[Chaos-l] SkySafari

[Terry Crook]

Very nice. Thx, Ro'bt.

Taurus Terry in Chapel Hill
35° 55' 47"N, 79° 01' 00"W

On 2/12/2013 9:52 PM, Robert Nielsen wrote:
> I think a lot of you know that I use a planetarium program on my iPad 
> (and iPhone) when observing ... including to control my telescope. 
>  Well, the guys who developed it were annoyed that the position of the 
> asteroid that will buzz Earth in a couple of days (2012 DA14) wasn't 
> quite right ... because they were just using Kepler equations to 
> compute the position ... so they went on an 80-hour coding marathon, 
> consulted with JPL, and now have an more accurate n-body algorithm to 
> calculate its position.
>
> Crazy, right?  All this on a smartphone! (or tablet in my case)
>
> The following link shows a video where one of the developers 
> demonstrates the new feature.   What is amazing is that as the 
> asteroid passes the Earth, the orbit is modified by Earth's gravity, 
> and you can actually see it change in the app!
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOYCzfvnrbQ
>
> Robert
>
>
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