SSPOS

Name

sspos

Purpose

Interactive program for generating solar system body ephemerides.

Description

Interactive front-end for EPHEM. Given object code (format described
in EPHEM), this will compute positions and give local circumstances
of the object. Reads the current time from the system clock which
may or may not be accurate.
All output is printed on the screen.

Calling Sequence

Inputs

Optional Input Parameters

Keyword Input Parameters

TIME - optional time [y,m,d,h,m,s] for positions
AMCRIT - Critical airmass for rise/set times.
OBSFILE - Override on file name where observatory codes are to be found.
OBSCODE - Integer Marsden code of the observatory, default 688 - Anderson Mesa
APO - Flag, if set, enables a special output mode for Apache Pt. Obs.
DT - If set will enable a special mode. This value is the update
frequency in seconds and the program will enter an infinite
loop and printout the ephemeris information at this rate.
The only way out is to ^C and interrupt. You'll have to clean
up the mess by hand afterward. This value is limited to
a maximum of 60 seconds. If you give a larger value it will
be reset to 60. The default is -1 for the normal interactive
mode.

Outputs

Keyword Output Parameters

Common Blocks

Side Effects

Restrictions

This procedure requires an external ephemeris computation engine that
is accessed through pipe I/O. The external commands are getinfo and
geteph.

Procedure

Modification History

1994/04/11 - Initial version written by Marc W. Buie, Lowell Observatory.
1995/05/03 - Added TIME keyword
1995/09/10 - Fixed bug that causes program to crash for objects that never
rise or set
1996/12/27 - MWB, added interactive 'T' time set option.
1997/03/05 - MWB, added FILE and OBSCODE keywords
2001/03/22, David Tucker, changed obsfile support
2001/04/18, MWB, changed systime call.
2001/04/20, MWB, changed to support new geteph/ephem
2002/09/09, MWB, added support for string obscode values
2010/04/29, MWB, added APO keyword
2013/02/15, MWB, added DT keyword and made some cosmetic changes