New Celestia unified runtime database

[Lafuente_Astronomy]

In relation to that, the Solar System Object's orbits must be updated with the most accurate program that predicts its orbit.

[Lafuente_Astronomy]

For anyone who wants information on Variable Stars, especially if you're going to put them in editing your starnames.dat files, or simply use them as reference for improving the database, I'll give you this link: http://variablestars.net

[pirogronian]

Changelog report:

1. Octree efficency improved to original level (at least on my machine).
2. New name handling infrastructure is introduced, what I believe is needed to incorporate bodies and locations into database.

Despite that above list is rather short, amount of changes is really large. So, testers ae welcome.

[Janus]

Not trying to be a pest, but any hope of an official way to disable/remove/never see the greek letters?
Right now I am basically replacing the list with a single entry in all three lists which are the same.
It appears to work, but redoing it every single time I grab new source dumps gets old.
For how I work, anything beyond Char(0x7F) interferes, hence me removing them.
Fully written out is both easier and faster for me than any other way.


Janus.

[pirogronian]

@Janus
I think that there definitely will be such an option, but the code is still unstable what make any persistent and non-provisonal solution difficult.

[Janus]

@pirogronian

Thank you.
I will continue to tweak it away until then in that case.


Janus.

[Lafuente_Astronomy]

Well, I don't see a problem with the Greek Letters but the way we type the Greek Letter spellings in the starnames.dat file is in all caps. It should be fine, except that the letters MU and NU would contradict the variable stars with HIP identifiers which just so happen to be identified with the designations MU and NU. For example, MU Hya has a HIP identifier, and since the Greek Letters automatically turns ever all caps letters forming the spelling of the Greek Letter into actual Greek letters, it renders the variable star with the designation MU Hya into μ Hya. I had to put the "(" and ")" brackets to prevent that from happening, thus MU Hya in my starnames.dat is now written as "(MU) Hya".

Since the new database may theoretically include every other star in the General Catalog Of Variable Stars(As per using GAIA values, designations and identifiers), and there are around 80+ constellations with stars having GCVS designations of MU and NU (Since a few of the constellations have too few variable stars to reach the designation MU), we may have to clarify which letters and values renders it into a Greek letter or not. I suggest making all the words that spells the Greek letter and turns into the Greek letter be lowercase, or starting with a uppercase letter and the rest being lowercase, so that mu and Mu becomes μ, and MU does not. However, if you know better, you can find another way around this. Thank you and more power to you

Added after 3 minutes 16 seconds:
P.S congratulations on making the astrodb branch much better. Do you mind if you can send me a link to the current progress of your development of the astrodb branch for Celestia 1.7.0?

[pirogronian]

@Lafuente_Astronomy
Variable stars naming was discussed by me and onetwothree, but without consensuss. I proposed just special prefix character to indicate non-greek name, while onetwothree proposed to add new specifier, indicating variable star. As a result, this issue is still open.

Did you mean link to my git branch? It is still. the same
https://github.com/CelestiaProject/Celestia/tree/astrodb

[Lafuente_Astronomy]

@Lafuente_Astronomy
Variable stars naming was discussed by me and onetwothree, but without consensuss. I proposed just special prefix character to indicate non-greek name, while onetwothree proposed to add new specifier, indicating variable star. As a result, this issue is still open.

Is it ok with you if you can tell me the specific information regarding each of your suggestions? What would the special prefix do? What would the new specifier do? Perhaps I can add my two cents in there

[Sirius_Alpha]

There's always SIMBAD's appraoch,
Mu Cep = MU Cep (variable)
*Mu Cep = µ Cep

[Lafuente_Astronomy]

In relation to the AstroDB Branch, should there be more star indexes, particularly making star indexes out of other large star catalogs like the Guide Star Catalog, the Bright Star Catalog, the Gliese, Gliese-Jahreiß and Woolley Catalogs, the PPM Catalog, 2MASS, etc?

[pirogronian]

@Lafuente_Astronomy
I don't remember well, but my approach was essentially the same as Sirius_Alpha wrote, only with differente character, "_". Onetwothree proposed something like type=variable inside hash body. My approach was simpler but brake backward compatibility. So, I also proposed the opposite: adding _ at name beginning would prevent Greek replacement. I still think it would be simplest solution.

Astrodb branch is intended mainly to easly adding new indexes, so...

[Lafuente_Astronomy]

@Lafuente_Astronomy
I don't remember well, but my approach was essentially the same as Sirius_Alpha wrote, only with differente character, "_". Onetwothree proposed something like type=variable inside hash body. My approach was simpler but brake backward compatibility. So, I also proposed the opposite: adding _ at name beginning would prevent Greek replacement. I still think it would be simplest solution.

Astrodb branch is intended mainly to easly adding new indexes, so...

Alright. I for one, think we should go with both. If I remember, there are two classes of variable stars, each containing various types: Intrinsic and Extrinsic Variable stars. Perhaps with regards to identifying what type of variable star is present, there could be a new type to identify variable stars by their class and type, which affects the quality of that star but not their names. Your suggestion is good with regards to naming them, which does not affect the other qualities of such stars.

And as for the Astrodb branch, that's good to know. Various star catalogs are present and they need to be included for cross-identification and indexing.

[LukeCEL]

So, I also proposed the opposite: adding _ at name beginning would prevent Greek replacement. I still think it would be simplest solution.

Personally, I would go with this choice. It's not very clean-looking, but it keeps backwards compatibility. This is super important for a piece of software whose heyday was many years ago.

Onetwothree proposed something like type=variable inside hash body.

So are we going to add variable stars in Celestia? This would be very nice, but I've said this before—the name of the object can't really be linked to its object type. Some stars with Greek letters (μ Geminorum, μ Leporis, μ Cephei, ν Eridani) are variable stars, but don't have variable names.

[onetwothree]

There's always SIMBAD's appraoch,
Mu Cep = MU Cep (variable)
*Mu Cep = µ Cep

The problem is that this approach is not backward compatible and it will break existing addons.

[Lafuente_Astronomy]

Some stars with Greek letters (μ Geminorum, μ Leporis, μ Cephei, ν Eridani) are variable stars, but don't have variable names.

That's correct. When naming Variable Stars, the ones naming them(Most recently, the GCVS) do not touch those with Bayer Designations, though they are still listed, just with their Bayer Designations. Every other star without other designations is fine, that's why Flamsteed stars have Variable Star names as well. Hence why there should be a new type to define Variable Stars, because there are just so many types of Variable Stars that it needs its own category.

Added after 4 hours 33 minutes:
Question: Does the new AstroDB Branch affect other celestial objects like planets, asteroids, comets and other non-stellar objects as well as deep sky objects and objects containing stars like nebulae, open clusters, globular clusters, galaxies, galactic clusters, superclusters, etc?

[pirogronian]

@Lafuente_Astronomy
Everything, even spacecrafts

[Lafuente_Astronomy]

@Lafuente_Astronomy
Everything, even spacecrafts

That's awesome! Like, really awesome! Well, on an unrelated note, I noticed that you're a member of the Celestia Discord Server, so if you want to post updates, feel free to post them in the "celestia-170" thread.

[pirogronian]

I noticed that you're a member of the Celestia Discord Server, so if you want to post updates, feel free to post them in the "celestia-170" thread.

I'm still unfamiliar with Discord, but I'll try.

[Lafuente_Astronomy]

I'm still unfamiliar with Discord, but I'll try.

Feel free to do so. Discord allows messages in real time, meaning that if you post a message, a notif sound can be heard, and your message automatically comes up on the thread, removing the need to constantly reload the page just to see new replies, which this forum has as a problem.

Added after 2 minutes 59 seconds:
I gave you the role of "Developer" in the Discord Server. Just like in the Forum, your name is written in Blue letters.