Cornelis Bockemuehl
has been released PmAs, a set of astronomically oriented programs. It calculates positions
of celestial bodies, times, risings and settings etc. and displays the results in
table and/or graphic form, all nicely integrated in the Presentation Manager. You
can download the files at: http://www.datacomm.ch/cobo
What is PmAs?
PmAs does astronomical calculations and outputs the results
as tables or graphics. It is made up of a number of programs and modules which
are responsible for certain tasks. Cooperation between the parts is based on the
capabilities of the OS/2 presentation manager. It may be run in german and english
and includes documentation and online help in both languages.
The program series is intended for users with a certain basic knowledge of astronomy
and astronomical terms , i.e. these are not covered by the documentation.
Comparing PmAs
PmAs is not a planetarium like e.g. NightVision, which displays
a fixed or animated image of the sky: PmAs also offers a lot of options for displaying
the sky, but animation is not among them.
Nor is PmAs a "astronomical command center", like Xephem could possibly
be called, but with this program it is already more comparable in many respects.
Anyway, big differences exist in concept and technical realization. At the moment
Xephem is probably the more mature product, and PmAs will probably not duplicate
many of its functions, but it has a number of strengths of its own
Some of them are the following:
The many formatting options for tables and graphics once they are already ready
calculated.
The strict modularity, which allows extensions and changes to be made very easily.
The integration into the OS/2 Presentation Manager, which allows the transfer of
data between programs by "drag and drop" in many cases.
The modules
The showmasters
PmAsTab and PmAsGraf are responsible for the display of the calculated results
as tables and/or graphics. They can either load, show and edit already stored tables
and graphics or serve as a output server for other programs, receiving their data
through a pipe mechanism.
The workhorses
PmAsBase is a DLL and contains all functions needed for the astronomical calculations.
Modules for calculating positions may be added.
PmAsDlg is another DLL and adds a user interface to the astronomy programs that
is made up of a notebook dialog. The user enters the necessary input there before
the calculations are started.
The astronomy programs
The actual astronomy programs are relatively small compared
to the modules described until here (and it is rather simple to write more). Until
now there are:
PmAsEph calculates an ephemeris, i.e. positions of a moving celestial body at a
number of times.
PmAsApl is in a way the opposite of the ephemeris program: It calculates for one
single moment the positions of a whole list of celestial bodies.
PmAsRist determines times of rise and set as well as culminations.
PmAsTime does calculations between time systems.
Supplementary programs
There exists one supplemental program at the moment:
PmAsGdat converts any positional data so that they can be displayed with PmAsGraf,
and on the other hand makes the graphic data of PmAsGraf editable.
Examples of use
The following examples illustrate the strengths
of PmAs:
Sample: Evening visibility of Venus
With PmAsRist calculate a list of times within a given timespan when the Sun is
6 degrees below the horizon. Output as a table goes through PmAsTab.
With PmAsEph azimuth and altitude of Venus can be calculated for all these times
by dragging the calculated times into the notebook page for entering times.
Sample: Several planet trails in a sky map
With PmAsEph calculate the trail of the first planet. Output occurs through PmAsGraf.
Calculate another planet trail with PmAsEph. The output of the graphic goes into
a second inscance of PmAsGraf.
The second graphic can now simply be dragged into the first one: The second planet
trail will appear in the first graphic, while the background (the sky) will not
be included a second time (duplicates are eliminated automatically).
The second and third step may be repeated.
Download
The PmAs programs are here for free download and their use
is free for private and scientific purposes. The author (Cornelis Bockemühl)
holds all rights and doesn't take any responsibility nor guarantees anything.
The distribution of the programs on other ways than the Homepage of the author
is not supported, because only that way the actuality of the files may be achieved
with not too much effort.
The programs are organized as packages together with a date so that parts may be
easily updated.
System requirements
Die programs are running with OS/2 Warp 4 and are "optimized for Pentium"
(whatever that means). Older versions of OS/2 are not tested, but with the notebook
dialogs there may be problems. (If it would be asked for there could easily be other
versions produced which run with all versions from 2.11).
The packages for download
All the packages are required for the programs to work. However, only one of the
languages must be chosen.
