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Fred, you wrote
> I mentioned the "other planet" possibilities just for fun --

I hope you understood my comment
> "OK, my thoughts were more  related to our good old planet earth, ...?
the same way..

Refering to your
> I mentioned the "other planet" possibilities just ... to  indicate the
> generality of the result.
That is also how I undertood it.

Refering to your
> Sticking to the terrestrial atmosphere,  there are
> still some options. Notice that the integration does not force you to  use
> any
> particular index of refraction. All it requires is that you specify the
> index
> of refraction as a function of height --as in the function "getmu" in my
> sample code. So for example, you could include variability of humidity
> with
> height if you consider that important (it's not important in navigational
> applications but it might be in high precision astronomical simulations).

I do completely agree with you. But to write a program correct and knowing
what results to expect of it, depending on the data entered, is one thing,
to have a low probability that those entered data correspond to the actual
situation - as in the case of refraction at low altitudes - is an other. It
is for this reason that I try to make my program as much correct as
reasonably possible and add a warning that due to the actual conditions the
results may differ.


> You  can
> also look at what happens all across the visible spectrum. Consider the
> case  of
> the star Sirius at 2 degrees altitude as seen from sea level. Its light is
> white, so there are more or less equal contributions of red, green, and
> blue.
> Run the integration for three values of the "zero level" index of
> refraction
> for  the three frequencies corresponding to those colors and see what you
> get.
> You  should find that the image of Sirius is considerably stretched out.
> It
> becomes a  little vertical spectral "stripe", 20 to 30 arcseconds in
> length.
> Setting aside  the large variability in refraction at such low altitudes,
> this is
> another  reason why there's no use fussing over a couple of tenths of a
> minute in  refraction tables very close to the horizon.

It is acually for this reason that I changed there your code slighly by
defining the refractive index used in "getmu" as an input variable to the
program.

> By the way, not too  surprisingly, my code lost its nice neat indentation
> for
> the two loops when it  went through the list processor. I assume it is
> still
> comprehensible although a  little less readable. Let me know if you have
> any
> difficulty translating from  the version of Basic I used.

The transcription was no problem thanks to the detailed comments you added
in your code. There was only one little change necessary. This relates to
the radius r and rnew in relation to the "getr loop":

In Basic:
..
r = REarth + 20000  'a fairly arbitrary  seed value...
DO
'getr loop follows:
DO
...
rnew = r - F /  dFdr
IF ABS(rnew - r)  < drtest THEN EXIT DO
r =  rnew
LOOP

dlmdlr = (r / mu) * dmudr
...
psi = psi + dpsi
LOOP UNTIL  psi >= psi0
.....

Which became in Delphi:
...
rnew := REarth + 20000.0;  // a fairly arbitrary  seed value...
repeat                                                // Start:  P S I - L o
o p
// getr loop follows:
repeat                                                // Start:  g e t R - L
o o p
r :=  rnew;
...
rnew := r - F /  dFdr;
until ABS(rnew - r) < drtest;                         // End  :  g e t R - L
o o p

dlmdlr := (r / mu) * dmudr;
....
psi := psi + dpsi;
until (psi >= psi0);                                  // End  :  P S I - L o
o p
.....

The program works with the simplified atmospheric model "getmu" and the
results look "reasonable". It remains now trying to introduce the
atmospheric model as described in the paper.

> I also use Delphi/Pascal, though less often now...  The next-to-last
> version of the
> "CentenniaHistorical Atlas" (see my web site)  was coded in Delphi.

The components you used on your Web page look really very familiar... It is
only for those dialogues with the user that I started to use this Delphi,
otherwise I would have preferred to go on with Fortran, which I used
previously for a long time. Now, having used Delphi for numbers of years, I
would have difficulties to switch back to Fortran.

Marcel

   

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