Bob,

as you may read even in shatters.net,

http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13642

Runar is around, but needed to take off a better part of a year for professional reasons.
We do have regular contact with him, though.

Fridger

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Ah, thank you Good Doctor...
That thread started back in April, and I suppose that I just forgot it.
Well, I hope all is well with our friend, and that he will find his way back again.

Thanks, Brain-Dead

Hi all,
Having just joined and noting that one needs to post something within the first week, it seems an introduction is in order.

I work in a planetarium and have been fiddling with celestia on and off for a few years. We have recently added full dome digital projection capabilities to the planetarium. I am now trying to generate material for projection onto the dome using celx scripts.

I have had some success so far but there is still much that I have to learn. For example, I hope I will be able to master orientations and coordinate systems while I still have some hair left.

Many thanks for a great program, and I look forward to learning more and maybe even contributing something useful in the future.

My real name is,
Chris

Welcome Chris,

many thanks for introducing yourself briefly.

As to posting, it's actually not that bad. Yet, since forums tend to be misused by lots of human spammers, we have to apply some effective precautions.

As of the latest Celestia version (1.6.0), we do have some neat coordinate grids included. Are you aware of these ? The readout of coordinate values can be done with the help of scripting (LUA), as implemented already in form of an add-on by Vincent in our development team.

Fridger

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Hi Mona,

I've just read it; I have to post something. Hm...

(At shatters.net I've been waiting half a year until I wrote something. Always this hustle and bustle here and there.)

So, let me say; I'm confused a bit, if I'm right here. Because ... I am not a scientist and mostly, I understand only one half. But I like these pages and - maybe - here is something to write or to work sometimes...

Regards
Michael

Hello Michael,

Welcome at CM!

No you don't really have to write anything, if you prefer. Like many other sites, we are really plagued with a huge number of bots and human spammers who only log in with ONE purpose. Hence in case of people that are not known, a "sign of life" serves a good purpose .

Being a scientist is by no means a criterion for CelestialMatters. We are also not restricted to Celestia-related subjects. You may e.g. link to some excellent photos you took. Altogether, CM is devoted to high quality as much as possible.

Fridger

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Is three years two long for one bump?

Regardless, a number of folks here might recognize me from the Celestia forum at Shatters.net.

So. Um...

Hi.

Time is just relative over here!

Welcome at CM Plutonian,

few constraints over here, except NO Star Trek stuff, please!
There are many sites out there specializing in ST...

Fridger

Yep! Well aware. Thanks for the reminder.

Hello all! It's been a long, long time since I've stopped by. So nice to see CM is alive and well and truly moving along! So nice to see so many familiar names still around too! Hopefully I'll be finding more time to be able to read all of your news, as I see lots of exciting topics already just popping in for this quick visit.

My best wishes to you all!
LordFerret (aka Alan)

Hi Lord Alan, welcome back!

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Never at rest.

Hi Alan,

Welcome back also from me! I hope you are visiting regularly gain...

Fridger

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Hello fellow humans,

I came here for a reason. I needed a way to picture asteroids' orbits from the point of view of Ceres, with view towards the Sun. A friend of mine who is working at an observatory told me that Celestia could do it. My research led me to this board. I understand there's a difference between Celestia whose development seems to have stalled, and Celestia.sci which this forum talks about. So that you understand that I'm a complete profane in astronomical science...

The orbital visualization need comes from a new free software project, Devuan, which is a fork of Debian. We decided to use minor planet names instead of toys for our release code names. The first and upcoming one, Jessie, matches the next Debian release. After this one, we'll choose names in alphabetical order from the list of minor planets, starting with ASCII. Unfortunately, Jessie and ASCII seem to be missing from the default Celestia catalog, so I need to figure out how to enter their coordinates into Celestia. One good approach would be to maintain a package of Devuan releases with the corresponding objects, as they're chosen. Ceres (our codename for the unstable suite) is already available in Celestia (although I still need to figure out how to look at the Sun and show the Earth orbit, or more probably find a way to visualize its orbit while also showing the Earth and the Sun).

In the next days I will study a few resources to grasp how to use Celestia (or Celestia.sci?) and create the correct files from the JPL database of minor planets. As I have no experience at all regarding 3D modeling, nor do I get any clue regarding where to find suitable images (if they exist) to simulate the objects I need to visualize, I hope this community can be of help.

In my preliminary research, reading the FAQs and a few messages on this board, I was already overwhelmed by new information and the quantity of knowledge that lie in these... spheres. I apologize in advance for my ignorance and I hope to learn a lot from our conversations.

hellekin,

you told me that you like scripting. What scripting languages do you speak?
There is always need for good knowledge in

-- Perl (!)
-- Lua

Perl is used a lot for extracting celestial data from scientific catalogs. Since it is human readable, Perl scripts serve also well certain documentary purposes...

Fridger

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