Both tails are not cones, rather thin paraboloids, with the nucleus in focus. The gas tail (bluish) should point straight away from the sun, the dust tail lags behind a bit, so you need to find not only position but speed (vector), and use this to push the tail from the direct antisolar direction. Anti-tails should be visible then just from observer/viewing geometry. The textures for those parabolas may be animated to move away from the coma and thin out. also, the ice/dust/gas "particles" coming from the vents should be pushed away from the sun.
HTH, G. On Di, 1.05.2012, 03:30, Reaves, Timothy wrote: > As a general rule, as accurate as possible. > > As you zoom in, the tail would still be visible. For the boy itself, there > are some OBJ files available for some of the more major comets. For ones > where these are not available, perhaps there is a library of OBJ files > that > could be sleected from based on composition, or some-such. As for seeing > venting, that would definitely be nice. > > For the other questions, 'yes'. :) > > > > On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 2:28 PM, Kristen Aw <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> I was just wondering about the level of detail in comet rendering that >> Stellarium wants. Currently, from afar, the comets are balls of light, >> and >> when zoomed into, are rotating spheres with some crater-map. I >> understand >> that the plasma tail comes out cone-shaped, and appears at 1.5 AU, the >> dust >> tail appears at about 3 AU, and the coma is visible when it passes >> Jupiter >> (5 AU). And that the brightness of the coma/ length of tail increases as >> the comet approaches the Sun. >> >> So, from afar, a comet would have a coma and tails. But what about when >> they are zoomed into? I guess it would have an irregular potato shape >> like >> Hartley, but as it releases gas/dust, should we be able the material >> coming >> out from vents, as the nucleus rotates...? >> >> And also, should we be able to calculate if the observer sees an >> antitail >> (due to parallax), and whether the dust tail is viewed head on (it would >> be >> seen as a fan on a plane) or directly from the side (it would be seen as >> a >> straight line)? >> >> I'm not sure how feasible the above is, so I'm just asking. >> >> Thanks >> >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Stellarium-pubdevel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/stellarium-pubdevel
