Best conjunction software?

[Stonius (Markus)]

Is there a good way to organise alerts for conjunctions that may be of interest?

Just playing in CDC and noticed that mars will be within about 1 degree of a 13th magnitude comet (116P/Wild). If there weren't White Walkers riding in from the Bight I'd have a look.

I stumble across this sort of thing fairly regularly. Is there a way to predict it? It would be good to be able to know ahead of time when objects of note above mag 15 are within, say 1 degree of each other (and brighter objects, within, say 5 degrees).

So if a comet was skimming past a galaxy, or an asteroid was floating near a planet, or even star occultations by the moon and planets, I'd like to know.

But I don't have a way to predict this sort of thing without following every damn asteroid and comet in the universe to see where they end up. Anyone know of any good software that can take a few input parameters and spit out a list of things worth having a look at for a certain period?

Cheers + Thanks

[StuTodd]

You should download the freeware Occult4 and Occultwatcher.

Occult4 is mainly used for lunar occultations, grazes, planetary occultations too.
Occult watcher is the software used by asteroid occultation observers, a prediction feed based on the shadow path crossing your specified location (parameters all adjustable).

There are feeds for near earth asteroids, comets and asteroids too.

www.lunar-occultations.com/iota/occult4.htm

www.occultwatcher.net/

Happy hunting!

Stu

[Stonius (Markus)]

Thanks for the reply; Can either of them tell me when I might see a comet/asteroid in the vicinty of a planet/nebluea/galaxy?

[StuTodd]

Originally Posted by Stonius

Thanks for the reply; Can either of them tell me when I might see a comet/asteroid in the vicinty of a planet/nebluea/galaxy?

Certainly occult watcher will show asteroid and comet occultations by planets but these are rare, stars less so of course.

You may be after the "simulation" feature of CdC where you can see the paths of the planets/comets for months in advance? It is under the "Setup - Date/Time" headers.

Stu

[Stonius (Markus)]

Thanks, Stu, the CDC is more what I'm looking for - I'm more interested in pretty pictures than anything actually, you know, useful, like occultation timings and whatnot. I guess I was just hoping to find an easier way than chasing every comet and asteroid in the database for months on end :-)

Cheers and Thanks

M

[Varyonyx]

Hi,

if you are interested in special conjunctions or doing "conjunction research" then this is the best resource you can find

http://www.vsuastro.dyndns.org



Please read the information on this site very carefully and check out the additional links on this site too.!
The information, data and so on available on this site is public domain.

Best regards
Alex (Vsu)

[Stonius (Markus)]

Originally Posted by Varyonyx

Hi,

if you are interested in special conjunctions or doing "conjunction research" then this is the best resource you can find

http://www.vsuastro.dyndns.org



Please read the information on this site very carefully and check out the additional links on this site too.!
The information, data and so on available on this site is public domain.

Best regards
Alex (Vsu)

Aber es ist alles in Deutsch?

[Stonius (Markus)]

I stumbled across this site, Thought I'd put it up for anyone else interested. It's a bit like heavens above - you enter your location and it gives you site specific events in the calendar. Like when the ISS is close to Venus (Sunday 11:33am, Separation=0.923° if you're in Melbourne), or a star is occulted by an asteroid, or when the moon is near a double star, or what have you. It's very configurable with lots of information.

http://www.calsky.com/cs.cgi

Markus