Index of /moontoolw/
Name Last modified Size Description
![[DIR]](/file/21496/OP4_96.ISO/surfen/astro/earthv/menu.xbm/menu.png)
Parent Directory 15-Aug-96 13:58 -
![[ ]](/file/21496/OP4_96.ISO/surfen/astro/earthv/unknown.xbm/unknown.png)
moontarc.zip 01-Aug-95 18:18 76K
![[IMG]](/file/21496/OP4_96.ISO/surfen/astro/earthv/image.xbm/image.png)
moontoolw.gif 01-Dec-94 23:09 6K
Moontool for Windows
by John Walker -- kelvin@fourmilab.ch
Moontool for Windows is a Microsoft Windows application that
calculates the phase of the Moon at either the current time or at any
user-specified time and displays a picture of the Moon at the correct
phase, either as an icon or in an open window.
MOONTOOL DISPLAY
================
When the Moontool window is open, it displays comprehensive
information about the Moon:
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| = Moontool |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| File Edit Options Help |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Julian date: 2448696.36623 +-------+ |
| Universal time: 08:47:22 14 March 1992 | Moon | |
| Local time: 00:47:22 14 March 1992 | image | |
| | | |
| Age of moon: 9 days, 19 hours, 44 minutes. +-------+ |
| Moon phase: 74% (0% = New, 100% = Full) |
| Moon's distance: 363702 kilometres, 57.0 Earth radii. |
| Moon subtends: 0.5476 degrees. |
| |
| Sun's distance: 148764944 kilometres, 0.994 astronomical units. |
| Sun subtends: 0.5361 degrees. |
| |
| Last new moon: 13:23 UTC 4 March 1992 Lunation: 856 |
| First quarter: 02:35 UTC 12 March 1992 |
| Full moon: 18:17 UTC 18 March 1992 |
| Last quarter: 02:31 UTC 26 March 1992 |
| Next new moon: 05:03 UTC 3 April 1992 Lunation: 857 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
When closed to an icon, Moontool displays the image of the Moon at the
current phase, subtitled with the age of the Moon in days and hours
(or hours and minutes when the Moon is less than one day old). If
Moontool is launched from the "load=" statement in WIN.INI, it starts
as an icon, permitting you to include the Moon as a permanent
embellishment of your Windows desktop.
Moontool allows the information displayed in the open window to be
copied to the clipboard as a bitmap, permitting you to paste it into
another document.
In addition to displaying the Moon at the current time, Moontool can
calculate the appearance of the Moon at any user-specified date and
time. Two dialogues permit entering date and time either as a
conventional Universal time (year, month, day, hours, minutes, and
seconds) or as a Julian date. These dialogues perform instantaneous
conversion between Universal time and Julian date, serving thus as a
Julian date calculator, handy by itself to astronomers. You can
animate the display of the Moon by placing Moontool into "Fast mode",
showing the progression of phases at the rate of one day every few
seconds.
Moontool's ability to display the Moon at any date in history lets you
quickly answer questions such as that posed in the April 1992 issue of
"Sky And Telescope" (page 437): did Paul Revere's midnight ride really
occur under the full Moon, or did Longfellow add the Moon to his poem
purely for atmosphere? Firing up Moontool and entering the time and
date of Revere's ride: 05:00:00 UTC April 19th, 1775, we find that the
Moon was 87% full that night, waning from the last full Moon at 21:53
UTC on April 15th, 1775. Moontool tells us that the Moon was indeed
close to full that night, confirming Revere's own recollection that
"the Moon shone bright".
DETAILS
=======
Moontool runs under Microsoft Windows 3.0 (and above) in any mode. It
is written in Microsoft Quick C; source code is included. Included in
the PKZIP archive MOONTARC.ZIP is a ready-to-run executable file,
MOONTOOL.EXE, and another self-extracting PKZIP archive, MOONTSRC.EXE,
which when executed under MS-DOS places all the source code and
support files (icons, bitmaps, etc.) needed to recompile Moontool into
the current directory.
All of these binary executable files have been created starting from
source code using only officially-licensed commercial software in
order to eliminate the risk of contamination with computer viruses.
The source code for Moontool is in the public domain. You are free to
use it in any manner you wish.
TIME ZONE SPECIFICATION
=======================
In order to calculate information about the Moon, Moontool must know
the relationship between the local time provided by the system clock
on MS-DOS and Universal Time (or Greenwich Mean Time). This is
provided by the "TZ" environment variable, normally set at system
startup time in AUTOEXEC.BAT. The time zone is specified as:
SET TZ=tzn[+|-]hh[:mm[:ss]][dzn]
where:
tzn Three character abbreviation for the time zone name.
hh The difference in hours between GMT and the local
time. A leading '+' or '-' sign is optional.
mm Optional minutes difference.
ss Optional seconds difference.
dzn Optional three character abbreviation for the
time zone name during daylight savings time (if
used in this locality).
TZ specifications for time zones in the 48 contiguous United States
are:
Zone SET TZ=
-------- ---------
Eastern EST5EDT
Central CST6CDT
Mountain MST7MDT
Pacific PST8PDT
If no TZ specification is present, Moontool issues a warning alert
when launched and uses the system default of the US Pacific time zone.
MOONTOOL HISTORY
================
Moontool was originally written for the Sun Workstation under the
SunView graphical user interface by John Walker in December of 1987.
The program was posted to the Usenet news group comp.sources.unix in
June 1988 and was subsequently widely distributed within the Sun user
community. As the original posting began, "What good's a Sun without
a Moon?".
In 1988 and 1989 Ron Hitchens contributed additional features to the
Sun version of the program, including the shaded Moon images which
were drawn by Joe Hitchens on an Amiga computer.
In December of 1991 I implemented Moontool under the X Window system
using the OpenLook toolkit. That version formed the starting point
for this Microsoft Windows Moontool which was completed in March of
1992.
ASTRONOMICAL PROGRAMMING RESOURCES
==================================
The algorithms used in this program to calculate the positions of the
Sun and Moon as seen from the Earth are given in the book "Practical
Astronomy With Your Calculator" by Peter Duffett-Smith, Second
Edition, Cambridge University Press, 1981. Ignore the word
"Calculator" in the title; this is an essential reference if you're
interested in developing software which calculates planetary
positions, orbits, eclipses, and the like. If you're interested in
pursuing such programming, you should also obtain:
"Astronomical Formulae for Calculators" by Jean Meeus, Third Edition,
Willmann-Bell, 1985. A must-have.
"Planetary Programs and Tables from -4000 to +2800" by Pierre
Bretagnon and Jean-Louis Simon, Willmann-Bell, 1986. If you want the
utmost (outside of JPL) accuracy for the planets, it's here.
"Celestial BASIC" by Eric Burgess, Revised Edition, Sybex, 1985. Very
cookbook oriented, and many of the algorithms are hard to dig out of
the turgid BASIC code, but you'll probably want it anyway.
Many of these references can be obtained from Willmann-Bell, P.O. Box
35025, Richmond, VA 23235, USA. Phone: (804) 320-7016. In addition
to their own publications, they stock most of the standard references
for mathematical and positional astronomy.