User`s guide

168 Starry Night User’s Guide
the Orbit Editor. A dialog box will appear,
warning you that changes have been made
to this database.
Any new objects or changes you have
made using the Orbit Editor are not
permanently saved until you press the
Save button in this dialog box!
If you now open the Find pane and clear
the text box, you will see your new object
listed in its appropriate place among the
other solar system objects. You can now
centre on the object, turn on its orbit, or
perform any of the other functions you can
do with solar system objects in Starry
Night.
Updating Data: To change any of the
information for any new objects you have
added with the Orbit Editor, open the
object’s contextual menu and choose
Edit Orbital Elements. This reopens the
Orbit Editor and allows you to make any
necessary changes.
Example: Adding a new planet
This example shows you how to use the
Orbit Editor to add an imaginary new
planet to our solar system.
1Choose File->New Asteroid Orbiting
Sun from the main menu to open the Orbit
Editor dialog box.
2 Change the object type to “Planet” and
name the new object “Planet X”.
3 The orbit of your new object is shown in
red. Use the Increase Elevation button in
the Orbit Editor dialog box to rocket out to
an elevation of about 25 AU’s. The
outermost brown orbit which you can see
is the orbit of Jupiter.
4 Use the Mean Distance slider in the
orbital elements section of the Orbit Editor
to increase your planet’s mean distance to
about 20 AU’s. As you do this, the red orbit
that marks your planet will get larger,
eventually encompassing the orbit of
Jupiter.
5 Close the Orbit Editor window by
pressing
Save.
6Open the
Find pane and clear the text
box. You should see “Planet X” listed just
underneath Jupiter. You can now centre on
Planet X, turn on its orbit, or perform any
of the other functions you can do with
planets in Starry Night.
Adding Objects 2 (Multiple Solar
System Objects)
The Orbit Editor is handy when you want
to add one or two new objects. However, it
is cumbersome to add large numbers of
objects (for example, a set of dim
asteroids). To add multiple comets,
satellites or asteroids, the best approach is
to manually edit the comet, asteroid and
satellite files. The data for these objects is
stored in the files “asteroids.txt”,
“comets.txt” and
“satellites.txt”, which are all
located in the “Starry Night\Sky
Data” folder (on the Macintosh, you will
need to Ctrl-click on the Starry Night
application icon and choose Show