[Celestia-developers] Distance to stars

[Grant H. <gra...@bl...>]

I'm trying to produce as complete an inventory of stars as I can, for the
region within 25 light years of the Sun, including correct orbits for those
multiple systems with orbital definitions. The orbital stuff is fine,
although the stars of course have to appear as emissive "planets" at
present. It's awkward, though, to get stc companion stars to align with
stars.dat primary stars. The distances defined in an stc are (in the region
I'm interested in) reported about 0.001 - 0.002 light-years adrift when I
ask for a stellar distance in Celestia. So:
Can you tell me what conversion factor is used to convert stars.dat
parallaxes to distances in light-years? (So that I can set my stc distances
to match.)
What happens to the stc distances when they pass through Celestia, to make
them shift slightly? (I'm wondering if a different conversion factor has
sneaked in to two different parts of the program.)

Grant