Astrolabe is a collection of subroutines and applications for calculating the positions of the sun, moon, planets and other celestial objects
Version : 0.4
Author(s) : Bill McClain (wmcclain@salamander.com)
License : GPL
Website : http://sourceforge.net/projects/astrolabe
Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1
Disk space required for installation is 855.70 Kb
This package requires prior installation of python
Astrolabe is a collection of subroutines and applications for calculating the positions of the sun, moon, planets and other celestial objects. The emphasis is on high accuracy over a several thousand year time span. Note that the techniques used are overkill for most calendar applications. See the FAQ, Astronomical Calculations for the Amateur for pointers to other methods which are both faster and smaller in terms of code bulk.
The subroutine library attempts to (someday) implement all the techniques described in Astronomical Algorithms, second edition 1998, by Jean Meeus, Willmann-Bell, Inc. For an alternative open-source implementation of Meeus in ANSI C, look here.
Currently there are no graphical applications apart from some demo CGI interfaces. I may add graphics in the future, but I don't intend to create a planetarium program. For a very nice open-source example of such running on Unix/Linux systems, see XEphem. Graphical software for many platforms are linked at Planetarium Software.