Python docstrings don't work for variables, so I hacked
a special comment format for helping pydown generate Markdown
text for the README.md for the exported constant KM_PER_AU,
or any other constants I may want to expose in the future.
Use a private enumerated type to select which direction
the precession and nutation is to be done:
- from date to J2000
- from J2000 to date
Normalize the order of parameters to be consistent
between precession() and nutation(), and across languages.
Pass in AstroTime instead of a pair of floating point TT
values (one of which had to be 0).
Added TypeScript version of ObserverVector(),
but it has not yet been documented or tested.
Astronomy Engine used to use USNO historical and predictive tables,
along with linear interpolation, to calculate Delta-T values.
The problem with the USNO tables is, they did not work well outside
a few centuries around present day.
Later I replaced with Espenak & Meeus piecewise polynomials
that work over a much larger time span (thousands of years).
I just discovered there were still comments in the code referring
to the USNO models. I updated the ones I could find to reflect
the current truth about how the code works today.
This is technically a breaking change, but only for clients
that use the cartesian coordinates in an ecliptic coordinate
return type. Before now, the coordinates were just separate
floating-point members ex, ey, ez. Now they are a standard
vector type.
The purpose is to allow seamless interfacing with vector
rotation functions, and to be consistent with the equatorial
coordinate types.
Now that equatorial coordinates include both angles
and cartesian coordinates, there is no need for the
VectorFromEquator function. It has been removed
from all four supported languages.
The expression "VectorFromEquator(equ, time)" can be
replaced with "equ.vec" in any calling code.
I'm about to start working on adding a new output
from the Horizon functions. It was a good time to better
document the ideas behind these calculations, before
adding anything new. These are internal comments only
and do not affect generated documentation.
While I was in there, I noticed extra code that was
checking for impossible return values from atan2().
I eliminated these.
I forgot that my build process automatically updates
copyright years when the current year changes.
My Travis CI unit tests verify that there are no local
changes after running all the tests.
That test failed because the update_copyrights.py changed
all the "2019-2020" to "2019-2021".
In all four versions of Astronomy Engine (C, C#, JavaScript, and Python),
starting a search for a full moon near December 19, 2020 would fail.
I added a unit test to all four languages and it failed consistently
across them all.
The root cause: I was too optimistic about how narrow I could make
the window around the approximate moon phase time in the
SearchMoonPhase functions. Finding the exact moon phase time failed
because it was outside this excessively small window around the approximate
time. I increased the window from 1.8 days to 3.0 days.
This should handle all cases with minimal impact on performance.
Now all four of the new unit tests pass.
I believe this wraps up the Python integrator.
It now works in all 4 languages and passes all tests.
Fixed up demo tests to match new output.
Turned on Travis CI checking in this branch again.
Windows does not support relative links in Git by default.
This broke the first-time experience for Windows users.
From now on I will maintain copies of the astronomy.js
and astronomy.py in the demo folders, so that the demos
will work on Windows immediately after cloning the repo.
Using Linux relative links to astronomy.py and astronomy.js
from the demo directories just doesn't work in Windows.
This creates a stumbling block for first-time users.
To make it easier for people to get started, I will just
make redundant copies in other directories as needed.
It is better to use a little extra disk space -- hard drives are cheap!
This is the first step: get rid of the links.
To be consistent, when calculating the geocentric position of the Sun,
we do need to correct for light travel time just like we would for any
other object. This reduces the maximum time error for predicting transits
from 25 minutes to 11 minutes.
Also had to disable aberration when calculating moon phases
(longitude from Sun) in order to keep a good fit with test data.
In all 4 supported languages, use consistent constant names for
Earth and Moon radii.
Use Moon's equatorial radius for rise/set timing.
Use Moon's mean radius for calculating Moon's umbra radius for
detecting solar eclipses.
Also use Moon's mean radius for determining whether the Earth's shadow
touches the Moon, for finding lunar eclipses.
Use the Moon's polar radius for distinguishing between total
and annular eclipses, with a 14 meter bias (instead of 1420 meters!)
to match Espenak data.
Use consistent unit test error threshold of 0.57 minutes for rise/set.
Updated demo test data for slight changes to rise/set prediction times.
Updated doxygen options to issue an error on any warnings.
Fixed the incorrect function name link that doxygen was warning me about.
Using geocentric Moon instead of heliocentric Moon
gives more floating point precision for determining
the distance between the Moon and the Earth's shadow ray.
I figured out a formula that determines how far away
the Moon is from the center of the Earth's shadow.
This confirms the formula makes sense for a known
total lunar eclipse on May 26, 2021.
I am working on adding aphelion/perihelion functionality
for planets. I ran into complicated behavior with the orbit
of Neptune. Its orbit is so circular, and its movement so slow,
that wobbling of the Sun around the Solar System Barycenter (SSB)
causes there to be 3 consecutive zero-slope points near the true
perihelion. I still need to resolve this.
Created skeleton test harness for validating the demo programs.
Created stub moonphase.py.
Copied correct demo program outputs from nodejs; will tweak as needed.
Call the Python demo test harness from the 'run' script.
