fred@inuxe.UUCP (Fred Mendenhall) (12/04/85)
*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE *** Several people from across the Atlantic have correctly pointed out my North American prejudice in the C planet program I recently posted to net.sources. Please accept my apology, no slight was intended. Anyone outside the continental United States has two choices if they wish to use the program. They may convert the time of their observation to the correct UT time and then use that selection in the program or they may lie to the program when it asks for the time zone. Basically the program uses a variable called "tz" to make the time zone correction from local to UT time. When the program asks for the time zone it expects an integer (tz) back such that 1 = EST, 2 = CST, etc. and places the sum of tz+4 in "tz". Later "tz" is multiplied by 100 and added to the local time then used to fine the decimal part of the day. The program does not check the supplied value of "tz" so you may lie to it. Just remember that tz+4 must equal the actual number of hours of correction between your local time and UT. For example, if you are 1 hour East of GMT, tell the program you time zone is -5 (-5+4=-1). The program will tell you that your local time is PST, fair enough you lied to it so it lies back, but all the other results should be correct for your local time. inuxe!fred