Neptune plotted

Yesterday, as I was building my Uranus planet track plot diagram, I learned a few things...

• don’t make the display mirror-reversed, at least for public use
• note, inside the image, the orientation
• add constellation name(s) (I remembered at the last minute)
• crop overall size, early on (to dramatically reduce file size, speed image software speed, and speed of animation)
• when the apparent motion slows, in the loop, start skipping dates, i.e. go every two weeks, maybe even three (so to unclutter the display); add leader lines?
• add a viewfinder field or a Telrad reticule

Hard lessons learned while doing second job...

• don’t select the background bitmap image when dragging from one frame to another
• don’t forget to regularly back up the file!
• do things in a “batch” order to avoid time loss flicking back and forth between editing modes, i.e. place each node “close” to position; then move each node precisely to position; adjust Bezier curve controls; etc.

You can sense that I got a little frustrated today. When the dust settled, I thought of some other things to include in these diagrams.

• add a copyright inside the image
• add a scale in degrees or minutes or whatever the appropriate scale or add grid markers

Here's the finished Neptune file:



Enjoy.

Now I should go back and redo the Uranus file.