Stars & Planets Conjunctions Scripts
Files
1) Aldebaran Conjunctions.ssc
2) Antares
Conjunctions.ssc
3) Beehive Conjunctions.ssc
4) Pleiades Conjunction.ssc
5) Regulus Conjunction.ssc
6) Spica Conjunctions.ssc
Instructions:
1) Download zip file
2) Extract the files
3) Run Stellarium
4) Run scripts
5) Run file
6) The program will take a couple of seconds to determine your offset for
UTC time, Latitude and Longitude.
7) From Main Menu
Press + or - to toggle choices
Press [ to select choice and run in Keypress mode
Press ] to select choice and run in Screensaver Mode
8) When running Keypress mode
Press + to go to the next conjunction
Press - to go to the previous one
Press [ to start over (at the original date)
Press ] to go back to Main Menu
9) When running Screensaver mode
Press any date key + - [ ] to return to main menu
General Notes:
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Versions
Version 4.0: Stellarium 11.3: More direct calculation on viewing times, Accurate Latitude determination, Displays Rise & Set times and Elongation from sun
Version 3.0: Stellarium 10.6: Directly calculates best times (comes close, still does some quick adjustments) , Screen Saver Mode.
Version 2.0: Never released. To find the best times it adjusts times until it finds the best.
Version 1.0: Never released. I made the scripts for Stellarium 9, but before I could finish them the scripting laungauge changed in version 10
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I could have taken the easy way out and just set these scripts for one location, but instead I wanted a script that would display these conjunctions using the users home location. So what these scripts do is "attempt" to calculate the best time at your location to view the conjunctions. To do this the scripts calculate sunset, sunrise, starrise, starset and midday transits at your location and from those it "guesses" the time best to view the conjunctions.
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Unfortunately there's no "Get latitude" or "Get longitude" functions in Stellarium scripts, so when you 1st run any of the scripts, they will first attempt to calculate your position and your offfset from UTC. It won't get your location exactly, but it should be close enough that the set and rise times won't be significantly different.
It calculates latitude accurately by your alt vs azm angle
It calculates long by starting at "12 noon" UTC and then seeing when Solar Noon is at your location. The difference is your longitude.
If you find this annoying or want more accuracy, you can open any of the script files in notepad (or equivalent) and manually enter your lat and long where it says lat and long.
When you 1st do this you will notice the initially lat and long numbers don't make sense, this is done on purpose.
If lat and/or long are in there normal ranges (lat is anything between -90 and 90 and long is between -180 and 180) then the program will use those values, if the lat and/or long are out of range then the program will attempt to determine them.
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The Beehive script includes conjunctions that are 1° from the center or less, all others I use 6.5° degrees from the star (center of cluster for Pleiades).
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The number appearing next to information in the upper left is the angular
separation of the planet and star at the time of it's closest approach that
day(with the Pleiades and Beehive it's the angle distance from the center
of the cluster), however the planet may have moved significantly at the time
it is displayed at your location. This number is not calculated by Stellarium
but was concurrently calculated in my program where I determined these dates.
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I excluded all Mercury, Venus and Mars conjunctions where they are less than 10° from the sun, If I included them there would be 3x as many conjunctions and the script would be cluttered with conjunctions you wouldn't be able to see anyhow.
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Neptune is only included with the Regulus conjunctions script. Uranus is
only included in the Regulus and Beehive conjunction scripts. Both are too
faint and don't come close enough to other stars to be worth putting in.
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The Beehive (Praesepe) Star cluster because it's faint I used 20° separation from the sun as the filter. This includes the outer planets as well.
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You can zoom in and out of scripts as you see fit.
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Dark Only Option
To further cut down on the number of "too close to the sun to see" type conjunctions, one option on all the scripts is the Dark Only option. If you chose the Dark Only option the script will exclude the 2 months when the stars are nearest the sun. For example in the Aldebaran script all May and June Conjunctions are excluded.
For the others the months that are excluded are
Antares - November and December
Beehive -
July and August
Pleiades - May and June
Regulus - August and September
Spica - September and October
Of course this is not perfect, depending on your lat/long some conjunctions early in the 1st month after or before might still be in sunlight or some conjunctions towards the beginning/end of the skipped months might be dark.
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There are two modes to select Key Press Mode and Screensaver Mode
Key press mode, the conjunction will display until you press one of the + - [ ] keys
Screen Saver Mode the script will behave LIKE a screensaver.
Keyword LIKE, it doesn't work exactly like a screensaver,
When you select screensaver mode, up will pop the 1st conjunction, the program will hold for 3 seconds (This is the default time, you can edit this time in the script file if you wish) and then go to the next conjunction and again hold for 3 seconds and then the next conjunction and on and on.
To leave the screen saver, unlike "real" screensavers pressing any key or moving the mouse will not cause the screensaver to end, with these scripts only changing the date by pressing the dates keys will cause the screensaver to end.
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All these scripts will start at the next up coming conjunction.
For example with Antares conjunctions script file
On 1/1/2012 it should start with the Antares - Mars conjunction on
10/20/2012
On 10/20/2012 it should still start with the conjunction on 10/20/2012
But on 10/21/2012 the program will then start with the Antares - Mercury
conjunction on 11/6/2012
If you want to start on a different date, just adjust the date to where you want to start in the main menu
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Pseudo-Conjunctions: Some conjunctions may not look like conjunctions, they are really the planets closest approach just as they start or finish retrograde motion.
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No I didn't type all these years and times out. I wrote a computer program based on Paul Schlyter's work at
http://www.stjarnhimlen.se/comp/ppcomp.html
which produced all these values.
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My dates I calculated do seem to match other dates from a wide variety of sources, but I make no guarantee on accuracy.
I'm sure accuracy decreases the further back or forward in time any given script goes.
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I can be emailed at qam1@aol.com