Astronomy on the Personal ComputerIt is said that a typical astronomer of the 19th century spent seven hours working at a desk for every hour spent at the telescope. That 's how long the routine analysis of data took with pencil, paper, and logarithmic tables. Thus when Wilhelm Olbers discovered the minor planet Vesta in 1807 and gathered the necessary observations, his friend Gauss needed almost 10 hours to hand calculate its orbit. That achievement astonished many less gifted astronomers of the time, who might have labored days to work out the orbit of a newfound comet. How different things are today! Gauss's method of orbit determination, presented in Chap. 11 of this book, runs to completion on a horne computer in a few seconds at most. The machine will issue its accurate results in less time than it takes to key in the observations. In this book, alandmark in the youthfulliterature of astronomical com puter algorithms, Oliver Montenbruck and Thomas Pfleger cover many topics of keen interest to the practical ob server. For me its most remarkable feature is the library of interrelated program modules, aIl elegantly written in PAS CAL. Anyone who has tried to create such modules in interpreted BASIC soon runs into trouble: too few letters for variable names, not enough signifi cant digits, and so on. These PASCAL routines are invoked one after another in coordinate transformations and calendar conversions. |
Contents
1 | |
5 | |
Stellar Occultations | 10 |
Cometary Orbits | 59 |
11 | 106 |
Planetary Orbits | 107 |
47 | 112 |
49 | 130 |
Physical Ephemerides of the Planets | 131 |
61 | 139 |
1 | 153 |
Solar Eclipses | 179 |
Orbit Determination | 228 |
Astrometry | 253 |
Appendix | 267 |
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Common terms and phrases
1993 Thomas Pfleger accuracy ADDSOL altitude approximation argument of perihelion ARRAY ascending node astrometric astrometric coordinates ATN2 BEGIN calculate celestial centuries since J2000 Chebyshev coefficients comet Compute CONST coordinate system date yyyy DELTA determined distance Earth eccentric anomaly ECLEQU ecliptic coordinates ecliptic longitude ephemeris epoch equatorial coordinates equinox of date function geocentric coordinates geometric given heliocentric heliocentric coordinates hour angle INTEGER Julian centuries Julian Date Jupiter Kepler Kepler's Equation light-time lunar mean anomaly Mercury minor planet Moon motion Neptune NUMINP observer obtain occultations Oliver Montenbruck orbital elements P2*FRAC Pascal perturbations planetary coordinates planetocentric planetographic Pluto POLAR polynomial position angle PRECART precession PROCEDURE READLN REAL right ascension rising and setting rotation Saturn sidereal solar star TEQX TERM true anomaly Uranus values vector velocity Venus vernal equinox WRITE WRITELN yyyy mm dd