NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Algorithms
From: John Kabel
Date: 1997 Mar 24, 08:52 EST
From: John Kabel
Date: 1997 Mar 24, 08:52 EST
There is this funny thing that happens whenever a debate starts on the Internet. People start chopping at the roots of the sapling trees and forget about the forest. Jean Meeus has written a very clear book on algorithms for computing just about anything astronomical. It is not the ultimate in precision, which is only to be found in the algorithms used by the United States Naval Observatory, Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the French organization, Bureau des Longitudes, I believe. But it more than suffices for anything to do with celestial navigation. The USNO and JPL algorithms would not work on "normal" computers (16 meg RAM, 1 gig Hard drives, 386-686 or so, or even Sun stations). So we have to make do with the less accurate algorithms. And then, Meeus is the standard. He has admirably worked the VSOP theory into a suitably precise set of almanac-type calculations. These ought to be the basis for navigation algo rtihms. If we use Meeus' publication as a starting point, develop appropriate "clear language" algorithms for the navigation routines, as opposed to code, could we not have a very quick standard developed? Then it would be up to each developer (in C or Forth or whatever) to document how their code adheres to the standard algorithm. No proof, no dissemination. Comments are invited . . . John Kabel, AP London Power and Sail Squadron London, Ontario
