numberedmoons.ssc update
Posted: 11.09.2005, 01:04
Just a note to avoid some potential confusion for those who update numberedmoons.ssc from the CVS tree.
I've updated this today with complete orbital elements for the Saturnian satellites S/2004 S1 - S/2004 S6, taken from Porco et al.'s paper in Science of 25 Feb 2005 (Vol 307, 1226-36). You can get it in the usual place on the CVS tree:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/celestia/celestia/extras/numberedmoons.ssc
I also maintain a little "completionist" file (poormoons.ssc) for those who want to have every planetary moon so far discovered, even those with poorly known orbital elements. This one is far too vague be part of the Celestia distribution, so it's kindly hosted by Selden, here:
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/hutchison/poormoons.html
Inevitably, stuff in poormoons.ssc migrates into numberedmoons.ssc as time goes by, so I maintain the two files in strict synchrony. So if you're going to update numberedmoons.ssc and have a copy of poormoons.ssc, remember to update it as well, otherwise you'll end up with moons that appear in both files.
All of this is documented in the files themselves, but I know some people don't like to read documentation.
----------------------
Confused by the number of "moons" files? I can't help you with all the add-ons that are now out there, some of which are now quite out of date. But here's a summary of the ones that are actually a part of Celestia:
1) solarsys.ssc: as well as the planets, this file contains major moons and those with defined shape models, such as Phobos and Deimos. Comes with the package.
2) minormoons.ssc: started life as a depository for the additional named moons that didn't appear in solarsys.ssc. Comes with the package.
3) numberedmoons.ssc: started life as a depository for all the moons that were numbered but unnamed; the other reason for choosing that particular name was to ensure it loaded after minormoons.ssc.
Stupid name
. It of course was overtaken by events, and the numbered moons started to acquire names. However, for reasons of backwards compatibility, we decided not to mess around renaming the file or shifting moons between files. So the name is no longer logical, but it works fine.
With these three, you have every moon with a well-defined orbit. All the updates happen to numberedmoons.ssc, so you can leave the rest alone for long periods of time without missing much.
And then there's:
poormoons.ssc, my own little file, maintained outside the Celestia distribution, for "completionists" only. Stuff does shift out of this file and into numberedmoons.ssc, as I've described, so you need to update it in tandem with numberedmoons.ssc.
If you have all four of these files, up-to-date, you'll have every known planetary moon without duplication.
Apart, of course, from any I haven't got around to adding yet.
Grant
I've updated this today with complete orbital elements for the Saturnian satellites S/2004 S1 - S/2004 S6, taken from Porco et al.'s paper in Science of 25 Feb 2005 (Vol 307, 1226-36). You can get it in the usual place on the CVS tree:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/celestia/celestia/extras/numberedmoons.ssc
I also maintain a little "completionist" file (poormoons.ssc) for those who want to have every planetary moon so far discovered, even those with poorly known orbital elements. This one is far too vague be part of the Celestia distribution, so it's kindly hosted by Selden, here:
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/hutchison/poormoons.html
Inevitably, stuff in poormoons.ssc migrates into numberedmoons.ssc as time goes by, so I maintain the two files in strict synchrony. So if you're going to update numberedmoons.ssc and have a copy of poormoons.ssc, remember to update it as well, otherwise you'll end up with moons that appear in both files.
All of this is documented in the files themselves, but I know some people don't like to read documentation.
----------------------
Confused by the number of "moons" files? I can't help you with all the add-ons that are now out there, some of which are now quite out of date. But here's a summary of the ones that are actually a part of Celestia:
1) solarsys.ssc: as well as the planets, this file contains major moons and those with defined shape models, such as Phobos and Deimos. Comes with the package.
2) minormoons.ssc: started life as a depository for the additional named moons that didn't appear in solarsys.ssc. Comes with the package.
3) numberedmoons.ssc: started life as a depository for all the moons that were numbered but unnamed; the other reason for choosing that particular name was to ensure it loaded after minormoons.ssc.
Stupid name
. It of course was overtaken by events, and the numbered moons started to acquire names. However, for reasons of backwards compatibility, we decided not to mess around renaming the file or shifting moons between files. So the name is no longer logical, but it works fine.
With these three, you have every moon with a well-defined orbit. All the updates happen to numberedmoons.ssc, so you can leave the rest alone for long periods of time without missing much.
And then there's:
poormoons.ssc, my own little file, maintained outside the Celestia distribution, for "completionists" only. Stuff does shift out of this file and into numberedmoons.ssc, as I've described, so you need to update it in tandem with numberedmoons.ssc.
If you have all four of these files, up-to-date, you'll have every known planetary moon without duplication.
Apart, of course, from any I haven't got around to adding yet.
Grant