[guide-user] Ax.0 troubles/variable display

Bill J. Gray Dec 23, 1999

Hi Jari,

I just checked this part of A2.0, and got results resembling yours.
(Turn 'color stars' on, and the red stars at the edge of the rectangle
tend to jump out at you.) This is a for-real A2.0 problem.

Mentioning it to Dave Monet is a good idea. Though I have to warn you
than I don't know if he'll have a chance to do much about it... as best
I can tell, USNO does not really regard the Ax.0 catalogues as a real
priority; Dave Monet is probably working on other projects by this point.

"...are distances measured from observer to the center of the target
object or to the neares point of it? I think the first is correct." It
is indeed so.

Your points about somewhat confusing wording are well taken. There is
another annoyance I intend to remedy, too: Guide uses the term
"geocentric" even if your home planet is not the earth. Changing it
to "planetocentric" in such cases would evade a little confusion.

Mario, about display of recurrent novae in a .TDF file: I like this
idea. I can't think of a way to get the objects to show up with the
variable star symbol ("hollow stars"); the best you can do, probably,
is to show them as 'normal' stars with a circle around them. This is
the way Sloan ACR stars are shown, for example. Here's the excerpt
from SLOAN.TDF:

type 6
type sc1;e0,0,20;

The first line tells Guide to show a star of the magnitude given in
the file. The second line tells Guide to draw a small circle around
that star. (Those interested in making their own user-added datasets
should take a look at

http://www.projectpluto.com/tdf_info.htm

And should you create such .TDF files, please let me know... I'll
post them on my site, or post a link to your site, as you prefer.)