ccount@athena.mit.edu (Craig A Counterman) (03/16/90)
Archive-name: starchart/v3.2 Original-posting-by: ccount@athena.mit.edu (Craig A Counterman) Original-subject: Starchart 3.2: Charts, Ephemerides, and more Archive-site: mandarin.mit.edu [18.82.0.21] Reposted-by: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) Starchart 3.2 has been submitted to comp.sources.misc, and is starting to show up. It joins the 'ephem' and 'orbit' programs recently posted to form a convenient trio in volume11. Starchart 3.2 is descended from AWPaeth's starchart suite. It includes a powerful charting program (actually many programs, one for each output device) and a versatile program called 'observe'. It also includes some supporting programs, awk and perl scripts, and databases. 'observe' incorporates ephemeris calculation of planets, and comets and asteroids based on orbital elements. It also calculates the positions of the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, and planetary sizes and phases. It is designed also to aid in planning an observing session (thus the name). [I think 'ephem' complements 'observe', since 'ephem' provides an interactive interface and has a few features 'observe' doesn't provide.] If you are too impatient to wait for the rest of the parts, you can ftp a compressed tar file from mandarin.mit.edu (18.82.0.21). The tar file also includes formatted versions of the document files, these formatted files aren't in the shar version, only the unformatted files. Additional star and nebula databases are also available from mandarin. If anyone can provide additional archive sites, especially sites with mail or anonymous uucp access, please contact me. star files have been posted to comp.sources.unix already, and are available from those archives. A nebula database may be posted to some sources group in the future, if there is interest. There is no Patch #1 yet, no major problems have been reported with this release yet. However, there are minor changes for the Atari ST version, and there may be other small changes in the near future. If you want to use the Atari ST version, please contact me for the minor changes. If you have any problems, please report them to me. Also contact me you want to add support for an output device or system not included in this release. If you ftp'd 3.2beta3 from mandarin, the patches to bring you up to the release version are available on mandarin. Enjoy, Craig