Re-add SkyPlane reference frame

CelestiaProject / Celestia

Real-time 3D visualization of space.

https://celestiaproject.space

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Re-add SkyPlane reference frame #437

Open SevenSpheres opened 4 years ago

SevenSpheres commented 4 years ago

Back in 2010 Andrew Tribick added a "SkyPlane" reference frame to the Celestia code for use with exoplanet orbits - source.

A few months later he removed it because of some issues. I think it should be re-added for version 1.7, since it does work correctly for exoplanets. ("Incidentally it looks like the extrasolar planets orbits we've got in Celestia are fine...") Here is the commit in question.

375gnu commented 2 years ago

@ajtribick what do you about this?

ajtribick commented 2 years ago

Would need to take a look at it again. IIRC the first stage is to allow flipping the third axis of the reference frame: currently it's constrained by the right hand rule. In particular, the case where the z-axis is taken to be radially outward (for x pointing N, y pointing E) would probably be a fairly common situation for visual+spectroscopic orbits.