Planetarium Version 1.13i ============ Author: Rolf Kühr Am Südhang 21 D 4798 Wünnenberg (Germany) Tel.:02953/8701 Some remarks: ============= This program was originally written for the C64 by H. Hinkelmann and first published in the C64 Magazin 5/85 (Markt & Technik). I ported it to the Amiga, adding a lot of stars and a few features, making use of intuition, thus re-coding the whole thing. First I wrote it in Amiga Basic, but that was a lot to slow (blame it!), now it`s GFA-Basic and about ten times faster! I reorganized the whole stucture of the program and its routines and that's why I sign as author. Anyway, it is not yet fully optimized and tested and therefore I put it in the PUBLIC DOMAIN. I give you the compiled version and the ASCII-sourcecode and you can do anything you want with it, as long as it is accompanied by this READ.ME file (you may add your own remarks, but don't alter it), and please leave my adress in the program. You may NOT use the program commercially in any way (read: sell it or make any money with it)! If you make any improvements ( add double-buffering, more pictures ...) or have suggestions, please let me know. I will answer your letters or if you send me a disc, I will mail it back with the latest version (if there is any). Program description: ==================== PLANETARIUM draws a chart of stars from horizon to horizon for any place on earth and any reasonable time (it calculates the Julian Date). It starts with the time (and date) it gets from your system, expecting Central Europeen Time. You can change it selecting the appropriate item from the pulldown-menu. Most stars down to third magnitude are shown and some fainter are added where the constellation requires them. Magnitude and apparent brightness correspond to the colours (grayscale) used by the program, planets are marked red. PLANETARIUM has the intention to help the astronomical beginner: First, it helps to locate stars, constellations and planets. Point at a star on the chart and press the left mousebutton: A circle is drawn around it, its name and that of its constellation are displayed while the other stars of the constellation are blinking. If you know the name of a star, planet or constellation and don't know where it is, select "Look for names" from the pulldown-menu, enter the name or part of it and everything will be displayed as mentioned above. Second, PLANETARIUM is able to simulate the movements of celestial objects. Just select "Planetarium" from the "MODE"-menu. Choosing an 24-hour interval will show you the motion of sun, moon and planets in front of the fixed stars. To stop the simulation select "Star chart" from the "MODE"-menu or simply press right-Amiga+q or right-Amiga+s. The shortcuts for the menuitems are shown in the pulldown-menus. If you want to get a hardcopy, you should have started PLANETARIUM from your workbench, because the program looks for the Preferences printer driver. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ATTENTION!! If your Amiga has only 512 K of memory you should choose the uninterlaced resolution (640*256) as soon as the loading picture has vanished; the program will start automatically. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I added the PD-program PopUpMenu; it is a lot more comfortable when menueitems appear right under your mouse-pointer! Program history =============== Version 0.98i (not released) ------------- I fixed a few bugs and added a preset feature for some well known (Wünnenberg??) or interesting locations. Now the MedRes-screen is built up properly and the GURU will not come up any more when you use some strange coordinates. A friend asked me for an entire english version, so I translated everything the best I could - even the names of variables and subroutines in the source - so that everybody might be able to understand what the program is doing (Version 0.98i means "international" haha). Version 0.99i (not released) ------------- I worked on the routines to speed them up. Where it is possible the program now uses integer instead of floatingpoint variables. Version 1.0i ------------ I checked the trigonometric functions and used the fast GFA routines where speed was more important than precision. This payed!! The compiled version now only needs about three seconds to calculate and draw! an image of the sky. I called this version 1.0i because during testing no serious mistake occured (though there might be still some more bugs in it). Version 1.01i (not released) ------------- I changed the palette so that the brightness of the stars can be displayed properly. Adding one more bitplane to the screen would slow down the program by half. Version 1.02i (not released) ------------- One minor bug in the blink routine eliminated. Version 1.1i ----------- I added a feature to calculate the phases of the moon and the possibility to print the names of the stars you klick at into the screen. Version 1.11i (not released) ------------- The moon is no longer a simple circle because I added a picture for the phases! Version 1.12i ------------- Now the moon is shown correctly even non-interlaced. Version 1.13i ------------- Pictures of the moon are now integrated in the source-code (inline). Using the latest version of GFA Basic and Compiler (Version 3.52) made some minor bugs disappear. That's all folks, enjoy! Rolf Kühr