BDL

Thanks for that Magnus. It looks like everything I need! Brilliant. All the best, Brian

To everyone who has commented on my original question - thank you all for your help. There is so much in your replies that it will take me some time to research and digest it all! During this time I will also be starting the programme design. I'll report on significant progress (of likely interest only!) as I go. Any more input will be very welcome. And I look forward to sending you the finished product when (and if) I succeed. All the best, Brian

Thanks everyone for your replies. Yes, I'm aware of the software all around doing similar to what I want to do. But I know exactly what I want to see from my programme. And all I need is the "starting point" so that I can plot all the planets at the right distances from the sun and the correct angles between a line drawn from each of them to the sun on one specific reference date. Then, as David Lloyd pointed out, I can do the maths to place them where they would be on any other date. Don't need any help with the programming thanks. I might have kicked the ball off in the wrong direction when I mentioned looking at our solar system from Polaris: what I should have said is from a distant point on a line drawn through the sun at 90 degrees to the solar system's plane. What is the starting point I'm looking for? (And what is it called? I'm sure I saw a name for it long ago.) When I've produced the programme I'll make a copy available so you can see what I'm going on about. Cheers, Brian

Hello everyone, I'm new here looking for some information. Imagine you're on the pole star looking "down" on our solar system. You see the sun in the middle with the planets all around it. I want to write a personal programme to show the relative positions of the sun and all it's planets on any chosen day. So if I stand on Polaris and look at our sun on a particular day, what would the angle be between the sun and Mercury, and Venus and Earth and all the rest of them on that day? I remember coming across this series of angles once as a reference for one particular date but I can't remember what it's called. Please can someone help? Many thanks, Brian