Asteroids used in Solar Fire belong to two different categories...

•Asteroids as Chart Points - The asteroids Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Vesta, Astraea, Hygeia and Chiron are immediately and always available for display in charts and reports of all kinds in Solar Fire. They can be selected as Displayed Points, Aspected Points, Transiting, Progressing and Radix Points in their own right, without the need to select them in a "user" asteroid file.

•Additional Asteroids - A collection of more than 1000 further asteroids are also included with Solar Fire in source files. Once they have been selected into a "user" asteroid file these asteroids can be selected for use in specific reports and page objects. When you first install Solar Fire, a set of 45 of these asteroids will already be in a user file called "standard.ast", and you can select individual asteroids from this set to be used in wheels and reports etc.

The additional asteroids that come with Solar Fire are available for use over the period year 1500 to year 2100. It is also possible to extend this range by acquiring additional asteroid ephemeris files (see Using More Asteroids).

Using additional asteroids in Solar Fire is a three step process...

1.Asteroid ephemeris and other information, from a variety of sources e.g Swiss Ephemeris files, Pottenger files, is stored on the computer in "source" asteroid files. These files have names like "se00007s.se1". Solar Fire comes supplied with source asteroid files containing over a 1000 asteroids.

2.From these source files you can select individual asteroids to be placed into Solar Fire's "user" asteroid files. Solar Fire's user asteroid files contain collections of asteroids that have been selected from the various source files on the computer, as asteroids to be actually used in the program.

3.Once you have selected an asteroid from a source asteroid file into a user asteroid file, you can then further select the asteroid from the user file - to be used in specific pages, wheels and reports.

Solar Fire however already comes supplied with some user asteroid files, containing different selections of asteroids for use in Solar Fire, and to use them in specific pages, wheels and reports, you only need to carry out step (c) above. These asteroids may be quite sufficient for your needs and you may never need to edit a Solar Fire user asteroid file. However, if you wish to add or remove asteroids from Solar Fire user asteroid files, you will need to edit the file.

This section therefore describes how to add or remove asteroids from source asteroid files into, or from, Solar Fire user asteroid files. Whatever asteroids are in Solar Fire user asteroid files, are the asteroids which can then be used in the reports and page objects that pertain to asteroids.

 

>> To edit an asteroid file

1.From the Main Screen select the Chart Options menu, Files option, Asteroids File item.

2.Select a user asteroid file from the list of file names

3.Select the Edit button

This will display the "Asteroid Selection" dialog box. The asteroids in this box are the asteroids from all the various source files on the computer.

The user asteroid file name is at the top, and beneath this is the Folder path for the source asteroid files of type set in the "Location" area.

The "Selected Asteroids" list box on the left of the dialog displays the number and name of each currently selected asteroid from those in the source files, and the "Available Asteroids" list box on the right displays the number and name of all the asteroids in the source files that are currently available for selection.

TIPS for advanced users: Hovering the mouse over the folder path in the "Location" textbox causes the full path of the location of the source asteroids to be displayed - useful if it wasn't fully visible in the textbox.

If you click on the folder path displayed in the "Location" textbox, the folder listed there will be opened and you will be able see the various source asteroid subfolders and files in it.

For normal use of Solar Fire you do not need to know anything about these files. However if you have installed new source files then see Using More Asteroids regarding updating the list of "Available Asteroids", in this dialog box, from these newly installed source files).

 

>> To edit the name of the selection

•Click inside the Description text box, and type in a description for the current selection. This name is displayed in the "File Manager" whenever you are selecting asteroid files, so it is helpful to enter a meaningful description of what this selection contains.

 

>> To include a single asteroid

1.Find the desired asteroid in the list of Available asteroids

2.Click on its entry in the list

 

>> To un-include a single asteroid

1.Find the asteroid in the list of Selected asteroids

2.Click on its entry in the list

As well as selecting individual asteroids, one at a time, you can select a range of asteroids based on their names or numbers.

 

>> To include or un-include a range of asteroids by name

1.Ensure that the By Name display order is selected

2.In the Quick Select Frame, type the starting letter into the From box

3.In the Quick Select Frame, type the finishing letter into the To box

4.Click on the On button to switch them on, or the Off button to switch them off. All the asteroids whose names are within the specified alphabetic range will be affected.

 

>> To include or un-include a range of asteroids by number

1.Ensure that the By Number display order is selected

2.In the Quick Select Frame, type the starting number into the From box

3.In the Quick Select Frame, type the finishing number into the To box

4.Click on the On button to switch them on, or the Off button to switch them off. All the asteroids whose numbers are within the specified range will be affected.

 

>> To alter the order in which asteroids are listed in Solar Fire reports

•Select the desired order from the Display Order option buttons.

Whichever order you choose here will be adopted in Solar Fire’s asteroid reports.

 

>> Save the file and exit

1.When you have selected all the asteroids you want for this user asteroid file, click on the Save button.

2.You will be back at the "File Management" dialog. If you want the file you have just edited to be the "current" Solar Fire asteroid file that you will be using to select asteroids from to use in reports etc, then click on the Select button. Otherwise click on the Cancel button.

 

>> Using asteroids in charts, pages and reports

➢ To display asteroids in a chart in the main ring see Editing a User Defined Points File.

➢ To display asteroids in a chart in an extra ring see Editing an Extra Ring Points File.

➢ To display transiting, progressing asteroids etc in dynamic reports see Editing an Extra Dynamic Points File.

See Also:

Using More Asteroids