Welcome to Starf, a celestial-body finder program written in C++.
Author: Omkaram Venkatesh.
- In order to find Alt/Az (Altitude and Azimuth) of any celestial object, you need to know the Ra/Dec (Right Ascension and Declination) of that object. There are plenty of sources on the Internet which can give you those details.
- The Ra/Dec in Degrees/Hours/Minutes format.
- Next, you need to know your Latitude and Longitude in decimal.
- Finally, enter the values as prompted on the screen and start execution.
- The program will display Alt/Az in realtime only.
M31 (Andromeda) -> RA: 00h 42m 44.3s / Dec: +41 16' 9''
M45 (Pleiades -> RA: 03h 47m 24s / Dec: +24 07' 00'
M15 (Pegasus) -> RA: 21h 29m 58.33s / Dec: +12 10' 01.2''
M44 (Beehive) -> RA: 08h 40.4m / Dec: +19 59'
Vega -> RA: 18h 36m 56.33635s / Dec: +38 47' 01.2802''
Betelgeuse -> RA: 05h 55m 10.30536s / Dec: +07 24' 25.4304''
Sirius -> RA: 06h 45m 08.917s / Dec: ~16 42' 58.02''
Rigel -> RA: 05h 14m 32.27210s / Dec: ~08 12' 05.8981''
To compile this code you need gcc installed in your machine. I use cygwin
Run g++ -static-libstdc++ -I /rootPath/ src/* include/* -o starf.exe
I am an Amateur Astronomer writing code as an Amateur C++ Programmer for my community. If you plan to use this program code, it is very much appreciated if you recognize my efforts and consider giving this project a Star. Also, please visit http://www.celestialprogramming.com/ for more interesting Astronomy based programs. Thanks to Greg Miller (gmiller@gregmiller.net) for providing the Mathematical functions in Javascript release as public domain, which can be found in "StarOperations.cpp"
If you think this program can be improved, please be my guest and submit your changes. Thanks in advance.