Wrong import of comet data by ssystem editor

Can you give some use-cases for testing?

Alexander, the original case was a guy who unsucessfully tried to
search C/2014 E2 (Jacques) using Stellarium, and after referring to
other sources spotted the comet way off the position indicated in
Stellarium. I checked this with Stellarium 0.13.0 and the latest beta
update and could confirm the wrong position. I used the MPC online
search tool of the solar system editor.

This import resulted in the following entry in ssystem.ini

radius = 5
orbit_Eccentricity = 0.999145
tex_map = nomap.png
orbit_Epoch = 2457000.5
color = 1.0, 1.0, 1.0
absolute_magnitude = 11
orbit_SemiMajorAxis = 776.5369
orbit_MeanAnomaly = 0.0073
orbit_MeanMotion = 4.55e-05
orbit_AscendingNode = 56.3952
albedo = 0.04
lighting = false
orbit_Inclination = 156.3925
coord_func = comet_orbit
orbit_ArgOfPericenter = 344.0479
type = comet
slope_parameter = 4
name = C/2014 E2 (Jacques)
parent = Sun

The first thing I noted was
type = comet
occuring with asteroid style elements.
The resulting approximate position in Stellarium for August 19, 0 UT, is:
2h50m38s, +59deg 59 ' (2000.0)

Guide 9 yields for the same time:
  03h04m28.13s +59 30' 42.9"

which is way off

If I change in Stellarium the entry in this way:
orbit_Eccentricity=0.9991180
orbit_PericenterDistance=0.6639480
orbit_TimeAtPericenter=2456841.01640
(taken from the CBAT data through Guide 9)
and remove the entries for mean anomaly and mean motion and semimajor
axis (e.g. shift to comet format)
I get about

3.04.25 +59:31 in Stellarium.
which nearly perfectly fits the Guide result.

Hartwig

Am 18.08.2014 13:45, schrieb Alexander Wolf:
> Can you give some use-cases for testing?
>

I just saw that the error only occurs when I import the comet data from
the MPC online search tool, but not when loading the object list from
MPC's list of observable comets (soft00Cmt.txt) and selecting the comet
from this list. In this case I get a correct comet style entry in the
ssystem.ini file and a correct position in the sky.

Hartwig

Am 18.08.2014 13:45, schrieb Alexander Wolf:
> Can you give some use-cases for testing?
>

Indeed, MpcImportWindow.cpp line 845. Currently objects are read as asteroids only in this panel. This should be fixed. But whichever way, also with converted elements it should be correct. So this is two bugs...

A tentative fix has been committed as revision 7239 of the trunk branch of Stellarium's Bazaar repository at Launchpad: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~stellarium/stellarium/trunk/revision/7239