2004 XR190 wrong radius given

[mopc]

I just downloaded and installed Celestia, what a great piece of software, I wonder why it is so little known.

Is this the right section to report factual mistakes or is it just for software problems?

Nonetheless, upon visiting the object 2004 XR190, the radius given by Celestia is 750km, whereas official sources provide a radius of 250-300km.

[symaski62]

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2004+XR190&orb=1

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_XR190

500 - 1000 km diam?tre

4.5 mag => 430 km diam?tre

2004XR190.ssc <= fichier

Code: Select all

"2004 XR190" "Sol"
{
   Class "asteroid"
   Mesh   "castalia.cmod"
   Texture "asteroid.jpg"
   Radius 215

   EllipticalOrbit
   {
   Epoch      2455000.5
   Period            435.06
   SemiMajorAxis     57.4148648
   Eccentricity      0.1059712
   Inclination       46.70080
   AscendingNode   252.36664
   ArgOfPericenter 284.13270
        MeanAnomaly     270.17687
   }

   Albedo 0.15
}

[mopc]

Sure, which means Celestia has the wrong radius for 2004 XR190.

Actually I think may "radiuses" given are actually diameters.

[t00fri]

I looked up the original discovery paper by Allen et al.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0512430

It is apparent that Grant Hutchison, who takes care of Celestia's outersys.ssc data file, has accidentally mixed up radius and diameter, here.

In outersys one reads

Radius 750 # "500-1000 km"

Clearly this range has always referred to the diameter...

Actually, the given InfoURL reference for XR190 is dead meanwhile...

Fridger

[granthutchison]

Yes, my error with the radius. Thanks for the correction, mopc.
I've committed a correction to SVN, and have replaced the dead InfoURL with a link to the discovery paper cited by Fridger.
Outersys.ssc is overdue for a more general review to update its content, but it'll need to wait a bit while I complete current projects.

Does anyone have any views on what sort of objects it should contain, and how many?

Grant