whatever DTD XML ssc files conform to shouldn't be too difficult... Even I could reuse some of my Java programming skills for Celestia

There are plenty of features I'd like to see in Celestia soon, but this one is my favorite, since it "embiggens" so much the ability to contribute (shades of The Simpsons here ... Now, why did I remember that?)

Greetings to everyone!

Bruckner

[Ortolan]

Aye, a perfecly cromulent suggestion!

[ZenMonkeyCat]

Boy, here are some guys who really know where their towells are! Froody baby, froody!