Some astronomy calculators

[george7378]

Hi everyone,

I decided to make a collection of calculators which I would find useful, and which I hope will be useful to the astronomy community. As far as I can tell they work OK, but this may not be the case on everyone else's computers, so I was wondering if you could please take a few seconds to run one or two of them on your machine to see if they work for you?

EDIT:

The final version is (hopefully) ready for download at:

http://gkastro.a60.us/Astrocalcsetup.exe

[SiriusB]

Hi George,

They work fine on my old computer!

For an extra point, be even better if they all linked together with a menu or something, just a constructive suggestion.

[george7378]

Thanks for the help - I was planning to do something like that when I finished them all. Also, are there any more calculators that anyone would like to see?

[george7378]

I designed an interface for the main program - I haven't linked them up yet though:

[Rosanella]

Interesting website

I'm afraid I can't be much help because I don't use a telescope (haven't got one at the moment). But I've tried the 'Absolute magnitude' calculator and after entering the distance nothing happened except for calculator to start from beginning....

Yes, a menu interface would make the calculators more userfriendly

[george7378]

Oh right - I don't know why that is. I tried it again and it seems to work - did you enter 0 or a negative number for distance? Thanks. Does this happen with anyone else?

[Daniel-K]

this is great thankyou

[BAZ Senior]

That's very thoughtful of you, thank you.

[mdstuart]

What about some astronomy ones like convering from mpc to light years...or the hubble constant to a redshift to get light years etc..

Mark

[george7378]

Thanks - that's a a great idea! I will add them now, in fact. I have pretty much finished (linked the interface to the calculators and created an installer) so I may be able to release them soon.

[George Jones]

or the hubble constant to a redshift to get light years

This is a little tricky. If only matter (dark and normal) and dark energy are used, a solution can be written down in closed form (using hyperbolic trig), but if radiation is also included (the universe was radiation dominated at very early times), then a numerical integration must be performed.

[george7378]

Yes - I couldn't find any easy was to do that I added the distance converter, and also an orbital period calculator though. The final version is ready to download at:

http://gkastro.a60.us/Astrocalcsetup.exe

There is no registry editing - it just extracts the calculators to the 'program files' section of your computer.

[SiriusB]

I designed an interface for the main program - I haven't linked them up yet though:

That looks just what you need to finish it of George, keep up the good work!

[nightfisher]

thanks george a job well done, works fine on my old thinkpad, a great help

[Rosanella]

Oh right - I don't know why that is. I tried it again and it seems to work - did you enter 0 or a negative number for distance? Thanks. Does this happen with anyone else?

It's ok. It works I had not noticed the brief line above where it reads 'enter another value..... or.... to exit'.

May I suggest to display absolute magnitude in colour.