New Horizons Add-On

[symaski62]

Jestr THX !!!

http://www.agi.com/corporate/mediaCente ... orizon.cfm

4 video

[Jeam Tag]

OK,I have just made catalogue entries on the Motherlode for my New Horizons addon.
I have included an xyz orbit for the craft and also for Pluto (so for 2015 you get 2 Pluto's in Celestia).

Jestr, this is superb, as usual, but it seems to me that you have not credited a texture for your second Pluto in the ADD .ssc file, so it appears blank for me. Or do have made something wrong? BTW, when I added into the file a texture name and add this texture (a fictitious Pluto) into the medres folder of the addon, all works fine. Jeam

[jestr]

Yes,I fear you may be correct,Jeam.When I was making the addon,I included some of my own,but later deleted them to save on space.They will need some though,even if only the default ones (of course the only "real" ones).Jestr

[Jeam Tag]

Yes,I fear you may be correct,Jeam.When I was making the addon,I included some of my own,but later deleted them to save on space.They will need some though,even if only the default ones (of course the only "real" ones).Jestr

OK Jestr! Two choices: you can recompile the addon with a medres fictitious texture of yours, for artistic license. But you can also ask Ulrich to edit the CML pack: just adding lines for the main celestia textures (pluto-lok.jpg and pluto-lok-spec.jpg) no necessary to include these, that is working very well... Jeam

[Jeam Tag]

Another solution: you could edit the .ssc with your references, and tell users to download your pluto textures (pluto.jpg and plutonormal.jpg) on your majormoons page http://www.jestrstuff.50megs.com/extras/addons/JestrsMajorMoons/textures/medres/majormedres.html, iguess this is the ones you are speaking about? IT is the ones i used for my test

Post scriptum, I remember you said it was based on the Praesaepe's Pluto. Do you have a copy of these textures? I lost them on a degraded cdrom If you have, could you sent a pack to me? Thanks, Jeam

[jestr]

Sorry Jeam it was a long time ago,I see the link to Praesaepe's website is broken,I dont think I have the originals anymore but I will check and see.I think the easiest solution would be for someone at the Motherlode to edit the ssc to point to the standard pluto_lok texture,cheers,Jestr

[Fightspit]

Jestr,

I want to say thank you to have made this add-on which is aviable at:

http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catal ... don_id=913

Bye!

edit link

[jestr]

Thanks for the applause Fightspit,but you are gonna have to change the link above as I have changed the addon and uploaded some newer versions,
including two large files that now include some hires (4k) fictional textures for Pluto and Charon.I have also included the jpleph.dat file pointed
to by Chris Laurel above for better orbital data for Pluto.
If you download either of the larger two files though you must copy over the
jpleph.dat file from the addons data folder to your Celestia\data folder before
running Celestia or else Celestia will fail to start at all.
Heres a screenshot with the new textures







The smaller files are the previous ones corrected so that Pluto and Charon have their normal textures back again.Hope you all like them,Jestr

[Joe]

There's no VSOP87 orbit for Pluto, so the errors in its position are much greater than for the other eight planets of the solar system. As an alternative to using an XYZ file for Pluto, you can use the JPL DE406 ephemerides with Celestia. ... ... ... This particular chunk of the full DE406 ephemeris gives very accurate positions for the planets and Moon for the years 1800-2100.

In solarsys.ssc file, the Moon is defined by:

Code: Select all

"Moon:Earth I" "Sol/Earth"
{
   Texture "moon.*"
   BumpMap "moonbump.*"
   BumpHeight 3.5
   Radius   1737.53
   # Oblateness 0.002

   InfoURL "http://www.nineplanets.org/luna.html"

   CustomOrbit "moon"

   # Overridden by CustomOrbit
   # EllipticalOrbit {
   #   Period           27.321661
   #   SemiMajorAxis    384400
   #   Eccentricity     0.054900
   #   Inclination      5.15
   # }

   OrbitFrame {
      EquatorJ2000 { Center "Sol/Earth" }
   }

   BodyFrame { EquatorJ2000 {} }
   CustomRotation "iau-moon"

   # Overriden by CustomRotation
   # UniformRotation
   # {
   #    Inclination    23.4608
        #    AscendingNode 359.9949
        #    MeridianAngle  38.3213
   # }

   LunarLambert 1.0

   Albedo           0.12
}

If I used JPL DE406 ephemerides, I shall modify the Moon's definition into:

Code: Select all

Modify "Moon" "Sol/Earth"
{
    CustomOrbit "jpl-moon-earth"
     OrbitFrame
    {
        EclipticJ2000 { Center "Sol/Earth" }
    }
}

My question is: whether OrbitFrame is EclipticJ2000 or EquatorJ2000? Would anybody help?

[Chuft-Captain]

This may help: http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/celestia_notes.html

(Section 5.10.9 )

[Joe]

Thanks to Chuft-Captain, it is a very helpful link.
It is encouraging to see some senior Celestians (or respectful old hands) are still around in the forum---a light of hopeful reviving in the dark for the community .

[Chuft-Captain]

In actual fact, it is Selden who should be thanked for the wealth of information he has compiled over the years (although some is now out-dated).
I just happen to have been around long enough to know about his resources.
Another link that you may find more or less helpful in this circumstance is: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia/Reference_Frames#EclipticJ2000_property

[John Van Vliet]

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