Extrasolar.ssc update

[granthutchison]

I've just updated extrasolar.ssc with the new "superterrestrial" around Mu Ara, and the new transiting Jovian at TrES-1. You can get the new version from the CVS tree at:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/celestia/celestia/data/extrasolar.ssc

You'll need to add the star TrES-1 if you want to observe the new transiter in action. I've therefore also updated my little add-on which includes all the stars with known planets that are missing from Celestia. You can get the stc file from Selden's site at:
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/hutchison/missing-stars.html

Grant

[Tosv]

Aaah! Grant is up-to-date as usual

Just a (stupid?) curious question. What is the reason that you?re putting the missing stars in the extrasolars.stc-file instead of adding them directly to the Celestias stars.dat?

Wouldn?t it be more convenient to have all stars collected in one file only?

// T

[Reve]

Yeah there are several exoplanets that actually come with Celestia 1.3.2 that don't have the corresponding stars in stars.dat !! The star info has been available from that website for ages, I don't know why they didn't make the release.

Could we have these added to the new stars.dat for the next release? (and in the meantime, on CVS?)

Thanks

Reve

[ElPelado]

1) How can I watch the transit from earth(in celestia, of course)??? I cant even see teh star at the max zoom...
2) I found that any planet in solarsys.scc has "mass", how is that calculated? And why planets in extrasolar.scc do have??

[ajtribick]

I think the missing stars are excluded from the official release because BD-10 3166 is included in the extended star database, and so anyone with the extended star database would have to keep commenting out the relevant entry in the stc file.

Seems we need a "venuslike-night.jpg" texture to keep with the pattern of glowing nightsides...

[Tosv]

Chaos: But, if that?s the case. Isn?t it easier to remove BD-10 3166 from the extended star database and collect all exoplanet-stars in stars.dat?

The extended star database is a kind of add-on, right? And my opinion is that the add-ons should adapt to the standard files that comes with Celestia, not the opposite. Or, am I missunderstanding something here?

Thanks!

// T.

[granthutchison]

Just a (stupid?) curious question. What is the reason that you?re putting the missing stars in the extrasolars.stc-file instead of adding them directly to the Celestias stars.dat?

Since almost all these stars have neither a Tycho nor a Hipparcos number, adding them to directly to stars.dat seems a little illogical ... I'm not keen to start mixing ficitional Hip numbers in there.

Seems we need a "venuslike-night.jpg" texture to keep with the pattern of glowing nightsides...

That'll certainly come if/when it's needed. TrES-1 falls just below my rather arbitrary cut-off of 1000K.

Grant

[granthutchison]

1) How can I watch the transit from earth(in celestia, of course)??? I cant even see teh star at the max zoom...

Well, you can't watch the transit from Earth in real life either. Why don't zoom in on the star and then travel towards it for some distance until you can see a disc?

2) I found that any planet in solarsys.scc has "mass", how is that calculated? And why planets in extrasolar.scc do have??

Really all we know about extrasolar planets themselves (apart from transiters) is an estimate of their mass and temperature - every other feature displayed in Celestia (radius, oblateness, rotation rate) is a more or less dodgy deduction derived from the mass. So it seems useful to record the mass in the file so that people can see why I've done what I've done, as explained in the comments at the start of the file. Celestia does absolutely nothing with the mass data.

Grant

[ElPelado]

Ok, thanks
So putting Mass xx or not puting ot wont change anything right?

[granthutchison]

So putting Mass xx or not puting ot wont change anything right?

Right.

Grant