Celestia Forums

I've harvested the correct orbital orientations for binary/multiple systems with known orbits from the Sixth Catalogue of Orbits of Visual Binary Stars, as well as some orbital periods for spectral binaries. To get a full depiction of local space quite a few star systems need to be added to the Hipparcos data, but since 1.3.1 supports the insertion of names in an stc file, you at least don't have to mess about editing starnames.dat any more.
So there follows first an stc listing of star systems, and secondly an ssc for companion star orbits. For those who'd rather not cut and paste, you can get a zip of the files at http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/hutchison/nearstars1.zip (thanks again to Selden for hosting this and other stuff of mine).
It's interesting to compare the position of, say, Sirius B in Celestia to the diagram of its orbit in textbooks.
The quadruple system of Alula Australis lies beyond my self-imposed 25ly cut-off, but it has been included because a) its original parallax indicated that it was closer than 25ly and b) it's an interesting multiple system that's worth a visit.

nearstars.stc
stellarcompanions.ssc
Grant

EDITED TO CORRECT MISDEFINITION FOR 33 LIB SYSTEM

Brilliant! Now all we need is a way to change "Planetary companions present" to "Stellar companions present"...

Nice work Grant, I'm looking forward to having a play with this after work, especially a look at the Alula Australis system.

This add-on will require some revision for versions beyond 1.3.1pre3.
Firstly, the three stars with Hipparcos numbers listed at the start of the stc have been added directly to stars.dat for future releases. Secondly, future releases will support the brown dwarf spectral classes, so won't need the work-around of assigning them to class M9V.
I've therefore made a second version of the stc above, incorporating these changes, which you should download and use to replace this version as soon as you upgrade to a newer Celestia release.
You can find it at http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/hutchison/nearstars.html.

Grant

Hello,
I've extracted the zip.file to root and added to "extras" the nearstars.stc and the stellarcompanions.ssc, yet all new near stars failed to show up in the Star Browser and Select Object and most of the stellar companions where nowhere to find either (they didn't exhibit any orbits). Some got through though like Sirius B and Procyon B.

Err... what am I doing wrong?

Hello,
I've extracted the zip.file to root and added to "extras" the nearstars.stc and the stellarcompanions.ssc, yet all new near stars failed to show up in the Star Browser and Select Object and most of the stellar companions where nowhere to find either (they didn't exhibit any orbits). Some got through though like Sirius B and Procyon B.

Err... what am I doing wrong?

Which zip file?
which ssc file?
which stc file?
which version of celestia?

your symptoms are consistant with trying to use the stc file that's intended for pre4 (or later) with pre3 (or earlier). i.e. using a file that contains star names with a version of celestia that doesn't understand them.

Sorry, maybe I should have been a little more specific.

1. This zip file: http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/hutchison/nearstars1.zip

2. The ssc. file contained in the above is called "stellarcompanions.ssc".

3. The stc. file contained in the above is called "nearstars.stc"

4. The current downloadable low-resolution version, which to the best of my knowledge is 1.3.0 (I find my system works a little better that way).


Regards!

Gennaro:
The add-on is intended for 1.3.1pre3 and above, which is why I called the thread "Companion star orbits out to 25ly for 1.3.1pre3".
It doesn't work with 1.3.0 because that version doesn't support star names in the stc file (you have to edit starnames.dat instead).
So if you want this to work you'll need to download the current Celestia version
http://www.celestiaproject.net/celestia/files/ ... .1pre6.exe
and then use this add-on
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/hutchison/nearstars2.zip

For more information see Selden's page at
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/hutchison/nearstars.html

Grant

Well, I thought that was a little strange it was called "1.3.1pre3" but if you go to the download page on this site you'll see that it's version 1.3.0 you're getting. Made my last installment this afternoon, so it's not that I'm unaware of the fact that I'd need the latest version.
Excuse me for this inconvenience, but it should be okay now. Thanks.

Gennaro wrote:but if you go to the download page on this site you'll see that it's version 1.3.0 you're getting.

Sure, but Chris regularly announces pre-release versions on this forum - and those of us who just can't wait for the definitive version tend to produce add-ons to exploit any new features in those pre-releases that particularly take our fancy
It was the ease of adding new star names, introduced in 1.3.1pre3, that got me going with this 25ly add-on.

Grant

I just fixed the 33 Librae system. It was both invisible and incorrectly specified. Doh.
I've sent replacement zips to Selden, so the corrected versions are downloadable now. Alternatively, just copy the new entries for 33 Lib BC, 33 Lib B and 33 Lib C from the (now edited) listing at the head of this thread, and paste 'em into your old stellarcompanions.ssc on top of the previous bad definitions.
Sorry!

Grant