Version 6.0
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Version 6.0
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Release date: 10th October 2001
"The sun must
not catch up the moon, nor does the night outstrip the day.
Each one is travelling in an orbit with its own motion"
(Al Qur'an 36:40)
"the sun and the
moon (are subjected) to calculations" (Al Qur'an 55:5)
| Moon Calculator
(MoonCalc) is a DOS program which provides information relating to the
position, age, phase, orientation, appearance and visibility of the
moon for any given date, time and location on earth. It also provides
the Julian Day Number, Magnetic Declination, time and direction of
moonrise and moonset, interval between sunset and moonset, interval
between sunrise and moonrise, date/time of astronomical new moon
(conjunction), full moon, apogee and perigee and predicts the
likelihood of visualising the young moon from a particular location.
Data pertaining to solar and lunar eclipses in any year are also
shown. MoonCalc provides Hijri calendar data including location
dependent Hijri date conversion using predicted crescent visibility.
Automatic local and regional (tri-zonal) Hijri calendar tabulation is
possible.
The program can scan the globe at the start of any lunar month to find the location, date/time and circumstances of earliest crescent sighting using a variety of ancient and modern moon sighting criteria. The program is able to draw world maps (flat and spherical projections) showing areas of the globe where the young moon is likely to be seen. Graphical displays showing the position of the moon on a star chart and the position of the moon in a simulated local sky (horizon view or traditional circular sky-chart view) can be produced and printed out. A close-up of the near side of the moon (showing orientation of the moon's limbs and position of the lunar craters), correct for a given observation site, is also provided. This close up takes into account the effect of libration and 'limb shortening' (optional). A graph of lunar libration for an entire month can be plotted. There is a choice of either topocentric/geocentric co-ordinates and apparent/geometric sunset. Correction for atmospheric refraction is optional. The program has a built in atlas database which stores latitude and longitude data of upto 1000 cities (ships with over 100 cities already entered). There are many user-configurable features. MoonCalc and accompanying documentation and files are copyright by Dr. Monzur Ahmed, © 1993/ 2015. All rights reserved |
After downloading, unzip the moonc60.zip file and look at the readme.txt or readme.pdf for instructions.
To unzip use an utility such as Winzip.
To read the readme.pdf file (contains same information as readme.txt) you will need Acrobat reader.
Some reviews of earlier versions of MoonCalc
Examples of program output:
Extensive tablulated data (1 of 4 tables shown)
Also eclipse and Hijri calendar
tables (not shown)
Extensive graphical data
Click on small images to see full-sized graphics
Starchart (Dec vs RA) showing sun & moon positions
Local sky (Alt/Azi) - horizon view (left) and traditional
circular view (right)
You can zoom in and out in either view.
Close-up of moon showing craters and physical moon data
Young moon visibility maps - any of 13 crescent sighting criteria can be applied
Trizonal Hijri Calendar Computation
Monthly libration graph
Copyright (c) Dr. Monzur Ahmed
Last updated: 27th September 2015
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monzur at uk2 dot net When emailing, replace 'at' with @ , replace 'dot' with . and remove spaces. This is to reduce spam mail - sorry for the inconvenience. |
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Mirrors: |
http://www.mooncalc.talktalk.net |
