Re: [guide-user] Guide bugs, changes, etc.

Olivier THIZY Dec 10, 2000

Hello Bill,


I am looking into calculating the phase angle of an asteroid from Guide 7
data (the "more" option). Is there a simple way to calculate it? Is it
possible to add it on the "more option" window for asteroids?


Best regards,
Olivier


----- Original Message -----
From: Bill J. Gray <pluto@...>
To: <guide-user@...>
Sent: dimanche 10 décembre 2000 03:45
Subject: [guide-user] Guide bugs, changes, etc.


> Hi folks,
>
> Looks as if I've got some fixup work to do. I've already done the
> easy task, of changing "30 December" to "30 November". Now for the
> hard parts:
>
> I found the problem Arturo mentioned about certain occultations of
> stars by Venus not appearing (essentially, any event where the
> occultation would not be visible from the center of a transparent
> Earth). I think I've got this fixed, but then again, I didn't
> realize it was broken in the first place; it never affected (for
> example) solar eclipses and asteroid occultations of stars (the two
> cases I run most frequently).
>
> I'm still looking into the missing 'movie frame' button. The problem
> is that I wrote a bit of code intended to add new toolbar buttons
> without destroying your existing toolbar settings. If I just supplied
> a new TOOLBAR.DAT, you'd have to re-select the buttons you really wanted
> to use... I figured that would be a real pain. But evading this required
> some excessively clever code. "Excessively clever code" usually means
> "bugs, bugs, bugs", and that appears to be the case here.
>
> Christian, about the 'white Venus': you'll see that there is also
> a bitmap for a "cloudy Venus". Might be closer to what you want. The
> Magellan image of a cloudless Venus is educational, but I admit that
> it doesn't match what you see through a telescope very well.
>
> Lawrence, as Masaki Kouda mentioned, you probably need to download
> the file PLANETS.ZIP from my Web site. Without it, you'll get bitmapped
> features on a few planets (those for which I had bitmaps when your CD was
> created). I think your CD predates the labelled features, so you also
> wouldn't normally have that data. Get PLANETS.ZIP, and both will become
> available.
>
> Ronny, about showing asteroids as starlike objects of the correct
> magnitude: the same idea applies to planets, artificial satellites,
> natural satellites, and comets. I like the idea, at least as an
> option. Personally, I suspect I'd only use it with artificial
> satellites, but others would use such a feature in all sorts of
> situations. It's on my "I really ought to figure out a way to do
> this" list.
>
> Andre, regarding scope communication over a network, or by
> writing data to a file: I've done things of this ilk over the years,
> but there has been very little interest in them. The main exception
> is the AltAz system, for users of Mel Bartels' scope control system.
> In that case, Guide writes assorted data (such as RA and dec) to
> a file, SLEW.DAT, and a separate, user-supplied program, parses
> that file to get RA/dec data. (You get a lot of other details, such
> as alt/az data and field rotation data. But as far as I know, nobody
> has made use of anything but the RA/dec data.)
>
> This does leave the mysterious crashing of the 16-bit version of
> Guide, reported by Thomas Roehr, and the "Guide starts and freezes"
> mentioned by James Ellis. In both cases, it _may_ help to clean out
> the Guide directory, re-install from the CD-ROM, then unZIP your
> update files. Drastic, I realize, but it often cures bizarre errors.
> Failing that, I may not be able to offer a solution until somebody
> else reports the same errors.
>
> -- Bill
>
>
>
>
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