Debian Edu Astronomy packages

A package to reorganize menu branches in order to get a structure easy to use for teachers and students.

Gpredict is a real time satellite tracking and orbit prediction program for the Linux desktop. It uses the SGP4/SDP4 propagation algorithms together with NORAD two-line element sets (TLE).

Some core features of Gpredict include:

• Tracking of a large number of satellites only limited by the physical memory and processing power of the computer
• Display the tracking data in lists, maps, polar plots and any combination of these
• Have many modules open at the same either in a notebook or in their own windows. The modules can also run in full-screen mode
• You can use many ground stations
• Predict upcoming passes
• Gpredict can run in real-time, simulated real-time (fast forward and backward), and manual time control
• Detailed information both the real time and non-real time modes
• Doppler tuning of radios via Hamlib rigctld
• Antenna rotator control via Hamlib rotctld

KStars is a scientifically accurate desktop planetarium, visualising a graphical simulation of the night sky from any location on Earth, at any date and time. The display includes 130,000 stars, 13,000 deep-sky objects, all 8 planets, the Sun and Moon, and thousands of comets and asteroids. KStars addresses students and amateur astronomers of all levels.

The database of known objects can be extended and updated from local or remote databases, which is prepared for in a user-extendable interface. KStars suggests observations of particular interest like conjunctions with respect to the location of the user. And for user-selected targets it proposes the ones that are best-observable.

The software may be used for planning experiments around the globe, e.g. for remote controlled commercial services. But KStars also features an INDI interface to control local telescopes and cameras. Users with programming experience can script it via the KDE desktop bus.

OpenUniverse (OU for short) is a fun, fast and free OpenGL space simulator. It currently focuses on the Solar System and lets you visit all of its planets, most major moons and a vast collection of smaller bodies in colorful, glorious and realtime 3D. If you've ever had a chance to visit Mercury or asteroid Geographos, here you'll find them looking exactly the same way, following exactly the same path as when you've left them.

Notice that OpenUniverse is not actively being maintained anymore and that users are recommended to use Celestia instead.

Stellarium renders 3D photo-realistic skies in real-time. With Stellarium, you really see what you can see with your eyes, binoculars or a small telescope.

Some features:

• default star catalogue with over 600 thousand stars,
• information about the brightest stars (spectral type, distance, etc.),
• downloadable star catalogue extensions, for up to 210 million stars,
• all New General Catalogue (NGC) objects,
• images of almost all Messier objects and the Milky Way,
• real time positions of the planets and their satellites,
• 13 different cultures with their constellations,
• artistic illustrations of the 88 Western constellations,
• very realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset,
• 7 panoramic landscapes (more can be made or downloaded from the website),
• scripting with ECMAScript,
• plug-in support: Stellarium comes with 8 plug-ins by default, including:
• artificial satellites plug-in (updated from an on-line TLE database),
• ocular simulation plug-in (shows how objects look like in a given ocular),
• Solar System editor plug-in (imports comet and asteroid data from the MPC),
• telescope control plug-in (Meade LX200 and Celestron NexStar compatible).

Stellarium should not be used for very high accurate calculation or ephemerids like eclipse predictions. However, it is the ideal program to prepare an observation evening with naked eye, binocular, or small telescope.

Xplanet renders an image of a planet into an X window or a file. All of the major planets and most satellites can be drawn, and different map projections are also supported, including azimuthal, hemisphere, Lambert, Mercator, Mollweide, Peters, polyconic, and rectangular.

In order to run xplanet, you'll need at least one map file. Some maps are included in the xplanet-images package.

Xplanet renders an image of a planet into an X window or a file.

In order to run xplanet, you'll need at least one map file. This package includes some map files that can be used with xplanet.

The aa program computes the orbital positions of planetary bodies and performs rigorous coordinate reductions to apparent geocentric and topocentric place (local altitude and azimuth). It also reduces star catalogue positions given in either the FK4 or FK5 system. Data for the 57 navigational stars is included. Most of the algorithms employed are from The Astronomical Almanac (AA) published by the U.S. Government Printing Office.

The aa program follows the rigorous algorithms for reduction of celestial coordinates exactly as laid out in current editions of the Astronomical Almanac. The reduction to apparent geocentric place has been checked by a special version of the program (aa200) that takes planetary positions directly from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory DE200 numerical integration of the solar system. The results agree exactly with the Astronomical Almanac tables from 1987 onward (earlier Almanacs used slightly different reduction methods).

Certain computations, such as the correction for nutation, are not given explicitly in the AA but are referenced there. In these cases the program performs the full computations that are used to construct the Almanac tables (references are provided).

Light Speed! is an OpenGL-based program which illustrates the effects of special relativity on the appearance of moving objects. When an object accelerates past a few million meters per second, these effects begin to grow noticeable, becoming more and more pronounced as the speed of light is approached. These relativistic effects are viewpoint-dependent, and include shifts in length, object hue, brightness and shape.

The moving object is, by default, a geometric lattice. 3D Studio and LightWave 3D objects may be imported as well. Best of all, the simulator is completely interactive, rendering the exotic distortions in real-time!

sunclock is an X11 application that displays a map of the Earth and indicates the illuminated portion of the globe by drawing sunlit areas dark on light, night areas as light on dark. In addition to providing local time for the default timezone, it also displays GMT time, legal and solar time of major cities, their latitude and longitude, and the mutual distances of arbitrary locations on Earth. Sunclock can display meridians, parallels, tropics and arctic circles. It has builtin functions that accelerate the speed of time and show the evolution of seasons.

XTide is a package that provides tide and current predictions in a wide variety of formats. Graphs, text listings, and calendars can be generated, or a tide clock can be provided on your desktop.

XTide can work with the X window system, plain text terminals, or the web. This is accomplished with three separate programs: the interactive interface (xtide), the non-interactive or command line interface (tide), and the web interface (xttpd).

The algorithm that XTide uses to predict tides is used by the National Ocean Service in the U.S. It is significantly more accurate than the simple tide clocks that can be bought in novelty stores. However, it takes more to predict tides accurately than just a spiffy algorithm -- data are required for every tidal prediction location. This package provides a sample data set for only one location so you can try out the package, but anything useful requires the data packaged in the xtide-data package (or downloaded from the XTide ftp site).