Celestial Object Locating

[zerakith]

Hi,
Bit of a noob to celestia scripting so i was wondering if you could help me out.

The problem:
I want to find a point in space. I will be doing this by using six other points.
These points will be constellations. Anyone familar with the Stargate film or programs should recognise this. To find the point you take Constellation 1 and Draw a line to Constellation 2. You then Repeat this for Constellations 3,4 and 5,6. You will end up with three line the point where all these line cross is the point that you want.

Any Ideas?

Thanks,
Drew

[selden]

Celestia can draw lines between any two stars or a sequence of stars. That's how it draws the constellations. They're defined in the plain-text file /data/asterisms.dat

You can select (or define) stars that are appropriate for the constellations you're interested in. Then add them to asterisms.dat; or you can create your own separate file and edit celestia.cfg to redefine the file that Celestia uses. The next time you start Celestia, it will draw lines between those stars when you select Render / View Options / "Show Constellations".

Unfortunately, I don't think you'll get the results you want, at least not the way you've described it. Let's just say Stargate's writers have used a little "poetic license" in their description of how the stargate's coordinate system works.

[zerakith]

Thanks, Ill try that out.

P.S i think that in prinicple it could work, just wanted to test it out.

Thanks Again,
Drew

[zerakith]

Tried out the method above.
I typed in the following code:

Code: Select all

"Earth1"
[
[ "Eta Aur" "Xi2 Cet"}
]

"Earth2"
[
[ "Iota Cen" "Delta Cnc"}
]

"Earth3"
[
[ "Alpha Sct" "Omega Eri"}
]


I loaded up celestia, made sure that constellations in On in the Render Options, but nothing is shown not even the real constellations

Any Ideas?

Thanks,
Drew

P.S The Address is Auriga, Cetus, Centuraus, Cancer, Scutum, Eridanus
and should, if the directors havn't used poetic license then i will cross at earth or at least our solar system.

[selden]

In what you've pasted above, you've used both square brackets [] and squiggly brackets {}
They all need to be square brackets.

[zerakith]

Ah! yeah C programming habit.

Fixed it now and it works. However the three lines don't even cross each other. Still think it could work in theory thogh.

Drew

[selden]

That is what I was alluding to. You have to use specific reference axes and offsets that produce lines that actually intersect at the desired location. Lines drawn between random stars are unlikely to intersect at all.

(From what I've read, the "constellation" explanation of the Stargate dialing sequence was supposedly something that one of their scientists (Carter?) came up with during the first couple of episodes and currently is considered erroneous. I.e. the writers just made up some techno-babble that sounded almost reasonable.)

[zerakith]

You are right, only it was in the film and it was Dr Jackson. Thinking about it there are probally none or very litte "Stargate Address's" that could work.

Drew