Questions tagged [ephemeris]

Questions about the predicted positions of an object in space, like another planet, comet, or asteroid.

In astronomy and celestial navigation, an ephemeris (plural: ephemerides) gives the trajectory of naturally occurring astronomical objects as well as artificial satellites in the sky, i.e., the position (and possibly velocity) over time. The etymology is from Latin ephemeris 'diary' and from Greek ἐφημερίς (ephemeris) 'diary, journal'.

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JPL Horizons sending too many emails

I submitted a job that, I think, should have returned 100 emails from JPL Horizons. I now have over 6000 emails and they are coming in at about four a minute. Anyone else had this problem? Anyone know how to stop the deluge? I have emailed JPH…
Haywire
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Formula to Determine When a Target Reaches a Specific Altitude

I'm trying to develop an Excel macro to compute when a target will rise above a specified altitude given the date and location. I can get the correct answer with Stellarium and using a Python program I wrote that leverages the PyEphem library, but…
BillR
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Beginners question about time scales

I'm using https://github.com/Bill-Gray/jpl_eph for a personal project to read JPL DE files, namely DE430 and the more recent DE440. This generally works great and when tested against a reference implementation the output shows the correct vectors…
zero0cool
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Where to get rate of change for calculating ephemeris from JPL Horizons

I have a working implementation of Schlyter's method for calculating the Sun's position. I would like to know how Schlyter got the 3.24587E-5_deg in the following calculation for Mercury. N = 48.3313_deg + 3.24587E-5_deg * d (Long of asc.…
jp2g
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How to test accuracy of DE441?

I want to write about processing DE441 data for Moon and Sun and include a section about the validation and accuracy testing of the algorithm. Is there a website where I can retrieve documentation for eclipse observations, such as when an eclipse…
Ath Genube
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Linear ephemeris

What is the T in the formula for the linear ephemeris T_max = T + P*E, please? P stands for the period; E, for ephemeris. How to determine T? I have T_max and P. Or is it a referent epoch? Many thanks
Elena Greg
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Difference in Ephemerides Position:- PlanEph 4.2 (VSOP87) vs JPL Horizons (DE431)

I have obtained the hindcast position of Mercury relative to the Sun for the epoch 2000-Jan-01 12:00:00 using two methods: PlanEph ver 4.2 (Dos-based) and JPL Horizons DE431 (online). The two methods give positions which are over 2000 Km apart.…
steveOw
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Ephemeris data mismatch between Nasa Horizonz and Astro.com

I have tried to compare the Ephemeris data from Nasa's Horizons with ephemeris tables from astro.com. And they do not match. Example: Date: 22th of July 2018. Body: Mars. Time 00:00 UT Horizons: 309 degrees (Ephemeris type=Observer) Astro.com: 305…
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What are ephemerides? (SPICE software)

I want to use the SPICE software, but there is something than I don't understand: The purpose of the SPK---which stands for S(pacecraft) and P(lanet) Kernel---file is to allow ephemerides for any collection of solar system bodies to be combined…
VansFannel
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Is there any ephemeris generator that gives you accurate distances between Earth and other bodies?

I've tried JPL's HORIZONS ephemeris generator and while it gives accurate celestial coordinates for an object it doesn't give the geocentric distance. JPL's Solar System Simulator gives the distance to an object at a certain time however only down…
user177107
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