Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tektronix!percival!parsely!agora!rickc
From: rickc@agora.UUCP (Rick Coates)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Rd: Re: software other than utilities
Message-ID: <1307@agora.UUCP>
Date: 2 Jan 89 00:06:07 GMT
References: <5069@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Organization: Advanced Solutions, Hillsboro, OR
Lines: 70

From article <5069@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>, by amlovell@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Anthony M Lovell):
>> 
>> I will soon send him a program to calculate the position of the planets -
>> does that count as a non-utility?
> 
> OK, but only if you avoid the annoying hallmarks of the DOS time and
> date commands:  ie: don't have it pause for input after printing the
> plantary coordinates, asking "Enter new Coordinates:".
> 

Hmmm, maybe I should wait, and see if other people would use it.  I'm
afraid I don't understand this comment at all.  Right now, the command 'planet'
is completely command line driven (except for environment variables
for latitude, longitude, height (for parallax correction) and time zone).

You can specify what planet you want; over-ride system time and date;
specify latitude, longitude, height; ask for rising and setting times
and azimuths, and a more verbose mode by command line options.

The output is fairly verbose, giving the corrected RA and declination,
distance, angular size, phase, and optional rise/set information.

The information should be good for 'about ten arc-seconds': corrections are
made for aberration, nutation, and parallax (the last is probably superfluous).
The algorithms are from Peter Duffett-Smith's
_Astronomy_With_Your_Personal_Computer_ - in C, though, not BASIC.

I will be doing a similar command for the Moon and (probably) the Sun.


Rick Coates

tektronix!reed!percival!agora!rickc
OR
tektronix!sequent!islabs!ateq!rick

Output from
planet -l -p Jupiter -v
(verbose mode; give location information; planet Jupiter):
(the x is the MS-DOS character for 'degrees'):
(note the year is 1988 - #!%$&# PC can't handle year changes, and I haven't
changed mine yet!)
==========

Planet: Jupiter:

122x 40' 33.0" West Longitude 
 45x 27' 30.0" North Latitude
elevation:  183 meters
date: 1988-01-01
time: 23:54:15 UT


Geocentric equatorial postion: 
	   ra:   1:16:53.3
	  dec:   6x 44' 30.3"
Geocentric hour-angle: 
	hrang:  21:10:5.1

Topocentric equatorial postion: 
	   ra:   1:16:53.3
	  dec:   6x 44' 31.7"
Topocentric hour-angle: 
	hrang:  21:10:5.1

	phase:		  0.99
	distance:	  4.70 AU
	angular size:    41.830 arc-seconds

==EOF=====