Can't "lock on" to planets

[IlyaG]

When you're at an extra-solar object, like any star, and you decide to go to a planet in our Solar System (any planet), when you type it's name by pressing Enter, it never accepts the command. It always ignores it, as if I typed it incorrectly. I'm forced to type in "Sol" followed by the planet's name in order to go to it from outside the solar system. Any reason for this, or is this a bug?

[Matt McIrvin]

When you're at an extra-solar object, like any star, and you decide to go to a planet in our Solar System (any planet), when you type it's name by pressing Enter, it never accepts the command. It always ignores it, as if I typed it incorrectly. I'm forced to type in "Sol" followed by the planet's name in order to go to it from outside the solar system. Any reason for this, or is this a bug?

It might be considered a feature... it would allow planets in different solar systems to have the same name, and might make name matching more efficient if the galaxy gets heavily populated with planets.

I think the documentation suggests that under some conditions, it might even be necessary to select a planet before selecting one of its moons. In practice this doesn't seem to be necessary, but it is one possible way, not currently used, to handle name collisions between asteroids and moons. On the other hand, it could lead to unexpected results.

There are several such name collisions in our own solar system. For instance, there is a real asteroid named Europa that is in Bruckner's add-on database. I don't think you can select it by name-- you get the more famous moon of Jupiter instead. Making selection strictly hierarchical would allow selection of the asteroid Europa, but in most cases that's not what the user would want...

[Matt McIrvin]

There are several such name collisions in our own solar system. For instance, there is a real asteroid named Europa that is in Bruckner's add-on database. I don't think you can select it by name-- you get the more famous moon of Jupiter instead. Making selection strictly hierarchical would allow selection of the asteroid Europa, but in most cases that's not what the user would want...

Hmm... Thinking about this some more... Named asteroids and other minor planets also have numbers associated with them, often written before the name ("1 Ceres", "20000 Varuna"). Maybe we should put those in somehow as alternate names, if the database allows alternate names for solar system objects. They also have provisional designations like "1998 KY26", based on the time and order of discovery, which could serve as another alternate name even after they have names.

[chris]

Hmm... Thinking about this some more... Named asteroids and other minor planets also have numbers associated with them, often written before the name ("1 Ceres", "20000 Varuna"). Maybe we should put those in somehow as alternate names, if the database allows alternate names for solar system objects. They also have provisional designations like "1998 KY26", based on the time and order of discovery, which could serve as another alternate name even after they have names.

Something like this is going to be necessary because of all the name collisions. Also, both "1 Ceres" and just "Ceres" should find the asteroid Ceres. There are a few complications, but I should be able to make this modification somewhere around version 1.2.6.

--Chris