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Published 20 hours ago • verified publisher icon Stellarium

AstroCalc: Wider range of dates

Open Atque opened this issue 3 years ago • 10 comments

We're currently stuck with calculating positions and phenomena between 1600 and 9999 AD. It would help research and visualization if that range increased, so that we could use AstroCalc fully for e.g. antiquity.

Atque avatar Oct 15 '20 05:10 Atque

This is more than obvious. 1600 is a technical restriction which we want to lift ourselves. Just that it takes some effort...

gzotti avatar Oct 15 '20 08:10 gzotti

Hope this could be soon implemented. Many historical events like star of Betlehem now are only known graphically and it is difficult to be precise. Thanks

AntonioYague avatar Oct 16 '20 11:10 AntonioYague

Well, I can apply fast solution for this issue if I switch input fields for dates into using JD (with traditional dates as tooltips for JD) - is it acceptable?

@gzotti ?

alex-w avatar Oct 23 '20 08:10 alex-w

Sorry, too busy to do much this week. I'd like to have a look how the calendar interface works, later today or this weekend.

gzotti avatar Oct 23 '20 08:10 gzotti

@alex-w Couldn't one simply translate the JD into pre-Greogrian dates?

Atque avatar Oct 23 '20 13:10 Atque

@Atque AstroCalc uses a date panel which is apparently limited to the post-1600 Gregorian calendar. Of course, "one can simply translate that...". Just that somebody must do it.

gzotti avatar Oct 23 '20 14:10 gzotti

@gzotti I understand. I'm just brainstorming here.

@alex-w About JD; I don't think JD should be used post-1600. I think it would confuse most people.

Atque avatar Oct 23 '20 15:10 Atque

Julian date is a good help as an intermediate step because there are some calculators that could change to day-month and year

AntonioYague avatar Oct 23 '20 19:10 AntonioYague

@AntonioYague We know that and use JD internally. The QDateTime widget is the problem. It only works in the Gregorian calendar, and for dates past Jan 1st, 100AD GREGORIAN. We can set it to allow dates from October 15, 1582, but earlier dates will cause confusion. The proper solution obviously is a replacement widget or some entirely new GUI element.

Note for ourselves: Also see https://git.sailfishos.org/mer-core/qtbase/commit/53e6cb3ff676f91a51d55e5740c7174f0c15e390?view=parallel&w=1

gzotti avatar Oct 23 '20 21:10 gzotti

We may use idea from AstroCalc/Eclipses tool - switch from DateFrom/DateTo to YearSince/TimeDepth

alex-w avatar Sep 15 '22 02:09 alex-w