One of my favourite subjects is astronomy, and being able to fuse that with my passion for programming is the greatest feeling.
Here are some tutorials based on an astronomical program, Urania, which I wrote as a little pet project. You can download the full source code for the application here. This application is still a work in progress, so expect rough edges here and there in it, although the calculations should all be accurate, or at least accurate within their margin of error. If you find any bugs too, please let me know.
Please do the check back regularly as I will adding more as time goes on.
Hope you enjoy it.
Time
Coordinates
- Handling degrees, minutes and seconds
- Handling Right Ascension
- Converting between equatorial and horizontal coordinates
- Converting between equatorial and ecliptic coordinates
- Converting between equatorial and galactic coordinates
- In which constellation is that again?
Telescopes
General
The Sun
- Calculating the Sun’s position
- Finding the distance to the Sun
- Finding the angular diameter of the Sun
- The Carrington Rotation Number
The Moon
- Finding the position of the Moon
- Calculating the Moon phase
- Calculating the distance to the Moon
- Finding the angular diameter of the Moon
- Finding the parallax of the Moon
- Getting the age of the Moon
The Planets
- Finding the position of the planets
- Calculating the phase of a planet
- Finding the distance to a planet
- Finding the magnitude of a planet
- Calculating the angular diameter of a planet
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