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I am new to using skyfield, is there any doc or help file that can show me on how to get the orbit of Sun and moon in ecliptic coordinate for a particular date and time. This is a follow up question of this question

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    $\begingroup$ I don't really see how this question is different from the one you link to. $\endgroup$
    – usernumber
    Nov 28, 2019 at 10:21
  • $\begingroup$ @usernumber that was how can be done, this is for how can be done using skyfield $\endgroup$
    – Rasika
    Nov 28, 2019 at 10:26

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I cant help you with skyfield, but I usually use JPL Horizons Web interface. No installation required, you can also print it in a text file if you want:

https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi

Otherwise I found the documentation for skyfield: https://rhodesmill.org/skyfield/toc.html

And if nothing of that works, I made a little astropy script for you

from astropy import units as u
from astropy.coordinates import SkyCoord, EarthLocation, AltAz, get_body
from astropy.time import Time
import numpy as np

# Create 1000 Timepoints between Time 1 and Time 2 (one year later)
t = np.linspace(2451545, 2451545+365, 1000)


pointlist = []

#Loop through this times
for tn in t:
    # For every timepoint, create an astropy_time object
    astropy_time = Time(tn, format="jd")
    # Get Planet (as string, "earth", "moon", "mercury" etc. in aequatorial coordinates
    planet_aequatorial = get_body("moon", time = astropy_time)
    #Transform to Barycentric True Ecliptic (relative to the center of mass of the solar system).
    planet_ecliptic =  planet_aequatorial.transform_to("barycentrictrueecliptic")

    # Add a point to the orbit. Every point is described as (longitude [deg], latitude (ecliptic coords), distance (km))
    pointlist.append([planet_ecliptic.lon.deg, planet_ecliptic.lat.deg, planet_ecliptic.distance.km])
    print(planet_ecliptic.distance.km)
    # So pointslist is a 2D array. The rows are all the 1000 points of the orbit

# In every point there is 3 columns for [Long, Lat, Distance]
print(pointlist)


# You can also save the result with
pointlist = np.array(pointlist)

np.save("results.npy", pointlist)

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  • $\begingroup$ thanks or the reply, it gives me a single point, however i want complete orbit, is that possible, my question may look silly, apologise $\endgroup$
    – Rasika
    Nov 29, 2019 at 17:44
  • $\begingroup$ create a list of times (in julian days) with >import numpy as np >t = np.linspace(2451545, 2451545+365, 2000) then loop over the above code but create Time object with >t = Time(t1, format="jd") instead $\endgroup$ Dec 9, 2019 at 22:47
  • $\begingroup$ did that help or should i do it for you? $\endgroup$ Jan 3, 2020 at 13:01
  • $\begingroup$ yes, please. that will be really helpful $\endgroup$
    – Rasika
    Jan 18, 2020 at 19:01
  • $\begingroup$ can you give me your e-mail or something? i cant post all the code here i think... $\endgroup$ Jan 23, 2020 at 11:11

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