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How To Update The Satellite.txt File? (Answer: Delete Or Rename The File And Restart SN8 - A New File Will Be Downloaded)

First post, and I'm not sure how to use this forum, so forgive me if this has been brought up before.

I just updated to Starry Night Pro 8. The first thing I did was to look at satellite passes, and compared them to the excellent ones on Heavens-Above. I saw NO matches. Satellites that should have shown up in SN did not, and satellites showing in SN do not in HA. I thought the problem was an old satellite data file, so I tried to update that. Behold and 'lo, SN told me my data files were up to date: no new files were downloaded.

Is this updating no longer supported? It was always useful to me in the past to be able to portray visible satellite passes for my planetarium customers.

I'm not the only one who has this problem. A Starry Night guru at Spitz Inc., manufacturers of planetariums, says he has the same problem (and he know more about SN than I'll ever know!). He advised I look at the NASA two-line elements for a particular satellite; I did so, and the epoch date doesn't seem to make sense.

Anyone else have this problem? Am I missing something obvious? I've used SN since about version 2, and this is the first time I've run into this problem.

--Keith Johnson

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3 comments

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    Khjalmarj

    Further info: I looked at the "Sky Data" folder (Mac users: right-click and select "Show Package Contents"; yes, it's safe if you don't make any changes :-)  . The "Satellites.txt" file that contains NASA two-line elements for the satellites has a creation date in March 2020. And the satellite entries have epoch dates in 2018! This is NOT up-to-date, as my copy of SN* claims it is. Is there any way to manually download a current copy of this file and install it manually? Or can we no longer get data-file updates?

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    Dlucas

    Hello Khjalmarj. Obviously, I don't work for or represent SimCurr. I hope they answer you quickly. I just wanted to let you know -- for some reason, my satellites.txt file is dated today. It has 7,260 lines of information. I can't explain the disparity between my file, which looks like it's been updated today, and yours from March 2020. All I know is, this looks recent. I wish I could be of more help.

    Doug

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    Keiron Smith

     

    Please Attach a screenshot of the Satellites.txt file creation date in March 2020.

    1. Rename the Satellites.txt as Satellites-1.txt
    2. Restart SN8.  SN8 will download a new file.
    3. Check the new file for the creation date.

    Thanks!

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