Astronomy Software: The View From 1986

[Mognet]

While playing follow the link on Wikipedia after reading about the sad loss of early home computer pioneer Bill Godbout in the current California wildfire, I came across a reference to Gary Kildall, who along with being the creator of CP/M was co-host of the Computer Chronicles on US TV. Most of the episodes of which are now available on the Internet Archive. I've just watched one on astronomy software, which now looks very primitive compared to what we have available to us now, but was pioneering at the time https://archive.org/details/Astronom1986. The programme also has some very early digital imaging of Halley's Comet from the Lick Observatory.

Also available is Computers in Space https://archive.org/details/space_2 from 1989

[jambouk]

I’m actually impressed at how advanced the software was; I’m also impressed at how quickly it computed the positions of the planets for a given date - not a lot slower than my laptop  now ...

James