How to create binaries?

[Slartibartfast]

I've created planets for my book. They look great, but I'd like to fix the stars they're around (Hadar, Regulus, Zuben Elakribi, Zuben el Genubi, Algol and Adhara) to reflect the fact that they are double/triple stars.

If you know of any of these that have already been done, that'd be INCREDIBLY spiffy! If not, is there an easy, not necessarily anywhere near accurate, way of upgrading these stars? (I have info like what kind of stars the companions are and how far away they orbit...some of them quite far away.)

[selden]

Slartibartfast,

Descriptions of STC (STar Catalog) files are in the WikiBook at
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia/STC_File
and in documents on the MotherLode at
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catal ... ation.html

Celestia includes catalogs for about 200 binary stars. Take a look in \data\visualbins.stc and \data\spectbins.stc to see which ones are included. Those catalogs modify the descriptions of the Hipparcos entries for some stars and add some others. At the very least, they'll give you examples of how they can be defined. Essentially, you can use the same EllipticalOrbit parameters as are used in SSC files.

[ajtribick]

You'll probably want to get your hands on Grant Hutchison's spreadsheet for converting orbital elements to ecliptic coordinates as well.

[Slartibartfast]

Your a good man Selden, thanks! (I'm sure I'll have more questions after I know enough to really screw things up.)

[t00fri]

You'll probably want to get your hands on Grant Hutchison's spreadsheet for converting orbital elements to ecliptic coordinates as well.

That's of course done in visualbins.pl and spectbins.pl in matters of seconds for a few hundred binaries...

These PERL scripts are part of the Celestia source distribution and PERL exists for any operating system.


Bye Fridger