Well, using a planetarium program would make you a theoretical astronomer...

Cheers


Wally wrote:

Navigator wrote:


You are veritable font of information on this! Are you sure you don't
stargaze?


Definitely sure. My interest, as I said, was to look into putative
astronomical alignments of prehistoric sites. I needed to understand the
cycles of the sun and moon to get an overview of what I was dealing with.



I would add that despite the fact that the nutation due to
all the other planets, not one of the usual 37 Darwin harmonic
constants is simply associated with it. This is because it is the sum
and difference of terms that determine the overall cycle repeat time.
If anyone wants to do the calculation I would be interested in
knowing if any (and which terms they are) two constants are
associated with nutation and which planets have the largest
influence...


I never got into doing numbers - when I wanted to check a particular
alignment, I'd fire up a planetarium program (SkyGlobe for quick checks,
SkyMap for more accurate stuff). I only needed to know where and when, but
not how.