Mars Occulted By Moon

[PMSchu]

Hi Greg,

Aren't the results also cleared if you change the observing location? This makes sense in most situations, but if you wanted to check if an occultation was visible from several different locations, it would be nice to be able to save the results.

FYI, there's no lunar occultation of Mars on 2023 Jan 30 here in Columbus, the moon passes just south of the planet  . There will be one on 2023 Sep 16.

Win a few, lose a few (WAFLAF).

Phil S.

[theskyhound]

Hi Phil,

Well, yes it does go away when you change locations. I guess I was thinking about the way the Current Events in ST3 worked. It saved the events for each location, and they were still there when when you switched back. It hasn't floated to the top of the todo list yet, but I do intend to return the current events feature. It will be much improved. I already did much of the work quite a while ago. The goal is for people to indicate what kinds of events they are interested in and have it automatically tell them ahead of time. That, and I want it to be able to do this without SkyTools having to be running, so as a background process on Windows, and maybe even send reminders/summaries to phones or the Alexa App, or whatever.

Ultimately what I want is for people to be able to include the nights events quickly and easily when planning, without the need to do a manual search, and also I imagine someone standing at a scope looking at a deep sky object, and their laptop says, "The shadow of Jupiter's moon Io has begun crossing the planet" or whatever.

[bigmasterdrago]

Thanks. That worked great. How do I save the output list?

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Sorry about that! I guess I shouldn't post about 2 MPs on the same thread like that - too confusing. I even confuse myself.

Phil S.

Not all of the events are occultations from my location, as the software uses a geocentric position and not a topocentric one.

There is no need for generalized results from other software.

SkyTools does all of its calculations based on the location selected. You could use the Events finder to make a similar listing via the 2 Bodies tab, with Mars and the Moon selected.

Sorry. Forgot to quote Greg. that worked great. How do I save the output list?

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I figured it out. Just click the events tab, then copy (goes to clipboard), then Open Word ot a text editor and paste in. Works fantastic to share.

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Here is an event from the output. I'm not sure how to read this.

Events for Squirrel Tree Ranch

2022 Dec 7 21:08 Moon and Mars 16' apart, Sep=Mars, Alt=-1.9, +00°15'42"% Dark

2023 Jan 30 23:16 Moon occults Mars, First Contact, Sep=Mars, Alt=0.0, +00°15'14"% Dark
2023 Jan 30 23:16 Moon occults Mars, Second Contact, Sep=Mars, Alt=0.0, +00°15'03"% Dark
2023 Jan 30 23:45 Moon occults Mars, Mid-occultation, Sep=Mars, Alt=0.0, +00°10'45"% Dark
2023 Jan 31 00:13 Moon occults Mars, Third Contact, Sep=Mars, Alt=0.0, +00°15'00"% Dark
2023 Jan 31 00:14 Moon occults Mars, Last Contact, Sep=Mars, Alt=0.0, +00°15'11"% Dark

[PMSchu]

Maybe the addition of a 'Paste' option to the 'Events' dropdown would allow the user to save a list of events & restore it later without having to recalculate it. I've calculated future lunar occultations for the planets from my primary observing site, but if I change the location I'd lose all of the results & would need to repeat the calculations when I switched the location back. Saving the Event results for each location would eliminate that issue. I haven't used ST3 in so long, I forgot many of those nice features.

Phil S.

[theskyhound]

Phil,

I don't think you understood me. Those weren't "nice features" in ST3, they were new features that are yet to come in ST4. Saving the event list with the location has never seemed like a very useful feature for the "Special" events, because they are easily printed/copied or you can just run them again.

[PMSchu]

I was referring to the ability to keep separate Events for different locations, not the new ideas that you mentioned for ST4. Sorry for the confusion.

I've calculated Events for things like lunar occultations of planets & stars for a location. Those are more work to set up for another location since you need to pick the occulted object each time. Not a major thing, just more work if there are several locations.

Here's what my list of Events looks like: [attachment=2453]

I haven't cleared it since December 2021.

Perhaps there's a more efficient way to use the Event Finder.

Phil S.

[theskyhound]

Phil,

The ability to save events for a location was for an entirely different feature, the Current Events. The Events Finder tool is meant for one-off use. It makes more sense to me to reintroduce the improved Current Events feature than to add overlapping functionality to the Events Finder tab.