+skr Posted February 7, 2020 Share Posted February 7, 2020 Hello, I work in a Planetarium, and the 90th anniversary of Pluto´s discovery of course is a big thing for us. A colleague from the marketing department was totally fascinated of Mashed Turtles, which played at our x-mas party and he was wondering, if can´t do something about 90 years of Pluto with Ataris. Great idea, could be mine. But: What to do then? Which software to show? Spontaneously I only "ATARI Planetarium" and "The Halley Project" come to my mind. Does anybody other astronomy related software, especially about Pluto? Best regards, Sascha 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted February 7, 2020 Share Posted February 7, 2020 (edited) http://www.atarimania.com/pgelstsoft.awp?system=8&type=G&genre=81&step=25 Your best bets for more on Pluto might be 'Our Solar System,' 'The Solar System' and 'Planetary Positions.' Atari Planetarium and The Halley project may be the best as far as visuals...the others may hold more information on specific planets, err...planetoids like Pluto though. Edited February 7, 2020 by Gunstar 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 7, 2020 Share Posted February 7, 2020 there were a lot, but most have not yet been dumped here's the list by software house Analog Computing - Halley Hunter, Observational Astronomy Program, Solar System Scaler Antic Software - Halley Patrol, Halley Watch, Space Base, Stargazing APX - Starware Atari - Atari Planetarium Bits and Bytes - The Solar System Capestyle Software - Halley Hunter Centurion Software - Galactic Travel Compute! - Skyscape Cybernetic Information Systems - Big Dipper Dynacomp - Space Base Hardcore Software - Star-Search Kinetic Designs - Astronomy Package, Horizon, Star Encounters Mindscape - The Halley Project Moses Engineering - Planetary Positions RPS Corporation - Our Solar System Tech-Link - Astronomy Software Package, Kepler, Sat Plot, Star, Twilight Thunder Mountain - The Halley Project UTsch (Gerold Utsch) - Astronomie Urania Systems - Space Base Unknown - Astronomy Quiz, Comet Halley, Local Sidereal Time & Date, Marooned in Space, Planetarium, Skyscape, Solar System, The Sun, Zodiac a8 astro.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 (edited) add space base earth views http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-earth-views_1788.html Edited July 7, 2020 by _The Doctor__ 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 Can't help with the software but BBC2 had a wonderful program about Pluto on last night, such an amazing and extraordinary little planet, lava ice volcano's laced with ammonia, frozen snow with gas pockets and a multi gas layered atmosphere....And maybe even life allowing actual water under the surface.. Me and my brother were keen astronomers as younger folk...Good luck with the Atari software Skr... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AeroDD Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 I remember typing in Skyscape from Compute magazine back when I was in junior high school. I thought it was pretty cool to be able calculate the position of planetary objects. Certainly the timeliness of Halley’s comet’s return helped with increasing interest in these types of programs. Out of curiosity, I checked the article and code to see if it was Y2K compliant. The article says it works for dates from 1977 and into the future, the BASIC code requires a year input > 1977. Makes me wonder how far off the calculated positions for a date some 35 years after the program was written are from reality. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdivancic Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 Ok, very cool topic. I’ve been doing astronomy about as long as I have been playing with computers. Never thought of using retro computers for this... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 (edited) Retrocomputers often required more effort than the gains they gave. In other words they weren't time savers yet and could be burdensome. This applied to most applications aside from games. But I did find them moderately useful for predicting moon phases, rise/set times, planet positions, and film exposure parameters, and maybe fuel for flights of imagination and discovery. Anything else would have to wait till the PC got into the 286/386 range for things like eclipse prediction or more in-depth ephemerides. And it was also common to learn more about a selected subject just by reading the manual that came with the software. Some of it was comprehensive like the Atari Planetarium manual at 125 pages. The manual is important because there's lots of single-key commands and symbol interpretation. Edited July 7, 2020 by Keatah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 36 minutes ago, Keatah said: nything else would have to wait till the PC got into the 286/386 range for things like eclipse prediction Oh come now, eclipse predictions go back thousands of years. The Greeks certainly didn’t need a 286 to do it. 5 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 And they got shot if they made mistakes! Pissing off the king and stuff. I was thinking of the graphical representations comprehensive menu controls. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 Nothing rocks harder than our little 8bit 1.8mhz cpu building up the night sky then rotating it in real time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+skr Posted July 7, 2020 Author Share Posted July 7, 2020 11 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said: add space base earth views http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-earth-views_1788.html Space Base looks interesting, but I can´t find an ATR for it. There´s no dump on Atarimania and my searches only lead to the ANTIC catalogs, where it was sold for 19,95$ (AP142). Can anybody help me getting this? Side Note: At the Fujiama meeting in 2018, there was a lunar eclipse. On the afternoon that day, @krupkaj started ATARI Planetarium on an 800 XL (or XE, don´t remember exactly), entered the location and time and that software from 1984 exactly predicted the lunar eclipse and also showed it graphically. That was very cool, especially, as we had clouds covering the sky and made it impossible to watch the real thing. 11 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 (edited) There were two one was a game and one was astronomical.... The only difference was Spacebase vs Space base.... just can't remember which is which, and did not find either in a quick search... maybe I'm totally wrong and remember them from a different machine. I don't think I'd make that mistake though... Edited July 7, 2020 by _The Doctor__ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 (edited) Good news, I have the correct machine in mind... http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-space-base_7150.html http://atarionline.pl/v01/index.php?ct=search&query=spacebase&t=katalog Bad news, the reason I can't find what I want... The game was done twice, once as SpaceBase, once as Space Base... and it overwrote what we wanted long ago... I suspect one game might be older OS or older Basic and one would have been updated or re-written to work on XL/XE and it's unfortunate that it wasn't named the exact same with XL/XE tacked on the end for the update. I only remembered the old color game... Spacebase (19xx)(-)[bas2boot].atr I'm at a loss at this point. http://gury.atari8.info/detail.php?id=5064&src=2 http://gury.atari8.info/detail.php?id=4991&src=2 the bellcom and page6 links don't seem to contain the game or the title I'm looking for... I'm probably just blind... at least I found the ham radio quizzer I was looking for... Edited July 7, 2020 by _The Doctor__ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClausB Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 Here's an astronomy program I wrote in 1983: ASTRO.BAS No graphics, just text. It calculates Julian date and sidereal time, it locates planets (including Pluto), and it converts between celestial and altazimuth coordinates. (Yes, my degree is in astronomy and physics.) FAFMUL.ATR 9 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+skr Posted July 7, 2020 Author Share Posted July 7, 2020 37 minutes ago, ClausB said: (including Pluto) Of course including Pluto! Thanks for sharing your program, that´s the stuff I´m looking for. 9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 How timely. Check Kay's most recent interview subject and topic here: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 2 hours ago, ClausB said: Here's an astronomy program I wrote in 1983: ASTRO.BAS No graphics, just text. It calculates Julian date and sidereal time, it locates planets (including Pluto), and it converts between celestial and altazimuth coordinates. (Yes, my degree is in astronomy and physics.) FAFMUL.ATR 90.02 kB · 6 downloads Absolutely! Because Pluto is a planet! Thank you for sharing your work! I'd like to see the Atari controlling a telescope again... With mass storage, large memory upgrades, or cartridges... we should be able to really nail it... all done in ML for speed and accuracy... 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 (edited) 4 minutes ago, DrVenkman said: How timely. Check Kay's most recent interview subject and topic here: Great stuff! Maybe he has disks listings and equipment! Now this could be awesome! Thanks for the link! Edited July 7, 2020 by _The Doctor__ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 The graphics are in the sky... although having the 8 bit giving visual cues could be a helpful update. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 8 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said: The graphics are in the sky... although having the 8 bit giving visual cues could be a helpful update. Telescope's gotta be one hella monitor! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClausB Posted July 8, 2020 Share Posted July 8, 2020 3 hours ago, skr said: Thanks for sharing your program, that´s the stuff I´m looking for. I based the calculations on polynomials from a paper, supposedly good to one minute of arc. I don't know how well they extrapolate to today, so I compared them with CalSky.com for today at 0h UTC: Body err RA err Dec ----- ----- ----- Sun 0.7 m 1' Mercury 0.3 m 1' Venus 0.3 m 1' Moon 8.6 m 35' Mars 0.5 m 2' Jupiter 0.0 m 0' Saturn 0.0 m 0' Uranus 0.0 m 0' Neptune 0.1 m 1' Pluto 0.8 m 2' Well, the moon is off a lot (1 m of RA is 15' of arc, or a quarter degree, or half the moon's diameter). The sun and Pluto are off a bit, but the rest are not too bad, for 37-year old polynomials! 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClausB Posted July 8, 2020 Share Posted July 8, 2020 10 hours ago, DrVenkman said: Oh come now, eclipse predictions go back thousands of years. The Greeks certainly didn’t need a 286 to do it. And the Babylonians could predict Jupiter's position pretty well, using something akin to numerical integration! https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/babylonians-tracked-jupiter-with-fancy-math-tablet-reveals/ 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+skr Posted July 8, 2020 Author Share Posted July 8, 2020 7 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said: I'd like to see the Atari controlling a telescope again... With mass storage, large memory upgrades, or cartridges... we should be able to really nail it... all done in ML for speed and accuracy... A guy who now lives in Munich created a controlinterface for an old ZEISS ZKP1 starball, which didn´t have computer control. He gave me all the software (machine language), but I still have to recreate the hardware. My colleague in Flensburg (about 170km North from me) still has a ZKP1 to test it with. So much to do... 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted December 29, 2021 Share Posted December 29, 2021 On 7/7/2020 at 2:11 PM, ClausB said: Here's an astronomy program I wrote in 1983: ASTRO.BAS No graphics, just text. It calculates Julian date and sidereal time, it locates planets (including Pluto), and it converts between celestial and altazimuth coordinates. (Yes, my degree is in astronomy and physics.) FAFMUL.ATR 90.02 kB · 45 downloads You haven't worked on it since then? Have you thought about updating it? That would be fascinating to.follow. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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