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Questions tagged [algorithm]

Questions about a stepwise procedure to solve logical and/ or mathematical problems.

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Flowchart of the pipeline of key processes for modeling wavefront distortion of astronomical objects: ground-based observation case

Associated with: Mathematical modeling of the influence of components of the interstellar medium on the distortion of the wavefront of the observed object Being inspired by this article, as well as ...
ayr's user avatar
  • 886
1 vote
0 answers
101 views

calculate declination and right ascension with limited information

I'm trying to make a game with high accuracy moon position so I followed some equations on geoastro.de Basics of Positional Astronomy and Ephemerides and with some help from the questions answers, I ...
Ahmed Dyaa's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
382 views

Wrong results of calculating moon's altitude and azimuth

I'm trying to calculate moon's altitude and azimuth and I followed this formula by geoastro.de Basics of Positional Astronomy and Ephemerides There is an example to test the formula at the end of the ...
Ahmed Dyaa's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
54 views

Is the "light-time" correction for the Moon's position in Meeus "Astronomical Algorithms" putting the Moon in inertial position or apparent position?

Originally posted on Space Exploration SE, I was encouraged to post it here. I'm looking at the second edition of Meeus's "Astronomical Algorithms," chapter 47, "Position of the Moon.&...
NeutronStar's user avatar
  • 2,693
3 votes
0 answers
96 views

Current sources for astronomical equation coefficients

For a project I needed to implement some of the code to calculate the position of the sun and moon. To do this I'm using Meeus. Everything is working but in doing so I've started to wonder about the ...
PhotoKevin's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
996 views

Modern equivalent of Astronomical Algorithms by Jean Meeus?

I understand that the Meeus book is a classic in astronomical calculations. I've read through many chapters of it now and while the content is great, it'd be nice to have discussion based on more ...
Ana's user avatar
  • 191
4 votes
1 answer
267 views

CSPICE vs JPL Horizons discrepancy in AZ/EL

This CSPICE spkcpo_c routine example outputs: ...
phil5's user avatar
  • 61
4 votes
1 answer
190 views

How can I replicate AstroImageJ's pixel to RA/Dec algorithm in my own code?

EDIT: solved, thanks to Eric Jensen's suggestion (in a comment on his answer) that I include the correction to my right ascension value as a function of my declination. All other comments were helpful ...
Conor W's user avatar
  • 43
2 votes
2 answers
822 views

Calculation of Julian day is off for negative dates

I bought the book Astronomical Algorithms by Jean Meuss and I am reading it in order to build a small library I will use for another project. I made a program in Rust to calculate the JD given a date ...
Mattia Procopio's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
323 views

How the heck does JPL actually do the numerical integration for their development ephemerides? (general questions)

After writing this answer to JPL Horizons - "highly accurate measurements of planetary positions" - how do they do it? which draws from Park, Folkner, Williams & Boggs 2021 The JPL ...
uhoh's user avatar
  • 30.7k
2 votes
2 answers
118 views

How to find the first Julian day with the same Earth-Sun constellation

There are quite some sources for astronomical calculation formulas, e.g. Astronomy Answers: Position of the Sun, which is e.g. used by KDE's Night Color plugin to calculate the time of a sunset or ...
Tobias Leupold's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
402 views

Calculate the general appearance of the night sky over +/-15,000 years

I want to see what the stars looked like up to 15,000 years into the past and future. I've chosen 15,000 years in order to see a full precession cycle. To make things easier, I would be satisfied with ...
John's user avatar
  • 355
2 votes
4 answers
558 views

Sunset and sunrise formulas adopted by IAU

I'm developing a C++ computer library with the formulas in the book "Practical Astronomy with your Calculator or Spreadsheet 4th Edition" but I have a problem with the formula 49, "...
VansFannel's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
126 views

What image analysis approaches/algorithms are used to detect near-Earth objects?

Disclaimer: I am not an astronomer or astrophysicist. I'm a computer scientist. Astronomers collect vast amounts of image data through astronmical surveys. The data is then analysed for signs of ...
pookie's user avatar
  • 171
2 votes
2 answers
510 views

What is the application of pseudorandomness in astrophysics?

What are the advantages of using pseudorandom numbers in Monte Carlo simulation instead of random numbers? What are other applications of pseudorandomness in astrophysics? Many thanks.
Elena Greg's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
498 views

How does one use SPICE to calculate sunrise and sunset?

I've seen it mentioned here that SPICE can be used to calculate sunrise and sunset. How? According to the official documentation, SPICE is used to calculate: Time system conversions Positions of ...
phil5's user avatar
  • 61
11 votes
2 answers
345 views

Can automatic algorithms completely eliminate the impact of Starlink and other satellites?

According to a comment by user @J: With that said, other than aesthetics, machine vision algorithms are wildly more advanced today than in the past - strategies to remove passing satellites don't ...
JonathanReez's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
397 views

Algorithm to fit galaxies

Do you know of any other data analysis algorithm that fits 2-D analytic functions to galaxies and point sources directly to digital images, other than GALFIT? Especially to subtract lens light from ...
bea's user avatar
  • 43
3 votes
1 answer
355 views

Converting equatorial coordinates to Cartesian coordinates for extragalactic distances

I'm trying to search for galaxy clusters with the friends-of-friends (FoF) algorithm. I have the equatorial coordinates ($\alpha, \delta$) and redshifts ($0.5<z<2.5$) of galaxies that I wish to ...
kenc_'s user avatar
  • 33
2 votes
1 answer
120 views

Why is the boundary of friends-of-friends (FOF) halo corresponding to iso-density contour?

The friends-of-friends algorithm (hereafter FOF) is commonly used to find halos in cosmological simulations. (For more information, please refer to here and here) I found that some literature argues ...
Wang Yun's user avatar
  • 451
12 votes
2 answers
3k views

Why do people choose 0.2 as the value of linking length in the friends-of-friends algorithm?

The friends-of-friends algorithm (hereafter FOF) is commonly used to find halos in cosmological simulations. And FOF depends on only one parameter, linking length, $l_\mathrm{link}=b \left(\frac{V_u}{...
Wang Yun's user avatar
  • 451
5 votes
2 answers
232 views

Constellation a celestial body is in

Given its right ascension and declination, find out the constellation a celestial body is in. Does anyone know of an algorithm (C#, js) for that? It would read the constellation boundaries (e.g. ...
Ricardo's user avatar
  • 63
2 votes
0 answers
55 views

How to algorithmically distinguish between different types of nebulae?

I remember that there are five types of nebulae: Planetary nebulae have not much to do with planets, but are emission nebula consisting of an expanding, glowing shell of ionized gas ejected from red ...
B--rian's user avatar
  • 5,657
0 votes
2 answers
365 views

Mapping illumination to moon phase (font) icon

I use algorithms that give me the moon phase, age and illumination (and more) for a given timestamp and location. I am struggling to map that information to a (font) icon of the Moon Phases font. Each ...
Marcel Stör's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
2k views

How to calculate the moon's illuminated fraction tilt?

I use "Astronomical algorithms" book by Jean Meeus for programming algorithms for the moon data calculations. I've already created a lot of methods but stuck on the calculation of the moon's ...
Andrey Zagoruyko's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
1k views

problems finding rise set and transit times at high latitudes using Meeus' algorithms

I am implementing Jean Meeus' algorithm from his book "Astronomical Algorithms", 2nd ed. for rise, set and transit times in Swift. It seems to provide very good results (no more than 1 ...
Ugo's user avatar
  • 181
3 votes
1 answer
262 views

How to tell which of the ecliptic cross horizon angles is to the east?

Jean Meeus' Astronomical Algorithms, 2nd ed. p. 99 gives a formula for finding the two longitudes where the ecliptic crosses the horizon: $$\tan\lambda = \frac{-\cos\theta}{\sin\epsilon \tan\phi + \...
Shawn Lauzon's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
118 views

Deducing the hour based on RA

I'm making a technological project. The goal is to write a program that gets an image of the nightsky and predicts the hour in which the photo was taken. I implemented a well-known method using the ...
omri slovatik's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
131 views

How do they know the non-uniformities seen on the disk of π¹ Gru are real and not artifacts?

@RobJeffries' answer to What is this web on the surface of the Sun? explains why convection cells on some other stars can be far larger than they are on our Sun and includes a near-infrared VLT ...
uhoh's user avatar
  • 30.7k
2 votes
2 answers
1k views

Jean Meeus - calculating moon rise, transit and set times - help isolating error in logic

I've been working my way through the Jean Meeus Astronomical Algorithms book for a few weeks, to implement some of the key algorithms for a personal project. This task has been a little more complex ...
Stew's user avatar
  • 21
12 votes
2 answers
3k views

How (the heck) does Astrometry.net work?

What magic is this? This answer to my question Astronomy detective question: what part of the sky are these photos of? What are a few of the stars? nails it, and the output (linked there) contains ...
uhoh's user avatar
  • 30.7k
5 votes
0 answers
228 views

How to apply Fast Folding algorithm?

I have High Time Resolution Universe dataset. I have applied de-dispersion on this HTRU dataset, and thereafter I applied the folding function to fold the dataset. How I can find that the periodicity ...
user28958's user avatar
10 votes
1 answer
148 views

How actively is Deep Learning being used in exoplanet identification?

Papers, like this one from Google, show that Deep Learning and Machine Learning are effective in detecting exoplanets from luminosity data provided by telescopes like TESS or Kepler. These models ...
user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
173 views

How to improve efficiency in periodicity detection?

Our data set has $10^4$ data points, but has a long baseline and many gaps. If we bin the data, there would be $10^8$ data points ($[t,\rm {value}]$), but only about 1% are non-zero values. How to ...
questionhang's user avatar
  • 3,157
3 votes
0 answers
1k views

Astronomy/Astrophysics Project With C++/C/Python [closed]

I am a Computer Science Engineering student, in the 1st year of college. I'm insanely interested in making a project regarding astronomy/astrophysics but I don't know where to begin from. I know C, C++...
user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
772 views

Computing orbit positions of Jovian Satellites / Moons using JPL data

I've been trying to build a model of the solar system in a game. Thus far I've succeeded in placing each of the planets in position using Keplerian elements and formulae from https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/...
PKCLsoft's user avatar
  • 211
1 vote
1 answer
426 views

Finding Asteroid Geocentric Longitude and Latitude

I started using the software that comes with Jean Meeus book Astronomical Algorithms. I am now using the updated code from naughter(dot)com/aa.html. I am able to calculate the heliocentric longitude ...
homebase's user avatar
  • 131
1 vote
1 answer
1k views

How to convert VSOP's xyz coordinates to heliocentric spherical lbr coordinates?

I ran VSOP2013 in Fortran, and I now have the following position $x, y, z$ as well as velocity $v_x, v_y, v_z$ data. How do I convert the position to heliocentric ecliptic spherical coordinates $l, b,...
Muhamad NW's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
2k views

Algorithm to stack astronomical images

I'm looking for a simple algorithm to compare astronomical images (of the same sky region) against each other, compute their movement and rotation, to finally stack them. At the moment I'm already ...
HellstormDe's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
458 views

What are the reasons for referring to equinox J2000 or the equinox of the date?

(Background: Trying to learn something about the mathematical and computational part of astronomy I have acquired a copy of Meeus' "Astronomical Algorithms" and implemented the material up to Chapter ...
laune's user avatar
  • 173
4 votes
0 answers
62 views

Does an algorithm exist that takes an image of the night sky and tell you where in the milky way that perspective likely originates? [duplicate]

In Stargate they talk about using the stars on other planets to figure out their location. I know that's fiction, but it made me wonder if such an algorithm (with arguably little usefulness right now) ...
user986122's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
2k views

What is exactly the "longitude of the perigee"

Some moon phase calculation algorithms (apparently derived from Duffet-Smith's book, example here) seem to use a parameter called "longitude of perigee at epoch". What exactly is this? Can I assume ...
ubik's user avatar
  • 143
4 votes
1 answer
395 views

Hubble HST scheduling algorithm

NASA developed SPIKE: Intelligent Scheduling of Hubble Space Telescope Observations (HST) and this. My question is simple, is there a programming library, preferably in python or C#, to implement the ...
Lynob's user avatar
  • 161
4 votes
3 answers
931 views

Are there standard algorithms and procedures for creating unique sky maps based on latitude/longitude/date/time?

I am trying to build an astronomy app that will use the user's latitude and longitude, along with the current date and time, to create a 3D view of the celestial sphere as seen based on that data. ...
John's user avatar
  • 41
6 votes
1 answer
375 views

What method is used to calculate the 'quality' of a solar/planetary image?

What sort of algorithm is used to calculate the relative quality of an image, such as is performed by PIPP, Registax, or Avistack? Such applications take planetary or solar images and prior to ...
Jeremy's user avatar
  • 3,234