Well, not to put a damper on this but scaling down can cause possible
difficulties on primitives (ie. disappearing sphere at about 0.001
unit scale). Probably can fit the typical planetary system into
POV-Ray without too much concern though and it has been done before as
Ken said. The best advice I can think of (since you are saying you
already have all the data :) is that you will no doubt want to get a
good grasp of the camera for zooming in/out and position/look_at. The
orientations can be a trick, nothing I can say to help out I think.
But most of all, to see the tiny specks those planets and moons will
make is going to require much tolerance adjustment I think. At normal
perspective distant planets won't show up readily without being
somehow artificially oversized during that particular "normal"
viewing, something like what Nieminen has said. The rendered singular
pixels have a tendancy to flicker on and off (just as in animations,
only single frame here) so they either show on the display or not.
Because of these sorts of things having the data isn't everything,
whether it be POV-Ray or other programs I'm pretty sure. It's because
of the 3D nature and limitations of the calculated objects.
But I digress, and rant, and rave....... so, I'll just wish you good
fortune with your endevour. But first, I leave you with this URL to a
POV Planetarium:

 http://home.global.co.za/~mvds/software.htm

Bob

Ken <tyl### [at] pacbellnet> wrote in message
news:37B### [at] pacbellnet...
>
>
> Hube wrote:
> >
> > If I wanted to create an imaginary solar system,
> > and I had all of the info about rotations and
> > angles and all the stuff you'd need to know for
> > such a thing. Could I create it with povray? Could
> > I set it up to give me the view from a certain
> > point on a certain world in the system? for
> > instance. Tour standing on Saturn, looking up at
> > the sky. Is it dark or light, can you see the
> > rings, which of the moons are out tonight and what
> > phase are they in. Would any of this be possible?
> >
> > Hube
>
>  It certainly is possible in fact it has been done many times. The
only thing
> you need to be careful about if the scale of the solor system. The
program
> has an epsilon value that will limit great distances and make some
of the
> outer planets dissapear. The way to avoid this is by scaling your
solar
> system down and it should pose no problem to you.
>
> Browse through the i.r.t.c. and you should find many examples of
peoples
> work with star systems. http://irtc.org
>
> --
> Ken Tyler
>
> See my 700+ Povray and 3D Rendering and Raytracing Links at:
> http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html

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