Bug#383940: ITP: aa -- astronomical almanac - calculate planet and star positions
Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
Owner: "James R. Van Zandt" <jrv@debian.org>
* Package name : aa
Version : 5.6
Upstream Author : Steve Moshier <steve@moshier.net>
* URL : http://www.moshier.net/
* License : under discussion (probably GPL)
Programming Lang: C
Description : astronomical almanac - calculate planet and star positions
aa computes the orbital positions of planetary bodies and performs
rigorous coordinate reductions to apparent geocentric and topocentric
place (local altitude and azimuth). It also reduces star catalogue
positions given in either the FK4 or FK5 system. Data for the 57
navigational stars is included. Most of the algorithms employed are
from The Astronomical Almanac (AA) published by the U.S. Government
Printing Office.
aa.exe follows the rigorous algorithms for reduction of
celestial coordinates exactly as laid out in current editions of
the Astronomical Almanac. The reduction to apparent geocentric
place has been checked by a special version of the program (aa200)
that takes planetary positions directly from the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory DE200 numerical integration of the solar system. The
results agree exactly with the Astronomical Almanac tables from
1987 onward (earlier Almanacs used slightly different reduction
methods).
Certain computations, such as the correction for nutation,
are not given explicitly in the AA but are referenced there. In
these cases the program performs the full computations that are
used to construct the Almanac tables (references are provided).
input to aa.exe is by single line responses to programmed prompts.
Output is written to stdout.
aa was used to generate the lunar distance tables at
http://www.math.uu.nl/people/wepster/ldtab.html
- Jim Van Zandt
-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (990, 'unstable'), (500, 'oldstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.17
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)
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