Questions tagged [software]
Questions about computer programs that assist modeling and observing the dynamics of astronomy.
112 questions
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Recommendations on 3D software for recreating human vantage point of satellites, planets, and star positions from fixed time, altitude, and lat/long
I have a few videos of (seemingly) anomalous objects taken from the cockpit of a commercial airliner in the past few days. I know the copilot very well. This person is staunch skeptic on the topic ...
8
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How can I reference sky photos to a star map?
On Earth, it is straightforward to georeference images onto a map surface using control points. Is there a similar approach for photos of the night sky showing stars?
I’ll take a long exposure shot of ...
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When should we use direct O(N^2) N-body simulation (instead of other methods)?
I've read a small tutorial on N-body simulation methods. What it says about direct N-body simulation is:
These codes are often used in star cluster dynamics or in other contexts where multiple stars ...
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How to get Stellarium for Mojave?
What's the newest version of Stellarium that will run on macOS 10.14 Mojave?
And where can it be downloaded?
I can't find system requirements for older versions anywhere on stellarium.org or GitHub.
...
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Segmentation fault (core dumped) while runnning PSFEx
I had a catalogue of sources extracted by Sextractor from the CEERS field. I selected few sources (approximately 10 (which have high snr and class_star value)) and create a fits ldac file and ran ...
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Large scale structure/Single galaxy simulation on GPU
I noticed that most of the tools for cosmological simulation (e.g. large scale structure or single galaxy evolution) are based on GADGET. It only allows to use CPU.
Why not GPU? What is the main ...
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Why is there a discrepancy between the difference in ecliptic longitudes as found with Skyfield when accounting or not accounting for precession?
I'm using Skyfield to calculate some ecliptic longitudes for various dates. I understand that the 0° point of ecliptic longitude changes based on precession due to being the intersection between the ...
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Why is there a discrepancy between ecliptic longitudes found with Skyfield and Astrolog for old dates?
Just to preface this, I know that Astrolog is software meant for astrology, which is pseudoscientific nonsense; however, I have a friend who insists on using it for certain astronomical calculations (...
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Do there exist open-source implementations of non-SGP4 propagators?
I'm well familiar with SGP4 and its implementations in various languages. I am curious if there are open-source implementations of J2Mean, J2, J3, J4, etc propagation techniques.
If my terminology is ...
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Declinations from stars apparent motion w/o plate solving
I am trying to program the calculation of the declination of the stars, based on their apparent movement through a series of astrophotographs, purely algebraically, without using a solver based on the ...
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How can I join as contributor to open source code on GitHub? [closed]
I want to join as a contributor, e.g., making pull or merge requests on GitHub, in an existent open source astronomy project. How do I start? What's the typical scenario? Writing directly to the ...
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Are there any softwares which help in simulating different experiments regarding flight of aircrafts on different terrestrial planets of solar system?
I have a few experiments on aircrafts whose results I am aware of if performed on the earth's surface. However, I am searching for software(s) that can help simulate the same or other experiments on ...
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Typical astronomical and astrophysical problems in various programming languages
As a rule, work in the field of observational astronomy and astrophysics requires knowledge of such programming languages as: C/C++ and the principles of OOP, MPI, CUDA. Sometimes additional ...
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How to plot star map using galactic coordinates and MS Excel graphs?
For some time, I have tried to draw a star map for my story. Primarily for myself to understand the relative positions of stars, plot interstellar travels, and find home (and colony) stars of alien ...
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Sky coverage plot using Python/Astropy
I want to recreate a plot where the area that is not visible from a certain point on earth (latitude and longitude) trough a full year. An example of this plots for example can be:
Where in white is ...
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What parameters about galaxies can be measured using SAO DS9?
I am trying to determine and plot various parameters for galaxies on SAO DS9. RA & dec, angular size to a fair extent, and contour plotting are a few of the aspects which I could determine using ...
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Get (X, Y, Z) coordinates from Horizontal Coordinates
I'm developing a planetarium software using the Hipparcos Catalogue. I have also implemented all the formulas of the book: "Practical astronomy with your Calculator and Spreadsheet".
With ...
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Where can I find MITEoR 150 Mhz radio data?
I was working on the Aladin Sky Atlas v12 software and while working on the radio data, I came across this Radio sky survey that said MITEoR 150 MHz. Initially, I mistook it to be GMRT because GMRT ...
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Software to create exoplanet transit lightcurves of all stars in a series of images?
There is quite a bit software out there that can be used for the transit method analysis of single stars, is there software that can do it for many simultaneously?
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How to use SExtractor to calculate Petrosian Radius?
I'm using Sextractor to run some benchmarks on the code I'm working on.
I'm mainly focused on Petrosial Radius (PETRO_RADIUS).
I have two main questions that I could not find in the documentation:
...
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JPL Ephemeris or Skyfield - how to get moon phase percentage (not illumination percentage)
I know how to use JPL's Horizons to get moon illumination percentage but I noticed that even at new moon, the illumination never goes to zero:
...
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orbit viewer for any date for moon
I'm aware of the NASA orbit viewer but it limits you to years > 1600 AD.
Is there an orbit viewer for any date?
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tool to calculate moonrise/moonset and moon phase for any date for any location
I have googled for such a solution but I have not found anything substantial: I found one website but it was someone's side hobby so my confidence in it is low.
Thankfully, I have discovered ...
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software library that calculates earth/moon/sun/planets positions based on the geocentric model
is there any software library that calculates earth/moon/sun/planets positions based on the geocentric model?
if that exists, why is the heliocentric model the most popular?
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Lunar Librations and Subsolar Point in Matlab
So I have been trying to write a program to generate the latitude and longitude of the lunar subsolar point in Matlab.
I have the ephemeris data from aero toolbox, but I can't seem to get values that ...
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creating asteroid light curves and analysing them
I came across the video Tutorial: Creating a Lightcurve of a Minor Planet linked below by Tycho Tracker, which is software that builds an asteroid light curve from raw images and analyses it to obtain ...
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uvotdetect sometimes doesn't make valid .fits files for DS9 to read (Swift UVOT, Heasoft)
I have downloaded galactic center sky images from the Swift database (https://www.swift.ac.uk/swift_live/index.php#doSimpleSearch.php?catname=swiftmastr&searchpos=galactic+center&searchrad=10&...
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Software to create star maps with custom asterism lines?
I would like to be able to create star maps and charts, but define my own sets of “constellation” lines.
I imagine I would need to provide an input file containing pairs of stars which would be ...
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Do I need ENVI if I want to just learn IDL?
I am trying to gain experience in IDL in order to do basic image data reduction techniques like stacking and aperture photometry, so I decided to purchase an IDL license, however, the license is ...
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For what aspects of cosmology research can a software engineer contribute?
I'm a software engineer and I would love to learn more about cosmology by participating in this field. I'd like to change my career path closer to it and further from web programming. But I don't know ...
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Making an application to draw the night sky of other planets
I'm making an application for drawing a night sky of planets other than Earth. Ultimately my app may be used to draw a night skies of a hypothetical planets in other solar systems. I'm doing it ...
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What are some astrophotography editing options and strategies for taking photos of galaxies with a telescope and a cell phone?
We purchased a phone adapter for my sons telescope and got some amazing pictures, BUT we believe that they can be clearer.
What is the best, or a really good, image editing program for amateur ...
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Incorrect Mars orbital time while calculating using Kepler formula in Java
Question:
I am trying to make a simple java program to do planetary orbital calculation like how many days it takes to complete the orbital along with each Earth day data but I end up getting a 4 ...
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How to choose numeric precision when creating a file with STILTS?
I am using the STILTS command-line tools, popular in astronomical data processing, to merge many (~330k) .fits astronomic tables into 1 large table. I am doing this with the STILTS command in the ...
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Looking for an interactive star chart
First, apologies; I understand this is like a software request over at Stack Overflow.
I'm looking for a star chart for a friend that likes to stargaze while in his outdoors hot tub. He is at latitude ...
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What objects can I search for using astropy.coordinates?
The spectacular Python package astropy allows the user to search for a celestial object using astropy.coordinates, querying ...
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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 ...
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Frame used for RGB cube in SAOImage
I have RGB FITS images with NAXIS=3 so I read them into SAOImage (ds9 8.2.1). I use this command line:
$ ds9 -rgbcube myimage.fits
Doing so, the window is split in ...
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Is there software that will let me calculate things like lunar phases and the position of bodies in the sky in a custom solar system?
I am constructing a fictional solar system and want to be able to calculate astronomical events and locations, like lunar phases and eclipses, plus the positions of other astronomical bodies in the ...
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Would it be a good idea to dockerize softwares in order to conduct hands-on tutorial sessions? [closed]
I am going to organize a tutorial in which I intend to train students on semi numerical simulations for reionization. Is it a good idea to supply use Docker to supply the codes?
What do you think ...
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Basic, learning examples of applications of CFD and MHD in astrophysics, and current research directions using these techniques?
I am an undergraduate in Physics, and I have an opportunity to work with a some of my seniors to learn Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD).
I would like to choose my ...
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Filtering local region in SIMBAD
I am completely new to astrophysics and currently writing a paper on Cepheid variables for high school physics.
I would like to filter out all Cepheid variables in the local system which I would ...
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Installing IRAF
Recently I asked this question on IRAF like software that can be run in a window but it seems it is not possible. So I installed window subsystem for linux. I followed these steps to install IRAF.
...
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IRAF Like software that work on Window
My professor asks to me install IRAF for the photometry project but We have a hard time installing it and also I'm more comfortable with the Windows environment (because there is other software that ...
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Star Map Vs Star Catalogue vs Planetarium Software
What is the difference between a star map, star catalogue and the sky provided by planetarium software? I have read the wiki but was having a hard time understanding how the data, accuracy and detail ...
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Opening VLA Export Format data on Windows
I recently downloaded some data from the NRAO archive.
It came as a file in the "VLA export format" with the extension .xp1. From what I gather I can open this using some software called ...
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Is there a term for "path of the Sun at a given point of the Earth"
I want to buy a house and I'm asking myself what quantity of daylight the various sides of the house receive.
I know the house is roughly oriented in the east-west direction.
But I'd like to know the ...
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How to place an observer in a cosmological simulation
Suppose I have a cosmological simulation with points in xyz space at a certain redshift in a cube like this:
And I have these for many cubes of different redshifts say from z=0 to z=2. Now I want to ...
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Mathamatica vs Sympy and Astropy to solve basic astronomy problems: solving linear equations and unit conversion
I realize this may be slightly off topic, but I also believe this is probably the best way to get an answer to my question:
What is the best combination of software packages / programming languages to ...
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How to I calcuate observed position of the Sun and Moon using the SOFA C library?
There are a number of answers on here that skirt the topic, but no concrete answers.
I currently have an implementation based on "Astronomical Algorithms by Jean Meeus" for stars, moon, and ...
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