Quote:
Originally Posted by Leo.G
So we send you a postcode and a cheque for how much Joe?
Before you jump in with a "do it yourself you lazy sod" I'm being facetious.
I Agree with Mike, very clever indeed and anyone who's seen your stunning photography already knows that.
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Thanks for the kind words Mike and Leo! I wrote my first rise and set program for my Texas Instruments 58c programmable calculator in 1979 when I was a teenager still at high school. So while I, "can do the math," I too am a lazy sod and so I use the National Mapping Centre's Sunrise and Moonrise software suites. They produce a nicely formatted annual table of rise and set times. It's also linked to NATMAP's GIS system so you can type in any location, you don't have to enter the LAT/LONG. I use some software from John Walker's Fourmilab and I used to use some USNO software but that went offline for a long time and I found alternatives and never went back.
The only PITA is that using the NATMAP software you can only calculate each table for a fixed time zone so I have to do two calculations, one for daylight savings and one for standard time then edit them together for the appropriate switchover dates-the single most time-consuming part of the project.
I don't want to print & post the book, it's pdf only and anyone is welcome to have a copy for free. You can get Officeworks to print and bind a copy if you want a hardcopy. I mostly use mine in PDF format. I do print out the moonrise/set, twilight times and I always have a Milky Way rise set graph on the wall.
I used to make it freely available but when I saw that only 25 copies per year were being downloaded, I downsized the publication removing some diagrams and tables that used to take a lot of time to draft and I'm less concerned with making the formatting pretty, just readable.
Two weeks ago, I completed the 2025 version in just 3 hrs + 2hrs proofing and correcting
and it was my intention to only distribute it via a private Facebook group I run for former participants of my Nightscape Photography workshops. But I'm happy to also put it on a publicly accessed page on my website.
It's calculated for Canberra's latitude and longitude. Rise & set times vary with both longitude and latitude depending upon the declination of the object.
Rise & set times for my location in the central west near Young vary from 0 to 7 mins later than the tabulated times. Bathurst might be even less than that being almost the same longitude as Canberra.
Rise & set times for Sydney will vary from 0 - 14 mins earlier than tabulated.
I would think that that's probably accurate enough for most people even in Sydney and up the Central coast. If you want to photograph the Moon or Sun on the horizon, use an app for a precise rise or set time. For the most part, to plan an observing night, you only want to know roughly when the Moon rises or sets.
ASTRONOMY 2025 has already been produced and printed and I don't want to undercut them. So, I'll make mine available publicly and free from 2026 onwards for as long as i continue to produce them. If you want accurate times, the references to the online calculators are listed on each page. So you can calculate your own (you lazy sod)
Jovian satellite event times can be copied from here:
https://www.projectpluto.com/jeve25.htm
cheers
Joe
