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Which Asteroids Are Displayed In SkySafari 6 Pro? (Answer: We Draw The 5000 Of The Brightest And Major Asteroids - Read On!)

I was wondering that asteroid (140553) 2001 TQ202 can be found via object search, but the object isn't displayed per default (I have unset the mag limit for these objects in the settings to display everything)...

Aren't all asteroids displayed that are in the object database? Which objects are displayed? How can I identify an object that I have found by observing without knowing it's name?

Here it is displayed after searching for it:

 

 

But when selecting another object, the asteroid disappears and isn't displayed any longer:

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5 comments

  • 0
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    Pedro Braganca

    Hi Markus, I'm able to replicate the behavior you explained.  I'm assuming that we only draw up to a certain number of asteroids (a few thousand, brightest and up to a certain catalog number in order) at a time due to performance issues.  If we attempted to draw all asteroids (think there are over 500k) and calculate their orbits in real time - the phones hardware couldn't compute quickly enough and the app would freeze.  So the solution is to draw a limited set and allow you to search for any object.  I'll mention this to our dev team however, and see if there is anything we can do in order to draw and label more asteroids at a time since phones are now faster.

  • 0
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    markusd112

    Yes, this could be plausible.

    The problem is, that you haven't a chance to identify an object with SkySafari you can see via Telescope but that isn't displayed in SkySafari: I have to know the name of the object...

    Maybe some "intelligent" caching/filtering could help, e.g. all the asteroids will be displayed only at a specific zoom level to decrease the needed processor power. Or some switch to enable manually the display of all objects at a certain zoom level...

    Thanks,

    Markus

  • 0
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    Pedro Braganca

    Hi Markus - thank you for your suggestions, I'll discuss with the dev team.  We do caching and filtering in a variety of our products.

  • 0
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    Pedro Braganca

    Other option might be to use the Planner to search for asteroids meeting certain criteria (magnitude, distance, ra/dec, etc) and make an observing list of them.  Then you can highlight the list to have them all easily pointed out in the chart.

  • 0
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    Keiron Smith

    Hi Markus,

    We draw up to 5000 of the brightest asteroids.

    Independent of your magnitude settings, we only draw non-selected asteroids on screen if it is considered (by us) as a "major" asteroid.

    Major asteroids either:

    1: Have a number between 0 and 2000 (i.e. are one of the first 2000 discovered asteroids

    2. Have an absolute magnitude  < 10

    3. Have a diameter > 10 Km

    We have 700,000 asteroids in the Pro database.  We just can't draw all 700,000 and expect any kind of reasonable performance.  That is why we only draw major asteroid if they are not selected.

    But, like Pedro said, mobile computing power has improved in the last couple of years so we can review this for future development.

    Thanks!

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