Automatic updating of catalogues of stars, comets and asteroids

[saber716rus]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. With catalogues of stars, comets, and asteroids.

Describe the solution you'd like When updating online catalogues of stars, asteroids and comets.

Describe alternatives you've considered Updating directories either on request or automatically, depending on the settings.

[alex-w]

Please give us more details, because updating catalogs is implemented many years ago.

[saber716rus]

Online databases are constantly updated, so that the planetarium has more up-to-date data, you need to auto-update catalogs from the Internet, especially often added/changed data on objects in the solar system. 

[alex-w]

But you already can add over 500000 asteroids and comets. And you can update their orbital elements every day or in any other time. Around 70-80% of users no need extra Solar system objects.

[saber716rus]

What about auto-updating the program itself? 

[gzotti]

I totally object program auto updates. People should decide for themselves if they want a new version of the program, and should be mature enough to decide which orbital elements of minor bodies are interesting to them. (You should keep that number rather low!) Some users also want to keep older versions because their hardware cannot cope with the latest (or they say so, at least...), or they don't want to learn new things every few months.

[saber716rus]

well, if it is possible to make it optional, namely, you want to enable it, you want to leave it by default. is this possible or not?

[gzotti]

I will not spend a minute of my time with attempt to do that. However, if Alexander likes it: we accept pull requests. And BTW there is a "check for updates" already in F1/About.

[saber716rus]

Okay, thank you for your attention. 

[markusd112]

I have the same problem: I try to find comet C/2021 A1 Leonard, but the list of comets is outdated. I don't remember how to update the comets list, because it is absolutely hidden: I have to go to preferences --> Plugins --> Solar System Editor --> Configure --> Solar System --> import ephemerides .....

It is very complicated from a users point of view. Wouldn't it be easier to have some update button on a more prominent place to simplify update process? Maybe in the search dialogue box...

[gzotti]

The Solar System Editor is an optional plugin, so we have no place in the main menu. Yes, it can be improved, such as everything else can be improved when somebody invests even more of his or her own time to do it. But it is a working solution already. If you don't remember how to do it, there is always a User Guide to help you.

[axd1967]

The update procedure is indeed not trivial, and will sometimes even crash Stellarium. Also, the current UI is still slightly confusing (I've tried to improve it in https://github.com/Stellarium/stellarium/issues/1299, yet it is still not satisfactory):

Auto updating is not the best idea because of needless loads on servers that provide the orbit information (MPC, ...). Not that it is likely to happen, yet it should be remembered.

Better is to provide good clear indications to the user whether an orbit is outdated or not, and that's part of #1880 , except that it might also be handy to indicate to a user that an outdated body has been hidden by Stellarium.

But it should be feasible to include a feature to update all loaded bodies upon a button press; one issue is then which server should be used, so the user might have to indicate such a preference, all this is adding small complexities.

The workaround is to manually update the orbit info :-)

Note that there is also a need to somehow remove bodies; now this requires to manually edit ssystem_minor.ini.

[alex-w]

Note that there is also a need to somehow remove bodies; now this requires to manually edit ssystem_minor.ini.

@axd1967 did you seen the Solar System Editor plugin?

[axd1967]

Note that there is also a need to somehow remove bodies; now this requires to manually edit ssystem_minor.ini.

@axd1967 did you seen the Solar System Editor plugin?

I'm ashamed I overlooked that, thank you.

For some reason that plugin deserves more attention (it's hard to believe that it is catalogued as a plugin); I often use ctl-alt-S to open the import dialog, but in fact there is a need to add an action shortcut to open the Solar System editor - from where the import dialog can then be opened.

[axd1967]

While working on #2022 I was thinking of this: why not

• add an indication in the SSE dialog to any body that is "outdated"? eg add the epoch/validity/...
• add a button to simply delete all "old" objects? (with a confirmation guard, of course)
• add an ExtraInfo line with the validity of the orbit