Starry Night .TXT import (Need example file if possible)

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1

Hi guys,

I’m trying a code a small web app to pull all the latest near earth asteroid discoveries that need confirming and dynamically produce a list of targets I can import into SGP.

I’ve got the format scrape and format done (Col A=target, L=RA, M=Dec -> total P cols tab delimited) but I get the error in SGP 3 when trying import “Object Reference not set to an instance of an object.”

Does anyone have an example starry nights target file I can view and test to make sure my .TXT matches what it expects?

… currently :

TARGET											RA	DEC			
P10GEyV											8.6938	+16.6171			
P10GDoa											10.1412	+12.6693			
P10GDo9											10.3687	+13.1162			
P10GDoc											10.1753	+14.2055

etc … though have been trying different coordinate formats too to no avail so far.

Thanks!

Dylan.

2

I don’t have the Starry Nights file, but I explain what you need to import in this thread:

FWIW my comment about no special format for RA and Dec was wrong. RA and Dec need to be decimal, not H M S for a successful “correct” import.

There is an upper limit of how many objects you can import so the entire Messier list won’t work.

3

Yeh I used your post and one other from cloudy nights as the basis for what I did… thanks! I can’t see that what I did is any different so not sure why I’m getting the error. Have you made the jump to SGP 3.0 Steve? Do you have a txt file (even with a single target) that you could share as a test?

4

I think that this will work although I don’t remember creating anything with SGP 3

5

Thank you!! Confirmed that your file works with SGP 3 just fine. That will help me pin down my error, I didn’t realise that all columns needed labels so perhaps it’s that. Thanks again!

6

It works! Thanks Steve!

For anyone who needs the format in future it’s like this (Columns A -> T … the tabs don’t line up nicely on the forum but each column has a label … and I’m not sure the columns after P matter but there are 2 blank columns Q & R before the 2 labelled columns at the end)

Name	Kind	Mag	Size	Alt	Az	Constellation	Rise	Transit	Set	Database	RA	DEC	Illumination	Semi-major	Distance			dec ra	dec dec
A106qxc											9.7204	+7.4620							
P10GEyV											8.8175	+15.8299							
P10GDoa											10.1331	+12.8484							
P10GDo9											10.3591	+12.9605							
P10GDoc											10.1677	+14.3724							
P10GDnS											10.2881	+5.6561							
P10GAtt											13.0273	+1.9240							
P10GzIh											14.1382	-25.9285							
P10GxwH											9.1354	+21.3928							
P10GxwK											9.3976	+17.5565							
P10GxwE											9.2858	+25.0784							
P10GxwC											9.4786	+23.2671							
P10Gxwz											9.5462	+21.5351							
P10Gxwx											9.7917	+22.5061							
P10Gxvi											9.6716	+16.5327							
P10Gxqs											14.6499	+12.0939							
P10Gxqp											8.2552	+17.0401
7

I also do asteroid astrometry and have a need to load lists of targets with coordinates. I was using a process
that created files in the above format which worked flawlessly with the previous version, but upgrading to
3.0.3.140 results in a “Success! x of x targets were imported” message but only the target name is loaded.
Also, the import fails to propagate the import options for centering and slewing. Any ideas as to what has changed? Any help is appreciated.

Jeff

8

I had to insert two new columns after the RA and DEC columns for v140 to import successfully. The two new columns are RA (J2000) and DEC (J2000). Here is a sample:

|Name|Kind|Mag|Size|Alt|Az|Constellation|Rise|Transit|Set|Database|RA|DEC|RA(J2000)|DEC(J2000)|Illumination|Semi-major|Distance|

|GCVS RU Scl|#|9.35|#|#|#|#|#|#|#|#|0 02.8017|-24 56.7167|0 02.8017|-24 56.7167|#|#|#|

The ‘|’ above is the TAB character.

Craig

1 Like
9

Thanks, Craig. That solves the problem.

Jeff