The CICA Windows Explosion!

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Text File | 1994-05-16 | 28KB | 563 lines

******* WARNING ***** WARNING ***** WARNING ***** WARNING ********* * * * THE AUTHOR OF THIS SOFTWARE DOES NOT PROVIDE ANY WARRANTY WHAT- * * SOEVER! YOU USE IT OR TRY IT ENTIRELY AND STRICTLY AT YOUR OWN * * RISK. THE AUTHOR EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY LIABILITY FOR DAMAGE * * TO YOUR COMPUTER, FILES OR ASSOCIATED ELECTRO-MECHANICAL * * DEVICES. NOR IS THERE ANY GUARANTEE AS TO THE ACCURACY OF THE * * RESULTS OR AS TO THE FITNESS OF THE MOONPO PROGRAM FOR ANY * * PARTICULAR PURPOSE. * * * * REMEMBER, YOU USE IT OR TRY IT SOLELY AT YOUR OWN RISK! * * * ******* WARNING ***** WARNING ***** WARNING ***** WARNING ********* 1.0 GENERAL INFORMATION MOONPO is a Windows 3.x application which can calculate the azimuth and elevation of the moon and the sun (and the phase of the moon) as a function of the date and time of day at any place on the earth (with the possible exception of the poles and precisely where the 0 or 180 degree meridians cross the equator). It will also compute the approximate rising and setting times and the azimuth of the moon and sun at those times. MOONPO's results are displayed as a table showing the local and GMT time in a 24 hour "military" format (for example, 6:34 PM would appear as 1834). Azimuth angles are measured clockwise from north (so, due south corresponds to an azimuth angle of 180 degrees). Elevations are measured from a level horizon (straight up is a 90 degree elevation angle). Results may be printed on the default Window printer and may be saved in an ascii formatted file for later printing or other use. Moonpo can also display and print simple graphs showing the azimuth and elevation of the sun as a function of the time of day. The azimuth and elevation values are usually accurate to within about 2 degrees. In order to actually run MOONPO you need to know your geographical longitude and latitude in at least degrees and minutes. You also need to know or figure out a "time zone" value for your location. Data for a few cities may be found below. Execution of MOONPO requires a computer with at least an 80286 cpu and an 80x87 math coprocessor or its equivalent (80486, for example). MOONPO is distributed as Shareware. That means you may try it for a reasonable period (say three weeks) at no cost, but that you should register it and pay the registration fee if you use it after the trial period. 2.0 INSTALLATION INFORMATION 2.1 STANDARD FILES The MOONPO files included in the authorized archive are: MOONPO.EXE - Windows 3.x executable application file. MOONPO.BMP - Logo bitmap file. MOONPO.DOC - This file. MOONPO.HLP - MoonPo help file. MYLOCALE.INI - User location customization file for MOONPO. GSW.EXE - Graphics server executable file. GSWDLL.DLL - Dynamic link library for graphics server. READTHIS.NOW - Minimal installation information. ILUM93.DTA - Some high precision results for MOONPO validation. WHATSNEW.220 - Changes from version 1.0. VALIDATE.DAT - Antivirus data for McAfee Associates VALIDATE.COM (Version 0.4) 2.1 RECOMMENDED INSTALLATION INFORMATION MOONPO must be installed using DOS commands or the Windows File Manager. A few essential instructions follow. While some components of MOONPO can be placed in different directories, the simplest thing to do is to put all of the files in a single MOONPO directory. That makes removal simple. Sample MOONPO Installation Procedure: This example assumes the following: A) Your base Windows directory is C:\WINDOWS. B) You will place all MOONPO files (EXCEPT MYLOCALE.INI, which MUST be in your base Windows directory) in a NEW directory on fixed drive D: C) The (de-archived) MOONPO files are on a diskette in diskette drive B:, and there are no other files on that diskette. D) The installation will be done from DOS or a DOS Window, and that your DOS "prompt" appears as C:\> Note: in the following example the term <CR> means that you press the "RETURN" or "ENTER" key. 1) Create the MOONPO directory: C:\> MKDIR D:\MOONPO <CR> 2) Copy files: C:\> Copy B:\MYLOCALE.INI C:\WINDOWS C:\> Copy B:\*.* D:\MOONPO NOTE: If you are using OS/2 Version 2.0 or later, you should puy MYLOCALE.INI in your \OS2\MDOS\WINOS2 directory. 3) Running or Preparing to Run MOONPO: METHOD 1: a) Click on the Program Manager's "File" option and select "Run". b) Enter D:\MOONPO\MOONPO.EXE and <CR>. METHOD 2: (add MOONPO to an existing group of applications) a) Click on (or TAB to) the title bar of the desired group. b) Select the Program Manager's "File" option, and then "New". c) Select "Program Item". d) i) For the "Description" enter: MOONPO ii) For the "Command Line" enter: D:\MOONPO\MOONPO.EXE iii) For "Working directory" enter: D:\MOONPO iv) Select "OK". If all is well, then the MOONPO icon will appear in the program group box and you can start MOONPO by clicking on that icon. Before running MOONPO, you will probably want to customize it for your geographical location. There are two ways to do that: 1) Edit the MYLOCALE.INI file to reflect your longitude, latitude and time zone before starting the MOONPO application. You may use any convenient ASCII editor and edit it to replace the sample data with that appropriate to your geographical location (also see discussion below). Doing that will make it unnecessary for you to re-enter your location data each time you want to run MOONPO. If you use MYLOCALE.INI, be sure to set the "TIMZON" parameter. Your time zone is the number of hours you need to add to Greenwich Mean Time (or more properly UTC) to get your local 24-hour time. West longitudes have negative (or zero) TIMZON values (they are "earlier"), while East longitudes have positive values. If you do not enter a value, one will be calculated from your longitude, but it may not be correct since local time zones don't adhere very closely to the way the earth rotates. DO NOT EDIT MYLOCALE.INI USING A WORD PROCESSING PROGRAM (SUCH AS WORDPERFECT, WORD FOR WINDOWS OR DOS, ETC) UNLESS YOU ARE SURE YOU KNOW HOW TO WRITE THE EDITED FILE IN PLAIN OLD ASCII FORM CONTAINING NO EXTRANEOUS INFORMATION INSERTED BY THE WORDPROCESSING PROGRAM. MS-DOS'S EDITOR OR THE WINDOWS NOTEPAD EDITOR ARE SUGGESTED. 2) Simply start MOONPO and then enter your location and time zone via the "Observer Position" option under the "Control data" menu item found on the main MOONPO menu bar. Once you select "OK" you will be asked if you wish to save the new data in the MYLOCALE.INI file. Choosing "Yes" will save the customized MYLOCALE.INI file. If you will NEVER want to examine MOONPO's graphs, you can omit copying of the "GSW..." files (or delete them later). If you already have a copy of GSW.EXE and GSWDLL.DLL in a directory named in your AUTOEXEC.BAT's PATH= statement, then you can probably save some diskspace by deleting GSW.EXE and GSWDLL.DLL from the MOONPO directory. The GSW.. files probably must belong to at least version 2.1, however. 3.0 RUNNING MOONPO When you run MOONPO you will normally want to override the default information such as your geographical location, the year and the date for which you want to learn something about the positions of the sun and moon. So, if you do not know them, you need to learn your geographical longitude and latitude. Most road maps show such data along the margins and you can probably interpolate to find the data for your own town will sufficient accuracy. You will also need to enter your time zone, as discussed above. The data just mentioned are entered by running the "Control Data" dialog to be discussed in Section 3.2. You can begin execution of MOONPO.EXE by clicking the Windows Program Manager's "File" menu item and then the "Run" item from the popup menu. Then you simply enter the complete path name needed to locate MOONPO.EXE. If you placed MOONPO.EXE in your base Windows directory you can omit the directory portion of the file name. MOONPO has no command line parameters. If you added MOONPO to a program group, then just start it in the usual fashion. When you start MOONPO you will be greeted by a more or less blank screen. There is no "cursor". There is a standard menu bar at the top of the screen. Choices are accessed in the usual Windows manner. The menu choices are as follows: File Control Data Run Moonrise Reset Graph Help 3.1 The "File" Menu Item Clicking on the "File" option brings up a popup menu composed of four items: "New", "SaveAs", "Print" and "Exit". Selecting "New" simply clears any previous results from the screen and memory and resets some internal flags. The File "SaveAs" option is chosen to initiate saving of the current results into an ascii file. It works pretty much as you might expect. The "Print" option will dump the currently displayed numerical results to the DEFAULT Windows printer. You must handle all default printer setup operations via the Windows Print Manager. The "Exit" option terminates MOONPO. 3.2 The "Control Data" Menu Item This item also brings up a popup menu with two sub-choices: "Observer Position" and "Time of Day". If you have not copied the MYLOCALE.INI file to your Windows directory you should click on the "Observer Position" choice and enter your geographical data, and a time zone value in the spots provided. (See section 2.1 (above) for a few comments on time zones, and Section 5.0 (below) for sample data. If you have made a change in the observer position or time zone data, then when you exit from the dialog via the "Ok" button you will be asked if you wish to save the changes in the MYLOCALE.INI file. If you answer "yes" then all the file data will be replaced. You will need to execute the "Time of Day" dialog to set the month and day of the month for which you want position data. Within that dialog you also set the hours for the first and last times of day and the increment in minutes for the calculations. All the input numbers are expected to be integers with no decimals, etc. Some, but not all, parameters are checked before a run, so if you enter any oddball values (like ~23, for example), all bets are off. 3.3 The "Run" Menu Item Choosing the "Run" menu item is the action which actually causes something to happen to produce data to be displayed in the blank window. There will probably be something of a delay before you see any results because MOONPO does all calculations before it displays any results. 3.4 The "Moonrise" Menu Item This item initiates iterative calculations which attempt to find the APPROXIMATE times at which the moon crosses the horizon (or for which the elevation angle is zero). These calculations may also take a while if you do not have a fast computer. Those times and the approximate azimuth angles at those times are then shown in a popup window. The results are nominal "astronomical" values and are not corrected for refractive atmospheric effects or topography. Refractive effects advance moon(sun)rise and delay moon(sun)set by about half a degree. 3.5 The "Reset" Menu Item Choosing the "Reset" menu item erases the "worksheet" and prepares some internal flags for "new" calculations. "Reset" does not, however, alter the observer or time of day data. "Reset" performs the same actions as the "File New" choice (see above). 3.6 The "Graph" Menu Item Select this item by mouse click or Alt+G to get simple graphs of elevation and azimuth angles (in degrees) vs local time (hours). They are displayed in an independent window. Negative elevation angles will not appear on the graph. The horizontal (abscissa) axis is your local time in hours, and the vertical (ordinate) axes will be the elevation (above the theoretical horizon) and azimuth angles in degrees. A displayed graph may be printed using the auxillary menu bar options seen at the top of each graph. However, YOUR PRINTER MUST HAVE GRAPHICS CAPABILITIES! If it doesn't, you may get a lot of blank sheets of paper!. Other options found on the graph windows' menu allow you to adjust the size and placement of the graph on the page. Use the graph window's Help option to assist you if desired. Normally, the graphs are scaled to fill about a complete printer page (X and Y scale factors = 1.0). Only scale factors smaller than 1.0 are suggested. You can also change the placement of a graph on paper by setting the Position offsets (entry unit is millimeters). Registered users can save their own values for those items. Use the Alt + Spacebar keys and then select the CLOSE popup menu item to close the graph window if you don't havσ a mouse. 3.7 The "View" Menu Item This command may be used to draw rough sketches of the appearance of the moon at three-hour intervals. The views illustrate the expected light and dark portions as seen by an observer looking directly at the moon at the various times. Sketches are drawn clockwise, with the top most sketch being for local midnight (0000 hrs), and the lowest one for local noon (1200 hrs). Times are shown in a four digit HHMM format, with the date and the observer's location shown at the center of the window. Sketches may not be properly shaded in cases in which the bright or dark portion of a sketch should be a very narrow cresent. Either the desired bright crescent may be incorrectly blackened, or a crescent which should be blackened may not turn out that way. That behavior is a result of the finite size of the pixels used in the Windows environment (or perhaps the GSW graphics server ?). The background color of the individual sketches is light blue or cyan if the sun is above the local horizon at a given time and black otherwise. Please note that the sketches DO NOT appear on the screen in a position that somehow relates to its position in the sky. The entire sketch may also be saved in a file with any one of the following file types: 1) ".BMP", 2) ".WMF" or 3) ."WFM" by using the FileSaveAs command of the File popup menu. Simply specify one of the three preceding file "extensions" when you enter the name to be used for the file to be created. 3.8 The "Help" Menu Item This one brings up another popup menu from which you can select the Index for the MoonPo help file, the Windows Help on Help file or maybe the About Moonpo dialog 4.0 OTHER IMPORTANT INFORMATION MOONPO is distributed as Shareware. If you use it after some reasonable trial period, please send the author $ 12.50 (US) for his trouble. Its the right thing to do! It will also make you feel better and will get you on a mailing list for information about any fixup versions or future enhanced versions. (Please send $ 15 (US) if you want to receive a pristine diskette copy of the latest version-in which case also tell me the disk size needed. You may not incorporate MOONPO into any commercial package without express written approval of the author, but you may feel free to give away unmodified copies of the demonstration archive (but not individual files) or post copies of it on any BBS which will accept it AND which makes no charges other than those made on the basis of connect time. The MOONPO version in the demonstration archive will function only for years 1991-1994. You can obtain a version usable later years by registering your copy. If you are using an unregistered copy of MOONPO version 2.1 or later which functions outside the years 1991-1994, then is is an ILLEGAL copy (and may also give incorrect results!). If you obtained such a copy from a BBS, please inform the SYSOP that said copy is NOT authorized for public release. Send your registration fee as well as any constructive comments or suggestions to: August Miller P.O Box 3512 Las Cruces, NM 88003-3512 (U.S.A.) Internet: amiller@nmsu.edu Note: Please remit registration fees by check or money order. Cash never seems to arrive. ALL registrants will receive written acknowledgements upon receipt of the registration fee. IF YOU ENCOUNTER ANY "ABNORMAL" BEHAVIOR, PLEASE SEND AS MUCH INFORMATION ABOUT ITS NATURE AND CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER WHICH IT WAS OBSERVED TO AUTHOR. * ADVERTISEMENT * There is also a SUNPO which provides low resolution angular position data for the sun PLUS general estimates of the intensity of solar visible, UV-A and UV-B radiation with any one of four user selectable models for the atmosphere. Look for SUNPO131.ZIP. The registration fee for SUNPO is $ 5.00 (U.S.), or $ 7.50 if you want a directly shipped diskette. $ 20.00 will get you a diskette containing both the latest SUNPO and MOONPO files. * ADVERTISEMENT * 5.0 MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION 5.1 Geographical Coordinates for some cities: In case you don't know where you are, here are a few clues: Latitude Longitude TimeZone ------------- ------------ -------- Atlanta, GA 33D 21M North 84D 22M West - 5 Boston, MA 41D 21M North 71D 3M West - 5 Chicago, IL 41D 52M North 87D 37M West - 6 Dallas, TX 32D 47M North 96D 47M West - 6 Denver, CO 39D 44M North 104D 59M West - 7 El Paso, TX 31D 45M North 106D 29M West - 7 Fairbanks, AK 64D 48M North 147D 51M West - 9 Las Cruces, NM 32D 19M North 106D 47M West - 7 Los Angeles,CA 34D 3M North 118D 14M West - 8 New Orleans, LA 29D 56M North 90D 3M West - 6 Phoenix, AZ 33D 26M North 112D 3M West - 7 San Francisco, CA 37D 47M North 122D 25M West - 8 Seattle, WA 47D 37M North 122D 19M West - 8 London 51D 32M North 0D 4M West 0 Hamburg 53D 33m North 10D 2M East + 1 Capetown 33D 55M South 18D 22M East + 2 Guayaquil 2D 10M South 79D 56M West - 5 Irkutsk 52D 30M North 104D 19M East + 7 Bangkok 13D 45M North 100D 30M East + 7 Manila 14D 34M North 120D 56M East + 9 (I think) Mexico City 19D 26M North 99D 7M West - 6 Rio de Janeiro 22D 56M South 43D 11M West - 3 Tokyo 35D 45M North 139D 45M East + 10 wherein, "D" means degrees and "M" means minutes. Some of time zone values are based on longitude alone. They may be off by an hour or so either way in a few cases due to the author's ignorance of local customs. 5.2 Eclipse Warnings MOONPO will occasionally issue "Eclipse Warnings". These warnings are issued if the angular positions of the sun and the moon are approximately those for which a solar or lunar eclipse might occur. Since the precision of MOONPO's calculations is rather low, such warnings may well be "false alarms". If you see such a warning and are really interested in the possibility of an eclipse, you may wish to consult a more precise source of astromomical data for the date in question. The magazine "Sky and Telescope" is a good place to look and is probably available in your local public library. 6.0 DISPLAY INFORMATION For an observer located as in the sample MYLOCALE.INI file, the screen display and the ascii output files look something like: Local Global Lunar Lunar Lunar Solar Solar Observ. time time Azim. Elev. Phase Azim. Elev. Params. 600 1300 62 -7 -161 69 11 1993 700 1400 70 4 -160 76 23 21 Jun 800 1500 77 16 -160 83 35 32.3 N 900 1600 84 28 -159 90 48 106.8 W 1000 1700 92 40 -159 99 60 1100 1800 102 52 -158 116 73 1200 1900 116 63 -158 168 81 1300 2000 143 73 -157 235 76 1400 2100 194 75 -157 257 64 1500 2200 233 68 -156 268 51 1600 2300 252 57 -156 275 39 1700 2400 262 46 -154 282 26 1800 100 271 33 -154 289 14 1900 200 278 21 -154 297 2 2000 300 285 9 -153 305 -9 7.0 PROGRAMMING INFORMATION The numerical algorithms utilized in MOONPO are loosely based on information from several sources but primarily use the "low precision" equations found in the 1993 edition of the Astronomical Almanac for describing the positions of the moon and sun as seen from the earth. A recommended reference book for anyone who wishes to learn more about doing astronomical calculations on personal computer is "Astronomy on a Personal Computer" by O. Montenbruck and T. Pfleger, (translated by S. Dunlop) and published by Springer Verlag, 1991. A good source of high precision tables is the Astronomical Almanac (published yearly). The developer of MOONPO is also indebted to high precision FORTRAN program ILLUM by Ir. A. Van Bochove and M. Erlich which has been used for testing the validity of the low precison (but faster!) routines. All programming and compiling of MOONPO was done using Version 1.5 of Borland International's Turbo Pascal for Windows. Note however, that the drawing and printing of graphs is handled by the GSW.EXE and GSWDLL.DLL routines. The latter "runtime routines" are products of Bits Per Second, Ltd. and Pinnacle Publishing, Inc. and are included under the licensing provisions of their Graphics Server SDK Version 2.2. Low precision formulas for the positions of the moon and sun have been used to accelerate the calculations. Such results should be accurate enough for most purposes at least through the end of 1995. (After that time, all bets are off unless an updated version is prepared.) Those formulas are not, in general, sufficiently accurate for eclipse predictions so you may not want to spend a lot of time trying to do that. If sufficient interest is shown (as measured by the number of registered users .. say 100 or more), a more accurate version will be prepared. As already stated above, MOONPO results are not corrected for refraction. That would be overkill in view of the low precison formulas used for position calculations. 8.0 VALIDATION OF MOONPO RESULTS MOONPO's results have been checked for several geographical sites, years and time of year by comparing its results with an updated (in terms of ephemeris data) version of program ILLUM by Ir. A.C. van Bochove's and M. Erlich. In virtually all cases tested, MOONPO results for lunar and solar positions agree with those of ILLUM to within two degrees or better. You can make a few judgements of your own by printing the file ILUM93.DTA and running MOONPO for the same conditions. ILUM93.DTA is a very, very small sampling of calculations which were done using the updated ILLUM in testing MOONPO. 9.0 NOTICES Microsoft MS-DOS and Windows 3.x are products of Microsoft Corporation. Turbo Pascal for Windows is a product of Borland International. GSW.EXE and GSWDLL.DLL are products of Bits per Second, Ltd. and Pinnacle Publishing, Inc. OS/2 is a product of International Business Machines (IBM). Revised 16 May 1994