Stellarium comets

[trent_julie]

Hi all,

I am using Stellarium Version 0.10.2 and I have put together this comet file for myself for use with stellarium, I found it pretty easy to do to be honest, but i thought I could save you the effort this once.
I intend to use Stellarium to drive my 16inch Lightbridge via my Argo Navis,

I identified the comets of interest for the week with this web site;
http://www.aerith.net/comet/weekly/20100116s.html

The data comes from NASA JPL HORIZONS Web interface;
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi

The data is then processed by this website;
http://projects.familie-steinel.de/stellarium-comet-jpl/

Then this information is copy and pasted onto the end of this file after all the text;
ssystem.ini

Which for me is located here;
C:\Program Files\Stellarium\data

And the full instructions for this process can be found here;
http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/JPL_HORIZONS

I have also written a little script that will bring any RA and Dec coordinate to the center of the Stellarium screen if anyone is interested i will also post it

Cheers,

Trent

[icytailmark]

i think it would be very hard to track comets with a dob unless u got a tracking system.

[trent_julie]

I should of explained it differently, my mistake, I intend on locating known comets using stellarium,

tracking will be by yogurt power

[icytailmark]

press F3 and a search box will come up. Type in what u want to look for.

[mithrandir]

If anyone was having problems with the comet ephemeris Andreas's web page was generating, I found the issue and Andreas has fixed it. Here are the values it now generates for C/2009 R1 and 81P/Wild 2.

[McNaught_C2009_R1]
# Data taken from JPL/HORIZONS
# correct for the specified time frame:
# Start Time : A.D. 2010-May-20 00:00:00.0000 CT
# Stop Time : A.D. 2010-May-20 00:00:00.0000 CT
name = Comet McNaught (C/2009 R1)
parent = Sun
coord_func = comet_orbit
radius = 10
oblateness = 0.0
albedo = 1
lighting = true
halo = true
color = 1.0,1.0,1.0
tex_halo = star16x16.png
tex_map = nomap.png
lighting = false
orbit_TimeAtPericenter = 2455380.1775793815
orbit_PericenterDistance = 0.4050275619047953
orbit_Eccentricity = 1.000351479723997
orbit_ArgOfPericenter = 130.7002706662588
orbit_AscendingNode = 322.6220299273699
orbit_Inclination = 77.03248212005248

[81PWild_2]
# Data taken from JPL/HORIZONS
# correct for the specified time frame:
# Start Time : A.D. 2010-May-20 00:00:00.0000 CT
# Stop Time : A.D. 2010-May-20 00:00:00.0000 CT
name = Comet 81P/Wild 2
parent = Sun
coord_func = comet_orbit
radius = 10
oblateness = 0.0
albedo = 1
lighting = true
halo = true
color = 1.0,1.0,1.0
tex_halo = star16x16.png
tex_map = nomap.png
lighting = false
orbit_TimeAtPericenter = 2455250.194174124
orbit_PericenterDistance = 1.598059094133712
orbit_Eccentricity = 0.5373364222432003
orbit_ArgOfPericenter = 41.79053485678668
orbit_AscendingNode = 136.0961580662001
orbit_Inclination = 3.237267810579713