Alcyone Ephemeris

Alcyone Ephemeris

Alcyone Ephemeris is an accurate and fast astronomical ephemeris calculator covering the period 3000 BC to AD 3000. It calculates heliocentric, geocentric, and topocentric positions of the Sun (Earth), Moon, planets, small bodies (asteroids, comets), and fixed stars in ecliptical, equatorial, and horizontal coordinates (including angular differences between two bodies), with optional corrections for parallax and refraction; rectangular coordinates, velocity, apparent diameter, magnitude, phase, lunar libration, orbital elements, differences for all of these, and more. In addition Alcyone Ephemeris offers a wealth of functionality: star chart generation, 3D-visualization of heliocentric and planetocentric orbits, plotting ephemeris data, searching for specific values, saving as Excel, HTML, XML or text files to export output to spreadsheets, word processors and web pages, printing, and report generation (PDF, HTML, RTF). The ephemeris calculation is based upon Steve Moshier's analytical ephemeris using trigonometric expansions for the earth and planets and the lunar ephemeris ELP2000-85 of Chapront-TouzГ© and Chapront for the moon, both adjusted to Jet Propulsion Laboratory's DE404 . There are further adjustments in Alcyone Ephemeris, some optional, to JPL's more recent DE406, the most accurate long-term ephemeris. Alcyone Ephemeris is fast. With an Athlon XP 2000+ processor, 100 calculations of geocentric longitude, latitude, and distance for the sun, moon, and all planets take about 2 seconds. A comprehensive documentation includes tabular and graphic comparisons of calculations with HORIZONS epehemeris genarator.