Institut für Astronomie und AstrophysikAbteilung AstronomieSand 1, D-72076 Tübingen, Germany |
PLANET_COORDS
Find low or high precision RA and DEC for the planets given a date
For low precision this routine uses HELIO to get the heliocentric ecliptic coordinates of the planets at the given date, then converts these to geocentric ecliptic coordinates ala "Astronomical Algorithms" by Jean Meeus (1991, p 209). These are then converted to RA and Dec using EULER. The accuracy between the years 1800 and 2050 is better than 1 arcminute for the terrestial planets, but reaches 10 arcminutes for Saturn. Before 1850 or after 2050 the accuracy can get much worse. For high precision use the /JPL option ito use the full JPL ephemeris.
PLANET_COORDS, DATE, RA, DEC, [ PLANET = , /JD, /JPL]
DATE - If /JD is not set, then date is a 3-6 element vector containing year,month (1-12), day, and optionally hour, minute, & second. If /JD is set then DATE is a Julian date. An advantage of the /JD option is that it allows the use of vector dates.
RA - right ascension of planet(s), J2000 degrees, double precision DEC - declination of planet(s), J2000 degrees, double precision
PLANET - scalar string giving name of a planet, e.g. 'venus'. Default is to compute coords for all of them (except Earth). /JD - If set, then the date parameter should be supplied as Julian date JPL - if /JPL set, then PLANET_COORDS will call the procedure JPLEPHINTERP to compute positions using the full JPL ephemeris. The JPL ephemeris FITS file JPLEPH.405 must exist in either the current directory, or in the directory specified by the environment variable ASTRO_DATA. Alternatively, the JPL keyword can be set to the full path and name of the ephemeris file. A copy of the JPL ephemeris FITS file JPLEPH.405 is available in http://idlastro.gsfc.nasa.gov/ftp/data/
(1) Find the RA, Dec of Venus on 1992 Dec 20 IDL> planet_coords, [1992,12,20], ra,dec ;Compute for all planets IDL> print,adstring(ra[1],dec[1],1) ;Venus is second planet ====> RA = 21 05 2.66 Dec = -18 51 45.7 This position is 37" from the full DE406 ephemeris position of RA = 21 05 5.24 -18 51 43.1 (2) Return the current RA and Dec of all 8 planets using JPL ephemeris IDL> get_juldate, jd ;Get current Julian Date IDL> planet_coords,jd,ra,dec,/jd,/jpl ;Find positions of all planets IDL> forprint,adstring(ra,dec,0) ;Display positions (3) Plot the declination of Mars for every day in the year 2001 IDL> jdcnv,2001,1,1,0,jd ;Get Julian date of midnight on Jan 1 Now get Mars RA,Dec for 365 consecutive days IDL> planet_coords,jd+indgen(365),ra,dec,/jd, planet = 'mars' IDL> plot,indgen(365)+1,dec
HELIO is based on the two-body problem and neglects interactions between the planets. This is why the worst results are for Saturn. Use the /JPL option or the online ephemeris generator http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/eph for more accuracy. The procedure returns astrometric coordinates, i.e. no correction for aberration. A correction for light travel time is applied when /JPL is set, but not for the default low-precision calculation.
JULDATE EULER, HELIO - if /JPL is not set JPLEPHREAD, JPLEPHINTERP - if /JPL is set
Written P.Plait & W. Landsman August 2000 Fixed Julian date conversion W. Landsman August 2000 Added /JPL keyword W. Landsman July 2001 Allow vector Julian dates with JPL ephemeris W. Landsman December 2002
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