NanoSail in Stellarium

[Tantalus]

I've managed to get the Nanosail-D satellite to display in Stellarium (rev 0.10.6.1) by manually editing the satellites.json file to include to following code...

"NANOSAIL-D2":

{

"comms": [],

"groups": [],

"hintColor": [0.8, 0.8, 0],

"orbitVisible": true,

"tle1": "1 90027U 0 11056.22661373 +.00033682 +00000-0 +44918-2 0 00543",

"tle2": "2 90027 071.9752 285.8868 0024951 093.2804 267.0156 14.79237081005456",

"visible": true

},

"hintColor" - sets the display colour for the satellite, and uses three RGB values between 0 and 1

"orbitVisible":true - will show the satellites track across the sky (set to false if you don't want the track to show)

TLE sourced from the nanosail website.

The first time I tried to add the satellite, I used the advice given on the Wiki:Stellarium pages and edited the .json file with Windows Notepad, but it bombed and Stellarium locked up during loading. I noticed that some of the parameters on the Wiki pages article differ slightly from the ones I found in my .json file, so at the second attempt I copy-and-paste'd one of the other entries then edited the parameter values accordingly. The satellites in the .json file are ordered alphabetically, so I followed the same convention, and this time it worked. If you're want to do this edit for yourself, then make sure you make a back-up for the json file first just in case it all goes pear-shaped.

So far, the in-program tle update function doesn't work for this satellite, and I haven't yet found an online source for this satellite that can be read by Stellarium. The website used by Stellarium for other satellites either doesn't have the tle, or if it has I haven't been able to find the right file, so at this point in time I will have to manually update from time to time, but it's easy enough to edit this file so no great hardship there.