Is Amalthea considered a minor moon?

[cartrite]

But Chris, are you ready to implement an official download page? Even if it's only for a file, IMHO you should open it, else we will never begin those official packages (textures or data) we have been talking about from time to time...

Shouldn't the executable that Phoenix or myself provide run in the svn celestia folder that wasn't built if it also had the dll's or whatever MAC needs to run? That's an official way to keep the users updated that can't build. Downloading with a SVN client is simple enough.
cartrite

I fear you lost me a bit here... I 'm not sure to understand what you mean exactly, but concerning those eventual official addons, the idea was to release Celestia as always and have some officially supported data set or textures. The files could stay in SVN, it's just a question of creating the catalogue page at shatters. In the present case, instead of having ALL minormoons in the default package, you will have only a few ones and up to each users to extend his data base downloading the files and placing them in the extras...

I mean if a user used a SVN client like Tortoise SVN, they could get all the data and texture files that are in SVN "currently official?" and use an executable to run the program. Even the "pre" packages for Windows only contain what is in the celestia.iss file. I think some texture files are left out. Not sure.

I was unaware of plans to create a download page. That would give a user a choice of what to include in their installation. Probably a better idea but it requires extra work.
cartrite

[chris]

But Chris, are you ready to implement an official download page? Even if it's only for a file, IMHO you should open it, else we will never begin those official packages (textures or data) we have been talking about from time to time...

Sure, I can create a download page. But, I was planning on just including minormoons.ssc in the basic release. Maybe I'm not understanding something?

--Chris

[ElChristou]

Sure, I can create a download page. But, I was planning on just including minormoons.ssc in the basic release. Maybe I'm not understanding something?

Wait, then you took Andrew's idea as the bodies to be classified as moons? then the rest would go in the minormoon.ssc?

[revent]

I would think the logical criteria for separating 'minor' and 'major' moons would be whether or not the moon in question is massive enough that it's gravitational effects need to be considered when calculating the orbits of the other moons.

[cartrite]

The executables that are at my web site are at revision 4309 which is one less then the current revision of 4310. Since that last update only affects MAC, I'm going to wait till the next commit to rebuild. There will be extra changes though. I plan to remove the extras folder that contained minormoons.ssc and numberedmoons.ssc.

Chris has modified those 2 files and and 3 more .ssc files from the data folder, asteroids, outersys, and solarsys that are available here.
http://www.celestiaproject.net/~claurel/celest ... system.zip
He would welcome some feedback before they are commited to SVN.

Now that the minormoon and dwarfplanet classes are implemented, here's
an update of solarsys.ssc, outersys.ssc, asteroids.ssc,
minormoons.ssc, and numberedmoons.ssc:

http://www.celestiaproject.net/~claurel/celest ... system.zip

The classes of Pluto, Eris, and Ceres were changed to dwarfplanet.
Most of the moons in minormoons.ssc and numberedmoons.ssc were demoted
to the class minormoon, with the exceptions suggested by Andrew in
this forum post:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=12336&p=102873#p102873

Also, I left Nix and Hydra as major moons, simply because with just
three moons, there's no need to control clutter in the Pluto system.

I like being able to see visualize the overall character of
planet-moon systems without the clutter of dozens of minor moon
orbits. Yet I admit it still feels odd to see an object like Skathi
listed as a major moon of Saturn. Anyone else care to venture and
opinion on this not-really-so-important issue?

--Chris

Since these are subject to change, I will remove the files I modified from the executable packages I've been providing pending the next update. After they are commited to SVN, I'll put them back in and update them when changes occur to them in the future until release candidates for 1.6 become available.
cartrite

[cartrite]

Something seems to be wrong here. R4309.
This first screen shot shows the label for Pluto with the dwarf planet labels on.

pluto-charon.jpg

This second shot shows the moons also. Problem is that the label for Pluto has faded away while the moon labels have not.

pluto-charon1.jpg

cartrite

[cartrite]

Here is a look at the Jupiter system. I think these look pretty good.

With the minor moons enabled.

jupiter-minormoons.jpg

With only moon labels enabled at a distance.

jupiter-moons.jpg

With moon labels enabled closer.

jupiter-moons1.jpg

cartrite

[Cham]

Here are my suggestions, about the minor moons and the dwarf planets. I don't have better arguments than size, orbit oriention, and consistency.

Minor moons :
I don't see why Despina and Thebe aren't considered as major moons, considering their size and orbit orientation. And I don't see why the following aren't considered as minor moons, since they are small and have an "arbitrarily" tilted orbit :
2000J11
Albiorix
Ananke
Carme
Halimede
Narvi
Neso
Pasiphae
Sao
Siarnaq
Skathi

Dwarf planets :
In my opinion, the following objects should be considered as "dwarf planets", for consistency about their size and other aspects (most objects found in outersys.ssc) :
Ceres
2003 EL61
2004 XR190
2005 FY9
Eris
Ixion
Orcus
Quaoar
Sedna
Varuna

Of course, others may disagree with this suggestion ...

[selden]

The membership of the classification "minor moons" is decided by Celestia's developers. Discussion here has a chance of affecting the list included with Celestia.

The membership of the classification "dwarf planets" is decided by the IAU. Discussion here is not likely to affect them.

Personally, I like the "ball of yarn" effect.