Hi Lawrence,
Guide shows (433) Eros twice to reflect the impact of the NEAR
spacecraft, which appears to have hit harder than expected,
shattering the asteroid in two.
Well, probably not. It's more likely that you've loaded some
asteroid data using the 'Add MPC Comets/Asteroids' function. The problem
is that Guide can't necessarily recognize that it's getting elements
both from that file _and_ from the 'main' data file, be it MPCORB
or its built-in elements. So the object appears twice. The solution
is to go into "Edit Comet Data", find the offending duplicate (433),
and remove it.
With comets, Guide usually has more success in weeding out duplicates.
At least, until recently: the naming scheme in the MPC comet files has
changed enough to confuse the algorithm a bit. I hope to fix this. In
the meantime, be aware that periodic comets (and some non-periodics)
may show duplicates.
Kevin, for the two-CD situation, I'll plagiarize my own site:
http://www.projectpluto.com/guide8.htm
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With the move to two CD-ROMs, having Guide run from the hard drive
in a flexible manner becomes much more important. Without it, you
could be forever swapping disks. One might want to copy all 1.3
GBytes to the hard drive; or copy disk #1 to the hard drive, with
disk #2 remaining in the CD drive. (Or you could tell Guide to use
only data on the first disk, so that swapping disks, or even putting
data on the hard drive, would never be necessary; or that you have
two CD-ROM drives installed. In situations where one or two CD drives
are in use, it ought to be possible to tell Guide, "No, I don't want
to insert a Guide disk; just use what you've already got.")
----------- Clip from site begins -----------
Basically, Guide will start up, look at the CD-ROM drive(s) you've
got installed, plus whatever's been installed to the hard drive, and
will use whatever data it can get.
About the 'floating magnitudes': the problem here is, what should
be done with magnitude limits when a dataset is turned 'off' or 'on'?
If they're left constant, it would annoy users of the 'auto' mag
In these situations, the mag limits are temporarily not in use at all,
About the 'floating magnitudes': yes, when you turn a dataset to
a different magnitude type ('auto', where the magnitude limit changes
logically when you zoom in or out; or 'fixed', where the magnitude
limit is held constant as you zoom), you may have to reset the magnitude
limit. At present, when you turn a dataset 'on' or 'off', the
limiting magnitude is unused (because the dataset is either turned
_completely_ 'on' or 'off', regardless of magnitude), but that unused
limit is allowed to float, just as if it were set to 'auto'.
I don't see a good way around this. Holding the limit fixed in such
circumstances would just lead to a different set of problems (ex: you
turn on asteroids to mag 20 at a one-arcminute FOV, then shut them off.
You zoom out to level 2, and turn asteroids back on, but still to mag
20. Chaos reigns as the screen fills with asteroids.)
-- Bill