smb@ulysses.UUCP (11/13/83)
(sorry to post this; an attempt to reply by mail failed.) For calculating Earth-moon distances, see "Practical Astronomy with your Calculator", by Peter Duffett-Smith. It's published by Cambridge University Press in both hardcover and soft- cover. It seems to have what you want, and much more besides. --Steve Bellovin Bell Labs ulysses!smb@Berkeley
Craig.Everhart%CMU-CS-A@sri-unix.UUCP (11/14/83)
I've got a program that does a crude job of what you ask for--its use is to figure out the phase and orientation of the moon (how it's tilted if you were to face toward it) so it can draw a picture of it on your terminal as you log out. My astronomy is much simplified, but it seems to simulate reality pretty well. Let me know if you can retrieve a copy and I'll pin down where it is, or I'll mail you a copy of the program if you can't do it. Before it can figure out what orientation the moon will seem to be at, it goes through a stage where it figures the azimuth and elevation of the moon's center. It just does it for a compiled-in latitude and it assumes that local time is solar time, but it should be easy to get it to do what you want. Any astronomical improvements (say, the prediction of eclipses) would be most welcome. Craig Everhart
stan@clyde.UUCP (Stan King) (11/16/83)
Does anyone know of the existence of an Earth - Moon simulator that would, if given a longitude-latitude point on the earth and a time, tell me the azimuth and elevation readings to the center of the moon from that point? Thanks, Daniel C Weller =-=-= Forgive me for posting this, but I seriously doubt if mailing to sri-unix!"DanielCWeller"@HIS-PHOENIX-MULTICS.ARPA would work. Anyway, Proceedings of IEEE recently had a special issue on global navigation systems. One article spoke of a publication called "Almanac for Computers," which gave ephemerides in series form for easy computation by calculators and what not. They also discussed the possible errors in that and other computational models of ephemerides. Stan King phone: 201-386-7433 Bell Labs, Whippany, NJ Cornet: 8+232-7433 room 2A-111 uucp: clyde!stan
james@umcp-cs.UUCP (11/17/83)
The Naval Observatory has a dial up line for their own bulletin board system, which also offers many earth/moon/tide/stars/etc. features. I don't remember the number right now, but it was 300/1200 baud, and explained itself reasonably well to users. If all you want is to get the right answers, this system would serve your need (albeit long distance.) If you want the software itself, I would suggest asking someone at the Observatory for their software, to see what they say. --Jim O'Toole
"DanielCWeller"@HIS-PHOENIX-MULTICS.ARPA (11/17/83)
Does anyone know of the existence of an Earth - Moon simulator that would, if given a longitude-latitude point on the earth and a time, tell me the azimuth and elevation readings to the center of the moon from that point? Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Daniel C Weller