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Brief Planet Ephemeris Document

The Brief Planet Ephemeris Document allows you to calculate instantaneous ephemeris information for planets, moon, and sun, and display the results in a report. Specifically, for any planet, sun, or moon, you can calculate the rise, set, and transit times, azimuth at rise and set times, and altitude at transit time for each day in the report period. For each time in the report period, you can calculate equatorial position, horizontal position (altitude & azimuth), constellation, solar elongation angle, phase, magnitude, angular size, distance from earth, distance from sun, and atlas references. You can also calculate the total motion that an object travels between successive times in the report period. Times are accurate for the observer's location. Times and equatorial position values and are given in the format selected in Preferences.

Information about the Planet Ephemeris Report

Brief Planet Ephemeris documents are compatible with Detailed Planet Ephemeris documents.

The Brief Planet Ephemeris document is best to use when:

▪you want changes in size and magnitude data over time

▪you want motion data over time

▪you want a concise report of rise/set/transit times over time

The Detailed Planet Ephemeris document is best to use when:

▪you want physical ephemeris data

▪you prefer the detailed report style

The document contains three adjustable panes.

▪The document settings pane allows you to specify how the ephemeris calculations are done.

▪The lower left report pane displays the results of the most recent calculations.

▪The lower right detail pane displays graphical and extended textual information for the selected object.

Document Settings Pane

General Tab

Location is used to select a particular location on the earth's surface. A location is required to calculate the times in the report. The location used in a new document is that selected as the Favorite Location using the Location Manager. Note that when an existing document is opened, it retains the same location that was selected when the document was saved. You may select any location by highlighting its name in the drop down list.

Apply Local Horizon Model If Any allows you to apply a local horizon model to the calculation of rise and set times of selected objects if the selected location has a horizon model defined in it. If a local horizon model is applied and the selected location has a local horizon model defined for it, rise & set times are the approximate times at which an object rises above and sets beneath the local horizon model. If a local horizon model is not applied, or if the selected location has no horizon model defined, rise and set times are calculated for a perfectly flat horizon.

The Solar System Objects list box contains the names of Sun, Moon, and all planets except Earth. Select any number of them that you want to be included in the calculation (you can use the standard Windows Shift-click and Ctrl-click techniques to select multiple objects.) You may also use Select All to select all planets, Sun, and Moon, or Clear All, to deselect all of them.

Times Tab

You may enter dates and times directly into the Beginning Date & Time or Ending Date & Time boxes, or you may use any of the Date & Time Presets. The times that you enter are interpreted as either 12 hour or 24 hour format according to the setting specified in Preferences. The beginning date and time must precede or equal the ending date and time.

The calendars work for dates between January 1, 1753 and December 31, 9999 inclusively. This is a Windows limitation. If you enter a date outside of this range into the year/month/day boxes the associated calendar is disabled. You may use the calendars or the year/month/day boxes to specify dates within the range.

Date & Time Presets

These presets may be used to specify some commonly used beginning and ending dates and times, and the days to skip value.

Preset	Beginning Date & Time	Ending Date & Time	Days to Skip
Now	present date and time	present date and time	1 day between calculations (1 calculation).
Today	midnight today	11:59 pm (23:59) today	1 day between calculations (1 calculation).
Tomorrow	midnight tomorrow	11:59 pm (23:59) tomorrow	1 day between calculations (1 calculation).
This Week	midnight on Sunday of this week	11:59 pm (23:59) on Saturday of this week	1 day between calculations (1 calculation per day for a total of 7 calculations).
Next Week	midnight on Sunday of next week	11:59 pm (23:59) on Saturday of next week	1 day between calculations (1 calculation per day for a total of 7 calculations).
This Month	midnight on the first day of the present month	11:59 pm (23:59) on the final day of the present month	1 day between calculations (1 calculation per day for a total of 28 to 31 calculations, depending on the present month).
Next Month	midnight on the first day of next month	11:59 pm (23:59) on the final day of next month	1 day between calculations (1 calculation per day for a total of 28 to 31 calculations, depending on next month).
Remain Month	midnight today	11:59 pm (23:59) on the final day of the present month	1 day between calculations (1 calculation per day for a total of 1 to 31 calculations, depending on the present date and month).
This Year	midnight on January 1 of the present year	11:59 pm (23:59) on December 31 of the present year	1 day between calculations (1 calculation per day for a total of 365 or 366 calculations, depending on the present year).
Next Year	midnight on January 1 of the next year	11:59 pm (23:59) on December 31 of the next year	1 day between calculations (1 calculation per day for a total of 365 or 366 calculations, depending on the next year).
Remain Year	midnight today	11:59 pm (23:59) on December 31 of the present year	1 day between calculations (1 calculation per day for a total of 1 to 366 calculations, depending on the present year).

Time to Skip allows you set any frequency of time between calculations from Days to Weeks to Hours. You may enter the skip value directly into the Time to Skip box and choose a unit of time from the drop list.

Report Pane

Calculate initiates calculations and ultimately produces a report. The status of the calculation and creation of the report are shown while these tasks are being performed. You can terminate the calculation by pressing the Cancel button in the status box.

Clear allows you to erase the report text. Report text is automatically erased before a new report is created.

Fit Columns and Show Columns provide control over report content and layout. These functions are discussed in Working with Reports.

Help allows you to open online help to this page.

A recessed status box appears beside the Help button. It shows the number of objects and times per object reported for the most recent calculation if a calculation has been performed. If the calculation was terminated, 'Calculation canceled' appears in the status box. If the text in the status box is grayed then the settings in the document have been changed and the report has not been refreshed by Calculate.

Get DSS Images opens the DSS Download Status dialog box where you can use the Smart DSS Download™ feature. Please see DSS Download Status for details.

Brief Planet Ephemeris Report contains the report text that results from the most recent calculation. Click here to see a description of the Brief Planet Ephemeris report. The text in the report can be scrolled horizontally and vertically using cursor keys or by clicking the scroll bars.

The report window has a context menu that can be accessed by right-clicking in the window. The context menu contains:

▪name of the object

▪object-specific functions

▪Preferences

▪Report Style Browser

Detail Pane

The Detail Pane is a multi-tabbed pane that contains graphical or extended textual content for a selected object. Currently, these tabbed pages include:

What about?

Some values do not appear in the report because they aren't pertinent. For example, if you calculate an ephemeris of the sun, Magnitude and Distance to the sun are not shown.

The motion traveled value is not reported for the first instant in the report period.

Atlas references may not appear in the report if they are disabled in Preferences.

You can calculate and report up to 65535 instants for each object.

Additional Information:

▪Accuracy of planetary ephemeris calculations

▪Saving a report to HTML

▪Saving a report to CSV

▪Saving a report to Text

▪Printing a document

▪Saving a document

▪Setting default values for a new planet ephemeris document

▪Brief Planet Ephemeris document speed buttons can be placed on your tool bar so that you can create brief planet ephemeris documents instantly with a single object pre-selected.