Visible Solar System Bug?

[BBQedIguana]

Interestingly, I've been investigating building my own sky atlas software for the Mac (and Windoze and Linux) and half thought about putting out a version for the VIC! The part I'm researching right now is the math involved for translating the right ascension and declination values for stellar objects into actual pixel coordinates on a computer screen. This involves rotating those coordinates into altitude and azimuth values and then also figuring out where the viewers' horizon should be depicted given their latitude on Earth.

So, I fully volunteer to participate in this project! On the VIC, I was going to skip the alt-az conversion and horizon display and produce a much simpler sky atlas based on stars down to mag 6.5 (naked eye limit). Going a little further (say mag 7 or 8 ) would yield a much more useful atlas, but might overwhelm the storage capacity of the VIC.

It would be super cool if we could have two versions - one for the unexpanded VIC (maybe with just a basic mag 4 star set?) and one for the expanded VIC that would include stars down to mag 7 or 8 plus the Messier objects, etc, etc.

This is VERY cool!

Rick

[Mike]

The part I'm researching right now is the math involved for translating the right ascension and declination values for stellar objects into actual pixel coordinates on a computer screen. [...]
On the VIC, I was going to skip the alt-az conversion and horizon display and produce a much simpler sky atlas based on stars down to mag 6.5 (naked eye limit). [...]

I thought about mag 4.5 as upper limit (~700 stars), because of VIC's display, and the calculation of one sky view when done in BASIC shouldn't take ages. Still, well known objects like M31, or M13 should be included.

IMO the biggest challenge is, to get Moon, Sun, and the planets right. If the program can correctly compute, and display sun eclipses within the years 1901 .. 2099 - that would be great.

Michael

P.S.: I've found 4.5 mag is too restrictive ... Ursa Minor Eta (Anwar al Farkadain) is 4.95 mag. So maybe we really should include all stars up to 6.5 mag

[formater]

P.S.: I've found 4.5 mag is too restrictive ... Ursa Minor Eta (Anwar al Farkadain) is 4.95 mag. So maybe we really should include all stars up to 6.5 mag

This mag will be tousands of stars. With nake eye you can see the 5.5 mag, and that are about 5000 stars. Perhaps are better take stars still 4 magnitude and some selected ones under this magnitud.

Now there's a fun idea. Visible Solar System 2009 Edition!

And Pluto isn't a planet anymore, so there's one less to do

I disagree, against the opinion of proffessional astronomers, Pluto is a big object (in fact a double planet) with natural spherical form and trip around a star, and for me must be added as a planet in the program.

[orion70]

I'm with Formater. The double body Pluto/Charon is one of the most interesting objects in our system. To support this view, I propose to call the program PLUTO (no more your-anus ).

[BBQedIguana]

I don't think Pluto cares how we pesky humans decide to classify it.