Moonclock

Description

MOONCLOCK produces a continually updating, real-time graphical representation on the visual aspect of the moon. The lunar aspect may be computed geocentrically, or topocentrically, for the current epoch, or for any time and date.

The dynamic MOONCLOCK graphic depicts how the moon would appear to the observer. The light and dark shaded portions of the lunar graphic represent the regions of lunar day and night. The direction from the Moon's center to celestial north is also indicated. To the tight of the lunar graphic the following information is presented:

• The lunar elongation angle (measured eastward from the sun)
• The position angle of the bright limb (measured eastward from celestial North to the mid-point of the bright limb)
• The percentage of the lunar surface illuminated by sunlight
• The current (or selected) Universal Time and Date
• The geographic longitude at which the sidereal time is 0 hours
• The observer's sidereal time
• The altitude and azimuth of the moon

An instantaneous lunar ephemeris is presented in the bottom of the MOONCLOCK window. The header for the ephemeris indicates whether positional computations were performed geocentrically or topocentrically, and the epoch of the ephemeris as both Julian and Gregorian dates.

The lunar Right Ascension, Declination, Heliocentric Latitude, Heliocentric Longitude, apparent angular Equatorial Radius, and Distance from the Earth is displayed. The equatorial coordinates of the moon are precessed to the equator and equinox of 2000.0. A.D. The lunar distance is expressed in Earth radii. The lunar angular radius is expressed in seconds of arc.

MOONCLOCK provides a high precision lunar ephemeris, with an accumulated error of less than 15-arc seconds per century from 1990.0. MOONCLOCK was developed using kernel software supplied with HIPPARCHUS, a fully integrated Macintosh application for positional and observational astronomy, from sofTouch APpLications.

Requirements

MOONCLOCK will run on any Macintosh computer, or other platform running the Macintosh Operating System, or Macintosh Application Environment. A native PowerPC version of MOONCLOCK, called MOONCLOCK PPC is available. To start MOONCLOCK just double click on the MOONCLOCK icon.

Notes

This software was developed using APL.68000, a proprietary product of MicroAPL Ltd., which has given permission for a runtime version of APL.68000 to be included with the software. Copyright and all intellectual property rights in APL.68000 remain vested in MicroAPL Ltd. APL.68000 is a registered trademark of MicroAPL Ltd.

Author

sofTouch APpLications

Status

Shareware, $5. Please distribute MOONCLOCK to anyone who may be interested in this product. sofTouch APpLications is pleased to serve and support all of our registered users.

• Download Moonclock 2.2.0 for 680x0 [MacBinary 292 Kb]
• Download Moonclock 2.2.0 for 680x0 [BinHex 396 Kb]

• Download Moonclock 2.2.0 for PowerPC [MacBinary 311 Kb]
• Download Moonclock 2.2.0 for PowerPC [BinHex 422 Kb]

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