EphJpl

Introduction

This is the gem library which calculates ephemeris datas by JPL(NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory) method.

This library calculates rectangular coordinates and velocities of a target astronomical body which made an astronomical body the center on a Julian Day.(Coordinate system is ICRS)

What's JPL?

Please refer the following link.

Please refer the following links about DE datas.

To understand this library's in-depth specification, you need to comprehend contents of the following link well.

Supported DE Ver.

This library supports only DE430, now.

Settable astronomical bodies as target and center numbers.

  1. Mercury
  2. Venus
  3. Earth
  4. Mars
  5. Jupiter
  6. Saturn
  7. Uranus
  8. Neptune
  9. Pluto
  10. Moon
  11. Sun
  12. Solar system Barycenter
  13. Earth-Moon barycenter
  14. Earth Nutations
  15. Lunar mantle Librations

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'eph_jpl'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install eph_jpl

Usage

obj = EphJpl.new("/path/to/JPLEPH", 11, 3, 2457465.5)

p obj.target       #=> Target atronomical body No. (Integer)
p obj.target_name  #=> Target atronomical body name (String)
p obj.center       #=> Center atronomical body No. (Integer)
p obj.center_name  #=> Center atronomical body name (String)
p obj.jd           #=> Julian Day (Float)
p obj.km           #=> KM flag (true: km unit, false: AU unit) (Boolean)
p obj.unit         #=> UNIT of positions and velocities (String)
p obj.bin          #=> Acquired data from binary file (Hash)
p obj.calc         #=> [x, y, z-position, x, y, z-velocity]

About binary file.

  1. Please get the binary file for DE430 from [ftp://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/eph/planets/Linux/de430/linux_p1550p2650.430].
  2. Please put "linux_p1550p2650.430" into a proper directory.
  3. Please rename as needed.

About arguments for target and center astronomical bodies.

  • You can set a integer betweetn 1 and 15 as a target astronomical body.
  • You can set a integer betweetn 0 and 13 as a center astronomical body.

About units.

  • If a target astronomical body number < 14 and KM flag = false, units of position and velocity are au, au/day.
  • If a target astronomical body number < 14 and KM flag = true, units of position and velocity are km, km/sec.
  • If a target astronomical body number = 14 or 15, units of position and velocity are rad, rad/day.

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment. Run bundle exec eph_jpl to use the gem in this directory, ignoring other installed copies of this gem.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/komasaru/eph_jpl.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.