Originally from ticket #7271.
1. What formula does Starry Night Pro use for its representations of cometary coma and tail sizes?
2. When you input a large comet nucleus and high magnitude, (a) Starry Night will not display the coma at all unless you zoom out a lot and (b) the coma does not appear in anything like the correct place relative to the nucleus--it is often far from it. Anything you can do to help me fix these problems would be greatly appreciated.
Colin, these issues will have to be dealt with as bugs in the way that we draw comets. Any further information you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
For example, if you increase the size of the comet a lot (up to 100 km) and insert a high absolute magnitude (-3 or higher)--the comet coma often appears quite a distance from where the nucleus is. It will not take you long to see the problem if you try this.
Also, do you know what formula is used for the representation of coma sizes? What about tail sizes? Can you adjust the length of the tail?
Also, is there any chance we could conduct our conversation by email rather than on the www? I can send you pics of the problem by email.
Thanks