Distance Sphere

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RHendrickson
Posts: 3
Joined: 31.10.2006
With us: 17 years 10 months
Location: Carol Stream, Illinois

Distance Sphere

Post #1by RHendrickson » 31.10.2006, 06:22

How 'bout creating a Distance to/from any object sphere. You input the distance, say 100 light years from the Earth and the program displays a sphere encompassing all object within the stated distance.

Starshipwright
Posts: 78
Joined: 08.08.2006
With us: 18 years 1 month

Post #2by Starshipwright » 01.11.2006, 16:06

What are you trying to do? The Celestial Grid can show you distances, also Seldon has created a number of add-ons for that purpose. You might want to check them out to see if they have what you need.

Seldon's add-ons can be downloaded at:

http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/graticules.html

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fsgregs
Posts: 1307
Joined: 07.10.2002
With us: 21 years 11 months
Location: Manassas, VA

Post #3by fsgregs » 06.11.2006, 00:53

There is a distance "sphere" already present in Celestia. Currently, it is available only as part of a large add-on for the Celestia-ED educational Activities project. However, I have created a zip file of the add-on as a stand-alone item and am seeking a good place to host it. Motherlode does not really have an "other" category, where such an add-on would best reside.

Anyway, the add-on creates a faint transparent sphere around the sun at any distance you wish. Currently, the add-on places two spheres at distances of 1 LY, and 86 LY from the sun (the farthest that any human created light/radio transmission from Earth has ever traveled into space).

Here is a screenshot, looking at the 1 LY sphere from about 5 LY out:

Image


You can edit the add-on to create spheres at any distance you wish.

When I find a good place to host it, I'll let you know here.

You can also use a menu in Celestia to black out all objects outside of a given radius from your viewpoint. Simply launch Celestia, open the "Render/View Options" menus, and move the "filter stars" slider. If you move it so it reads 100 LY, all stars beyond 100 LY will disappear. Only the stars and their systems within 100 LY of you will be on the screen.

Enjoy

Frank


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