![[Katalina system]](katalina.jpg)
The Katalina solar system.
and here's a Cel://URL to take you to this viewpoint:
The Katalina solar system.
Many of Rassilon's creations are available on the Web at http://63.224.48.65/~rassilon/. This particular Add-on is available at http://63.224.48.65/~rassilon/NGC2244-systems_i.zip. NGC 2244 is the designation for the Open Cluster of stars in the middle of the Rosette Nebula. The Nebula itself is NGC 2237.
This Add-on was designed assuming that you already have installed the Add-on described in section 3 above as well as a "Globular Cluster" generator. Installing this Add-on by itself has some potential problems which can be used to illustrate how Celestia supports Add-ons.
Katalina is Rassilon's name for an imaginary star which is the primary content of this Add-on. This star name needs to be made known to Celestia. Briefly, the following steps will make that happen:
\data\starnames.dat so it includes the star's name.
Note: If you have a version of Celestia released after v1.3.0,
like v1.3.1pre3, you don't need
to modify starnames.dat. You can include the star's name
in the STC file itself.
4.2:
Create the directory tree for \extras\addons\NGC2244\
(This makes it easy to keep track of NGC2244's pieces.)
4.3:
Create \extras\addons\NGC2244\katalina.stc.
(This tells Celestia where to draw the star.)
4.4: Copy NGC2244-katalina.ssc from the Zip file
to the folder
\extras\addons\NGC2244\ (This describes all the planets
around the star.)
4.5: Copy all of the picture files that are in the Zip file in the
directory \textures\medres\ to
\extras\addons\NGC2244\textures\medres\.
(These images of the planets' surfaces
are the artwork that Rassilon spent a lot of
his time creating.)
Then you can GoTo the star by name and see its planets.
starnames.datFirst some background:
Rassilon defined the planets that orbit around Katalina in
the file NGC2244-katalina.ssc, and he used the star name
"Katalina" everywhere in that file. So that name has to be
taught to Celestia.
Celestia uses "Hipparcos numbers" to keep track of stars. Hipparcos numbers are numbers assigned by the astronomers who used the Hipparcos Satellite to measure the distances to many stars.
Imaginary stars like Katalina have to be given fake Hipparcos numbers in Celestia. Usually people use numbers between 300000 and 600000.
In order for Celestia to know which star number has which name,
both its number and its name have to be added to Celestia's file
\data\starnames.dat.
starnames.dat is a text file.
It doesn't have any special binary codes in it. As a result,
you can use either Notepad or Wordpad to edit
starnames.dat.
Wordpad is usually a better choice because starnames.dat doesn't use
the standard Windows method of using the two characters
[carriage-return] [line-feed] to separate lines from one another.
It just has [line-feed] between the lines,
and so Notepad doesn't show the file right.
Be careful. though. Celestia gets all of its starnames from
starnames.dat.
You might want to copy it somewhere else to save it in case it gets damaged.
You can copy back the one you saved if something goes wrong.
As Rassilon wrote in the README in the Zip file,
you have to add this next line to the very end of
\data\starnames.dat:
500506:Katalina
You can use the START menu, RUN item to start Wordpad
and then use Wordpad's "file open" menu to get to
starnames.dat
extras directory
which has the name addons.
This will let you move all of your Add-ons at once by moving just
this one directory.
addons directory, create a directory for
each add-on when you install it. For example, you might create the
NGC2244 directory.
NGC2244 directory, you must create the directories for
its models and its surface textures: create the directories
models
and textures Within the
textures
directory, create the directory
medres.
(The lores and hires directories aren't needed for
this particular Add-on.)
When you've created the new directories, your directory structure might look something like this:
[-] Celestia130
--- data
[-] extras
| [-] addons
| [+] HIP500000
| [+] NGC2237
| [-] NGC2244
| --- models
| [-] textures
| --- medres
--- models
[+] textures
Rassilon buried the definition for the star 500506 in the middle of one of his very big star catalogs. The Readme says you can delete those catalogs if you don't have his Globular Cluster Add-on. But if you do that, you can't find Katalina.
Here's a simple .STC file that defines just the star that is
named Katalina. Create this file in the directory
\extras\addons\NGC2244\.
You can use your favorite editor to create it. Notepad is fine.
Wordpad is OK, too.
#######################
#katalina.stc
#######################
# HIP 500506
500506 {
RA 98.02484576
Dec 5.04107509
Distance 5500.3959
SpectralType "G0Ia-O"
AppMag 15.00 # Radii: 1.47270096432767
}
#######################
If you're using Celestia v1.3.0, its
STC files can only include the Hipparcos index number. Names have to be
added to the file starnames.dat.
If you're using Celestia v1.3.1pre3 or later, its STC files can include both a star's Hipparcos index number and its name.
The star's name must follow the Hipparcos number, be enclosed in quotes, and come before the first "{". More than one name can be specified between the quotes if they're separated by colons (:).
For example, here's how you could define Katalina as the name for the star HIP 500506:
500506 "Katalina" {
Once you've changed starnames.dat,
created katalina.stc,
and put the other files in the right directories,
your directory structure should look something
like this:
[-] Celestia130
--- data
| -- starnames.dat
[-] extras
| [-] addons
| [+] HIP500000
| [+] NGC2237
| [-] NGC2244
| -- katalina.stc
| -- NGC2244-katalina.ssc
| --- models
| -- ngc2237-aster_i.3ds (Rassilon made a typo here)
| [-] textures
| --- medres
| -- ngc2244-katalina_i.jpg
| [...]
| -- ngc2244-moon_i-bump.jpg
--- models
[+] textures
Now you finally
should be able to run Celestia and use the commands
[return]
katalina[return]
c
g
to visit Rassilon's Katalina system in the heart of the Rosetta Nebula.
Here's a snapshot taken by Celestia of the Katalina solar system.
The Katalina solar system.
and here's a Cel://URL to take you to this viewpoint:
The Katalina solar system.
If you don't tell me that something's missing, unclear or wrong, I can't improve it.