KStars keeps track of thousands of comets and asteroids.  
It uses orbital data published by NASA's Jet Propulsion 
Laboratory (JPL); these data are known as "orbital elements".
Because these small bodies are easily perturbed as they 
wander about the solar system, their orbital elements must 
be updated regularly.  Updating the elements will also add 
any recently-discovered bodies.


How to update the orbital elements of comets and asteroids:

-=( 1 )=-  The Easy Way.

Start KStars, then open the "Get New Stuff" Tool by selecting 
"Download Data..." from the File menu, or by pressing Ctrl+D.

If a new "ephemerides" package is available, select it and press 
the Install button.  Voila!


-=( 2 )=-  Doing it Manually.

It is possible that the ephemerides package is not completely 
up-to-date.  Fortunately, it's relatively simple to update the 
files manually whenever you want.  

::NOTE:: If you find that the ephemerides package is woefully 
outdated, and you follow this manual-install procedure, PLEASE
send your final comets.dat and asteroids.dat files to 
kstars-devel@kde.org!  Now is your chance to be a KStars Hero!


Step 1: The JPL Webpage

Point your browser to the following URL:
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?sb_elem


Step 2: The Comets

Under "ASCII Files", click on the "Comets" link, and save 
this file as ~/.kde/share/apps/kstars/comets.dat (or as 
$KDEDIR/share/apps/kstars/comets.dat for a system-wide install).

Be sure to delete the header lines from this file; the first 
line should begin with "1P/Halley".

Next, please remove all comets whose names begin with "D/".  These
comets no longer exist, and so they should not be included in the
simulation.

Finally, also remove comets named "SOHO" or "SOLWIND".  These comets
are discovered by spacecraft monitoring the Sun, and they actually
fall into the Sun shortly after being discovered (I don't know why
they are not named with "D/").


Step 3: The Asteroids

Under "ASCII Files", click on the "Numbered Asteroids" link, 
and save this file in a working directory as "asteroids.full.dat".
Again, don't forget to remove the header lines at the beginning 
of the file.

This file contains about 100,000 asteroids, far more than we 
want to deal with in KStars.  I ship KStars with 2000 asteroids; 
you may feel free to keep as many as you want (but be aware that 
larger numbers will require more RAM and will use the CPU more).

So, how do we pick which of the 100,000 asteroids to keep?  I 
think the most sensible option is to sort the list from biggest 
to smallest, and then just keep the 2000 largest (or however 
many you are keeping).  However, there isn't a "size" column to 
sort by!  Ah, but there *is* an "absolute magnitude" column 
(column 10).  Absolute magnitude is a measure of the asteroid's 
intrinsic brightness, which is a good indicator of its size.  
Smaller numbers are brighter, so sorting the file such that the 
magnitudes increase means that the biggest asteroids are at the 
top of the list.

Use the "sort" command to sort, and the "head" command to cut 
out the first 2000 lines.  However, because many asteroid names 
include spaces, you first have to use your favorite text editor 
to move the asteroid names to the end of the line (in emacs, use 
M-x kill-rectangle, M-x yank-rectangle).  The use a command like:

  % sort -n -k 9 asteroids.full.dat | head -n 2000 > asteroids.dat

This assumes that you moved only the asteroid names field to the 
end of the line, so the absolute magnitude field is now column 9.

Don't forget to move the names field back to its proper location,
again using your favorite editor.  

*IMPORTANT*: The JPL column formatting has changed, so you will have
to adjust the position of the name column to the left by two places.
You can do this non-destructively by removing the first column in each
line, and removing the space between the ID number and the name.
Then, add two spaces just before the MJD field (after the name) to
keep the column positions of the rest of the line the same.  Here's a
before and after example:

 136199 Eris            54200 67.7311622 0.43999155  44.15946 151.55827  35.88446 197.9656645  -1.17 0.15 JPL 16
136199Eris              54200 67.7311622 0.43999155  44.15946 151.55827  35.88446 197.9656645  -1.17 0.15 JPL 16

Finally, copy your modified "asteroids.dat" to 
~/.kde/share/apps/kstars/ (for a single-user install) or 
$KDEDIR/share/apps/kstars/ (for a system-wide install).