space faq calculations archive name space math last modified date performing calculations and interpreting data formats computing spacecraft orbits and trajectories references that have been frequently recommended on the net are fundamentals of astrodynamics roger bate donald mueller jerry white dover press pp us paperback isbn nasa spaceflight handbooks dating from the s sp orbital flight handbook parts sp lunar flight handbook parts sp planetary flight handbook parts these might be found in university aeronautics libraries or ordered through the us govt printing office gpo although more information would probably be needed to order them m a minovitch the determination and characteristics of ballistic interplanetary trajectories under the influence of multiple planetary attractions technical report jet propulsion laboratory pasadena calif oct the title says all starts of with the basics and works its way up very good it has a companion article m minovitch utilizing large planetary perubations for the design of deep space solar probe and out of ecliptic trajectories technical report jpl pasadena calif you need to read the first one first to realy understand this one it does include a short summary if you can only find the second contact jpl for availability of these reports spacecraft attitude dynamics peter c hughes john wiley and sons celestial mechanics a computational guide for the practitioner lawrence g taff wiley interscience new york starts with the basics body problem coordinates and works up to orbit determinations perturbations and differential corrections taff also briefly discusses stellar dynamics including a short discussion of n body problems computing planetary positions more net references van flandern pullinen low precision formulae for planetary positions astrophysical j supp series look in an astronomy or physics library for this also said to be available from willmann bell gives series to compute positions accurate to arc minute for a period or years from now pluto is included but stated to have an accuracy of only about arc minutes multiyear interactive computer almanac mica produced by the us naval observatory valid for years outside us available for ibm order pb hdv or macintosh order pb hdv from the ntis sales desk i believe this is intended to replace the usno s interactive computer ephemeris interactive computer ephemeris from the us naval observatory distributed on ibm pc floppy disks willmann bell covers dates planetary programs and tables from to bretagnon simon willmann bell floppy disks available separately fundamentals of celestial mechanics nd ed j m a danby willmann bell a good fundamental text includes basic programs a companion set of floppy disks is available separately astronomical formulae for calculators th ed j meeus willmann bell astronomical algorithms j meeus willmann bell if you actively use one of the editions of astronomical formulae for calculators you will want to replace it with astronomical algorithms this new book is more oriented towards computers than calculators and contains formulae for planetary motion based on modern work by the jet propulsion laboratory the u s naval observatory and the bureau des longitudes the previous books were all based on formulae mostly developed in the last century algorithms available separately on diskette practical astronomy with your calculator rd ed p duffett smith cambridge university press orbits for amateurs with a microcomputer d tattersfield stanley thornes ltd includes example programs in basic orbits for amateurs ii d tattersfield john wiley sons astronomy scientific software catalog of shareware public domain and commercial software for ibm and other pcs astronomy software includes planetarium simulations ephemeris generators astronomical databases solar system simulations satellite tracking programs celestial mechanics simulators and more andromeda software inc p o box amherst ny computing crater diameters from earth impacting asteroids astrogeologist gene shoemaker proposes the following formula based on studies of cratering caused by nuclear tests d s s c k w crater diameter in km g p f n s g g gravity correction factor for bodies other than g e t earth where g m s and g is the surface e t gravity of the target body this scaling is cited for lunar craters and may hold true for other bodies s p p correction factor for target density p p a t t p g cm for alluvium at the jangle u a crater site p g cm for average rock on the continental shields c crater collapse factor for craters km in diameter for larger craters on earth k km kt tnt equivalent n empirically determined from the jangle u nuclear test crater w pi d delta v projectile kinetic energy in kt tnt equivalent given diameter d velocity v and projectile density delta in cgs units delta of around g cm is fairly good for an asteroid an rms velocity of v km sec may be used for earth crossing asteroids under these assumptions the body which created the barringer meteor crater in arizona km diameter would have been about meters in diameter more generally one can use after gehrels asteroid number of objects impact probability impact energy diameter km impacts year ergs assuming simple scaling laws note that ergs tons tnt equivalent or the energy released by the hiroshima a bomb references gehrels t asteroids and comets physics today an excellent general overview of the subject for the layman shoemaker e m asteroid and comet bombardment of the earth ann rev earth planet sci very long and fairly technical but a comprehensive examination of the subject shoemaker e m j g williams e f helin r f wolfe earth crossing asteroids orbital classes collision rates with earth and origin in asteroids t gehrels ed pp university of arizona press tucson cunningham c j introduction to asteroids the next frontier richmond willman bell inc covers all aspects of asteroid studies and is an excellent introduction to the subject for people of all experience levels it also has a very extensive reference list covering essentially all of the reference material in the field map projections and spherical trignometry two easy to find sources of map projections are the encyclopaedia brittanica particularly the older volumes and a tutorial appearing in graphics gems academic press the latter was written with simplicity of exposition and suitability of digital computation in mind spherical trig formulae also appear as do digitally plotted examples more than you ever cared to know about map projections is in john snyder s usgs publication map projections a working manual usgs professional paper this contains detailed descriptions of projections with history features projection formulas for both spherical earth and ellipsoidal earth and numerical test cases it s a neat book all pages worth this one s you might also want the companion volume by snyder and philip voxland an album of map projections usgs professional paper this contains less detail on about projections and variants formulas are in the back example plots in the front pages you can order these ways the cheap slow way is direct from usgs earth science information center us geological survey national center reston va usa maps they can quote you a price and tell you where to send your money expect a week turnaround time a much faster way about week is through timely discount topos w th drive suite broomfield co call them and tell them what you want they ll quote a price you send a check and then they go to usgs customer service counter and pick it up for you add about a service charge plus shipping a perhaps more accessible mapping article is r miller and f reddy mapping the world in pascal byte v december contains turbo pascal procedures for five common map projections a demo program cartog pas and a small point coastline data is available on compuserve genie and many bbss some references for spherical trignometry are spherical astronomy w m smart cambridge u press a compendium of spherical astronomy s newcomb dover spherical astronomy r m green cambridge u press update of smart spherical astronomy e woolard and g clemence academic press performing n body simulations efficiently computer simulation using particles r w hockney and j w eastwood adam hilger bristol and philadelphia the rapid evaluation of potential fields in particle systems l greengard mit press a breakthrough o n simulation method has been parallelized l greengard and v rokhlin a fast algorithm for particle simulations journal of computational physics an o n algorithm for three dimensional n body simulations msee thesis feng zhao mit ailab technical report galactic dynamics j binney s tremaine princeton u press princeton includes an o n fortran code written by aarseth a pioneer in the field hierarchical n log n tree methods are described in these papers a w appel an efficient program for many body simulation siam journal of scientific and statistical computing vol p barnes hut a hierarchical o n log n force calculation algorithm nature v dec l hernquist hierarchical n body methods computer physics communications vol p interpreting the fits image format if you just need to examine fits images use the ppm package see the comp graphics faq to convert them to your preferred format for more information on the format and other software to read and write it see the sci astro fits faq sky unix ephemeris program the th edition of the unix operating system came with several software systems not distributed because of older media capacity limitations included were an ephmeris a satellite track and speech synthesis software the ephmeris sky is available within at t and to sites possessing a unix source code license the program is regarded as unix source code sky is mb send proof of source code license to e miya ms nasa ames research center moffett field ca eugene orville nas nasa gov three dimensional star galaxy coordinates to generate d coordinates of astronomical objects first obtain an astronomical database which specifies right ascension declination and parallax for the objects convert parallax into distance using the formula in part of the faq convert ra and declination to coordinates on a unit sphere see some of the references on planetary positions and spherical trignometry earlier in this section for details on this and scale this by the distance two databases useful for this purpose are the yale bright star catalog sources listed in faq section or the catalogue of stars within parsecs of the sun in pub space faq stars data and stars doc on ames arc nasa gov next faq references on specific areas
