Rise, Set, Transit, Up and RA times

File
Rise and Set Times.ssc

Version 3.0

Made: In Stellarium 11.3

Instructions:

1) Download zip file
2) Extract the files
3) Run Stellarium
4) Run script
5) Run file
6) Move to date to see rise, set, transit, length and RA sun times

New in Version 3.0

* Calculates latitude more accurately
* Can change latitude while running the script
* Font to White color

  New in Version 2.0

Removed some stars to make room for extra GUI info added in Stellarium Version 11

General Notes:

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There are 45 bodies whose rise, set, transit, up time and RA sun are shown. I cover both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres so some bodies won't have rise times at your location.

You can have a total of 46.

Add bodies you wish to see in the script file in the following format.

ij[i] = "Body name in Stellarium"; ik[i] = "Display Name"; i = i + 1;

For example

ij[i] = "HIP 7588"; ik[i] = "Achemar"; i = i + 1;

If you want other bodies, you can just remove the bodies that never rise at your latitude or ones you aren't interested in.

To remove object remove whole line

Remember that

i + i + 1;

at the end of the line is important.

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Latitude can be changed when running the script, but longitude can't. If you change longitude you must restart the script to calculate from the new longitude location.

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 offset 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, longitude the script can only do an estimate.

It then 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 longitude where it says longitude.

When you 1st do this you will notice the initially longitude number doesn't make sense, this is done on purpose.

If longitude is in there normal range (between -180 and 180) then the program will use those values, if the longitude is out of range then the program will attempt to determine it.

You have to enter longitude in decimal form. There are many online conversions out there or to convert from Degrees, minutes, seconds to degrees in decimals

Degrees + minutes/60 + seconds/3600

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As such, if you let the script estimate longitude, Rise and Set times can be off by up to 10 minutes.

If manually put your exact longitude in the script file, rise and set times are accurate to 1 to 2 minutes.

Times for the Moon might be off by up to an hour, I don't factor in the moon's movement around the earth,  

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Transit times are always the date you are on, the rise and set times are calculated from it. If a rise or set time is before or after midnight when compared to the transit time, then they are the previous or next day respectively.

For example if the date is March 27,

If for Mars the rise/transit/set times are

Rise: 23:00
Transit: 07:00
Set: 15:00

Then Mars rose 23:00 on March 26th, transits 07:00 March 27th and sets 15:00 on March 27th

If for Jupiter the rise/transit/set times are

Rise: 09:00
Transit: 17:00
Set: 01:00

Then Jupiter rises 09:00 on March 27th, transits 17:00 March 27th and sets 01:00 on March 28th

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Transit: When the body crosses the meridian.

RA Sun: The Right Ascension separation between sun and body

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Please do check out ephemeris from the polar regions, it took me quite a bit to get them right

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A link to a site that deserve credit for helping me predict, find & make these scripts

http://www.stjarnhimlen.se/comp/ppcomp.html

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My dates and data I calculated do seem to match other dates from a wide variety of sources, but I make no guarantee on accuracy.

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I can be emailed at qam1@aol.com