Venus Greatest Elongation Scripts  

' Remember - Press 6 or K to go to the next Greatest Elongation

Files

1) Venus Greatest Elongations all 2010 - 2410.sts
2) Venus Greatest Elongations evenings 2010 - 2677.sts
3) Venus Greatest Elongations mornings 2011 - 2679.sts

 Instructions:
1) Download zip file
2) Extract the files
3) Run Stellarium 9
4)  press M for scripts
5) Run file
6) - Press 6 or K to go to the next Greatest Elongation

General Notes:

' Remember - Press 6 or K to go to the next Greatest Elongation
*********

The default time for viewing each Greatest Elongation is set at 06:00 for mornings and 18:00 for evenings. Venus should be above the horizon most places on Earth on most dates during it's Greatest Elongation at these times. If it's not than switch it as below.

*********

The seconds are set as the month, for example if the Greatest Elongation is evening June 14th then the time is set 18:00:06, if it's Sept 8th then time is 18:00:09, Dec it's 18:00:12  morning Feb. 21st then Time is 06:00:02, morning Nov. 15 06:00:11 etc, etc.

There's a reason I did this.

To make it easier to change the one size fits all 6:00 or 18:00 time to a better viewing time at your location.

For instance, if you live in a latitude like mine where in May the sun sets at about 20:00, it would be better having Stellarium display Venus later like at 21:00 instead of displaying it during bright sunshine at 18:00

 To change this all you have to do is

1) Open the script file with notepad or any other text editor
2) Press Ctrl +H or the click on edit>replace
3) On the "Find What" line type 18:00:05
4) On the "Replace With" line type 21:00:05
5) Press the Replace All button

This will switch all Evening Mays. Venus' Greatest Elongations are pretty much in the same place during any given month. So if you change a time for a month (i.e. May) it should be good for all Mays (if it works May 2011 then it should be just as good in May 2450)

Repeat with other months as necessary.

I would suggest leaving the seconds as the month, just in case you have to change them again.

***********

When running one of these scripts, if on a particular date, Stellarium consistently freezes and then crashes that means it's likely the script is taking up too much memory. Closing any other program you might also be running might help, if not the only other way to fix this is to open the script file with notepad (or equivalent) and take some years (including the "script action pause" part) out of the file or break the file in two or more parts.

***************** 

All Greatest Elongation dates were calculated using UTC time, so any given Greatest Elongation might be ±1 day off from other local sources you might see

Most notable is the Farmers Almanac which calculates Greatest Elongation dates using their local time in Boston in the Eastern United States time zone.

For example if the exact time of the Greatest Elongation is say 2:30am UTC time on 10/29/2011, that means in the Eastern USA the exact time the Greatest Elongation occurs is 9:30pm on 10/28/2011. My script will display 10/29/2011 while the Farmers Almanac will show 10/28/2011 for the Greatest Elongation

Sorry, it's would be too much of a pain in the you-know-what to make 24+ different scripts for all time zones (including daylight savings times) in the world .       

*********************

In the Script file, the number after the date is the actual angular separation of Venus at the time of the Greatest Elongation.

********

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.

*******************

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.

*********

* If you want to have (and run) Stellarium version 9 in order to run scripts, but still want to have Stellarium 10 at the same time.

1) Download Stellarium 9 (You can get it at Stellarium's website)

If you don't have Stellarium 10 already installed goto step 4

2) Find the config.ini for Stellarium 10

In Windows XP it's located @
C:\Documents and Settings\yourname\Application Data\Stellarium

In Windows #!&* Vista it's located @
C:\Users\yourname\Appdata\Roaming\Stellarium

3)  right click and rename the file tconfig.ini  

4) Run the Stellarium 9 setup file

5) When running setup, Name the folder you extract the files to--> Stellarium9

 6) Add the following to the shortcut on your desktop and/or start menu

--config-file config9.ini

So your shortcut should read

C:\Program Files\Stellarium9\stellarium.exe --config-file config9.ini

This necessary because the config.ini file is not compatible between the 2 versions

7) Rename the Stellarium 10 tconfig.ini file back to config.ini if 10 was already installed

See this https://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=3009395&forum_id=278769 for more info on this

**********

' Remember - Press 6 or K to go to the next Greatest Elongation
*********

I can be emailed at qam1@aol.com