Orbital elements for software packages
This page provides links to orbital elements of comets for use in various planetarium programs:
•
Minor Planet Center
•
Guide (Project Pluto)
•
Starry Night (Sienna Software)
•
TheSky (Software Bisque) 1
•
MegaStar V4.x (E.L.B. Software)
•
SkyMap (SkyMap Software)
•
Xephem (E. Downey)
•
SkyTools v2 (Skyhound, formerly CapellaSoft) 2
•
KStars (KDE) 3
1 TheSky6 (retired version) does not allow loading more than 1000 comets, so a personal selection must be made.
TheSky6 also does not allow for eccentricities greater than 2, meaning that it does not support the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov.
TheSkyX will allow up to 1100 comets with eccentricities up to 5 to be imported.
2 This format is for the retired version 2 only. Later versions obtain their data directly from Skyhound.
3 Disable the 'Auto Online Update' setting in the KStars solar system settings. Then replace \Users\[username]\AppData\Local\kstars\comets.dat
The orbital elements were provided either by the MPC (Minor Planet Center).
Magnitude parameters were based on observations contributed by observers worldwide, via COBS (Comet Observation Database) or the MPC (Minor Planet Center)
