Re: [guide-user] Re: Adding Comets

P. Clay Sherrod Nov 5, 2015

I vote for the first of your workarounds....you providing accurate and dependable
comet elements that are epoch-efficient.

------------
Dr. Clay

Arkansas Sky Observatories
http://www.arksky.org/
ASO Petit Jean Mountain /MPC H41
ASO Petit Jean Mountain South /MPC H45
ASO West Conway /MPC H43
.......serving astronomy since 1971
____________________
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Gray pluto@... [guide-user]" <guide-user@yahoogroups.com>
To: <guide-user@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2015 4:30 PM
Subject: Re: [guide-user] Re: Adding Comets


> Hi Clay,
>
> Removing it permanently would present a major problem: you
> would get only those comets MPC happens to be keeping track of,
> plus those Guide knew about when the disks were made. You would
> get horribly incorrect epochs (because the data would be the old
> stuff from the DVD, not the new stuff from IMCCE), and a lot of
> missing objects (those found after the DVDs were made, but not
> recently enough that MPC is still putting them in their lists.)
>
> For the nonce, downloading the 'eltdat_g.txt' file mentioned in
> my previous e-mail will fill in the missing objects. But the
> continued absence of IMCCE is going to cause trouble.
>
> I'm considering a couple of possible workarounds. One would be
> for me to provide my own comet elements. I'm now able to get the
> MPC's file of comet astrometry and compute orbits myself for all
> objects in it. Essentially, I'd be providing a comet version of
> what Lowell's ASTORB and MPC's MPCORB provide for asteroids.
>
> This wouldn't be all that difficult for me to do, but keeping
> it up to date would be a nuisance. So I'm sort of hoping to avoid
> doing this. But it may be unavoidable.
>
> -- Bill
>
> On 11/05/2015 02:58 PM, 'P. Clay Sherrod' drclay@... [guide-user] wrote:
>> Interesting that you are noting the silence of IMCCE.....from the very
>> first date that this change was made, I had trouble getting comet data
>> consistently with that link to IMCCE; it would never complete the
>> download, or connection could not be even made.
>> Nearly every night the comet data was all over the place, with missing
>> comets, horribly incorrect epochs and other mistakes.
>>
>> When the "Use Only MPC...." function/link was added through some gentle
>> pursuasion, things worked just fine and downloads have been accurate
>> and swift, no problems.
>>
>> I suggest that the IMCCE link be removed completely from Guide.
>>
>> ------------
>> Dr. Clay
>>
>> Arkansas Sky Observatories
>> http://www.arksky.org/
>> ASO Petit Jean Mountain /MPC H41
>> ASO Petit Jean Mountain South /MPC H45
>> ASO West Conway /MPC H43
>> .......serving astronomy since 1971
>> ____________________
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Bill Gray pluto@... [guide-user]" <guide-user@yahoogroups.com>
>> To: <guide-user@yahoogroups.com>
>> Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2015 1:36 PM
>> Subject: Re: [guide-user] Re: Adding Comets
>>
>>
>>> Hi David,
>>>
>>> Simplest way to fix this :
>>>
>>> (1) Make sure you're using the version of the Guide 9 software from
>>>
>>> http://www.projectpluto.com/new.htm
>>>
>>> You will see, among other improvements, "(2012 December 12) Fixes
>>> and improved display of comets". Which is partly why I recommend getting
>>> this version.
>>>
>>> (2) The "improvement" involved having Guide use comet orbital data
>>> from the IMCCE in France, plus the Minor Planet Center's comet data.
>>> The only sticky bit is that the IMCCE has gone silent, causing Guide's
>>> automatic comet retrieval to break. (As you found.)
>>>
>>> So instead, try downloading this file:
>>>
>>> http://www.projectpluto.com/eltdat_g.txt
>>>
>>> (about 193 KBytes) to your Guide folder. This is the last version
>>> of the IMCCE data, from August 2015.
>>>
>>> Then, download the MPC file directly :
>>>
>>> http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/Ephemerides/Comets/Soft02Cmt.txt
>>>
>>> And save it to your Guide folder... _changing the name to
>>> soft02cm.txt_, i.e., drop a 't' from the name. Upper vs. lowercase
>>> doesn't matter, at least not in Windows.
>>>
>>> -- Bill
>>>
>>> On 11/05/2015 02:01 PM, stonedoffmyass@... [guide-user] wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I solved my own issue.( kind of )
>>>>
>>>> After careful review of the orbital elements and their entries,
>>>>
>>>> One laptop I have magically took the orbital elements ,the other machine refuses
>>>> to accept these new Comets.
>>>>
>>>> At least I can "add a trail" , and print the chart displaying added Comet now.
>>>>
>>>> Will settle for that for now
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> David
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------
>>> Posted by: Bill Gray <pluto@...>
>>> ------------------------------------
>>>
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>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------
>> Posted by: "P. Clay Sherrod" <drclay@...>
>> ------------------------------------
>>
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>>
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>>
>>
>>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
> Posted by: Bill Gray <pluto@...>
> ------------------------------------
>
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>
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>
>