NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Dave Walden
Date: 2010 Mar 2, 19:41 -0800
The discussion of occultation has led me to have a try at writing my own prediction code. I used the USNO NOVAS to read JPL DE405 files and to carry out the transformations necessary. Based on SIMBAD data for Aldebaran, using the DE405 value for mean lunar radius of 1737.53 km, no polar motion corrections, no UTC-UT1 correction, and no lunar limb corrections, I get for the 1997 case that has been discussed:
immersion 7 44 48 UT
emmersion 9 2 51 UT
The two lines below (from a longer file) give, for the immersion case, altitude and azimuth of Aldebaran, altitude, azimuth, and distance (AU) for the moon, distance from Aldebaran to lunar center (min arc), SD (min arc), hour, and last difference between LD and SD (negative when behind the moon).
48.88778794 103.70078935 49.04885755 104.03097621 0.00246454 16.20311158 16.20099104 7.74660000 0.00212053
48.89022811 103.70312515 49.05123599 104.03323331 0.00246454 16.19791065 16.20099641 7.74680000 -0.00308576
Likewise, emmersion:
63.84370299 124.65684386 63.68245311 124.16587081 0.00246076 16.22355478 16.22586874 9.04740000 -0.00231396
63.84576920 124.66140682 63.68449018 124.17022582 0.00246076 16.22826563 16.22587092 9.04760000 0.00239471
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