Hi All,
While looking ahead at potentially bright comets Guide was indicating
C/2010 J5 as a good prospect. Two problems. Firstly this is the initial
orbit from May last year, which was updated with the change of designation
to P/2010 J5 producing a totally different Encke type orbit at 3+ AU . I
have come across this before, often resulting in two comets being shown, but
the second problem came with Guide not showing P/2010 in the list of
currently visible comets or on screen until I had manually deleted C/2010
from the full editable list, which I would rarely look at. Thus the orbital
elements were being downloaded for the new designation but Guide was not
reading or ignoring them somehow in preference to those for C/2010. Any
thoughts on the cause or how to avoid this in future? With the correct orbit
keeping the comet well outside my capabilities visually it was not on my
radar, and it took a bit of time to figure out the problem with Guide
ignoring it on screen.
Regards, Jim Gifford