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Moon Calculator (MoonCalc) is a DOS program which provides information relating
to the position, age, phase, orientation, appearance and visibility of the moon for any given date, time and location on earth.
It also provides the Julian Day Number, Magnetic Declination, time and direction of moonrise and moonset, interval between
sunset and moonset, interval between sunrise and moonrise, date/time of astronomical new moon (conjunction), full moon, apogee
and perigee and predicts the likelihood of visualising the young moon from a particular location.
The program can scan the globe at the start of any lunar month to find the location, date/time
and circumstances of earliest crescent sighting using a variety of ancient and modern moon sighting criteria. The program
is able to draw world maps (flat and spherical projections) showing areas of the globe where the young moon is likely to be
seen.
Graphical displays showing the position of the moon on a star chart and the position of the
moon in a simulated local sky (horizon view or traditional circular sky-chart view) can be produced and printed out. A close-up
of the near side of the moon (showing orientation of the moon's limbs and position of the lunar craters), correct for a given
observation site, is also provided. This close up takes into account the effect of libration and 'limb shortening' (optional).
A graph of lunar libration for an entire month can be plotted.
There is a choice of either topocentric/geocentric co-ordinates and apparent/geometric sunset.
Correction for atmospheric refraction is optional.
The program has a built in atlas database which stores latitude and longitude data of
upto 1000 cities (ships with over 100 cities already entered). There are many user-configurable features.
MoonCalc and accompanying documentation and files are copyright by Dr. Monzur Ahmed, ©
1993/ 2001. All rights reserved |
