-*- encoding: utf-8; indent-tabs-mode:nil -*-
=encoding utf-8
=head1 Document Status
This text is published under the I<Creative Commons> license
CC-BY-ND.
Copyright (c) 2017 Jean Forget. All rights reserved.
The text is often (but irregularly) updated on Github. There are
a French version and an English version. Since I am more at ease
discussing astronomical subjects in French, the English version
will lag behind the French one.
This text is an integral part of the module's distribution package.
So you can read it on web pages generated from CPAN
(L<http://search.cpan.org>, L<https://metacpan.org>, etc).
But it is not used during the module installation process.
So, I guess it will not appear in C<.deb> or C<.rpm> packages.
=head1 Why This Text? For Whom?
The main purpose of this text is to explain how the sunrises
and sunsets are computed. These explanations are much too long
to be included into the module's POD section.
=head2 For Whom? For Me
You may be surprised that the main person for whom I write this
is myself. I write this text to remember which problems I have
encountered while maintaining this module and how I fixed them.
But mainly, I write this to build a detailed description of the
precise iterative algorithm, because
L<Paul Schlyter's explanations|http://www.stjarnhimlen.se/comp/riset.html#3>
are not detailed enough for my taste and there is no
compilable source available to check this algorithm (unlike the
L<simple version without iteration|http://www.stjarnhimlen.se/comp/sunriset.c>.
=head2 For Whom? For The Next Module Maintainer
The second person for whom I write is the next module maintainer. I have read
L<Neil Bowers' message|http://codeverge.com/perl.module-authors/the-module-authors-pledge/744969>
about I<the module authors pledge>. I agree with him and I declare that
should I stop maintaing my modules for whatever reason, I accept that
any volunteer can take charge of them.
What Neil did not explain, is that the new maintainer must obey a few
criteria and must have three available resources to take over a module maintenance:
be competent in Perl programming, have enough available time to work on
the module and be enthusiastic enough to get around to it.
In the case of astronomical module, the competence in Perl programming is
not enough, you must also be competent in astronomy. So, if you think you might
maintain this module, first read the present text. If you understand why I bother
about such and such question, if you can follow my train of thought with being
lost, then you are competent enough. If you think I am playing
L<Captain Obvious|http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CaptainObvious>
and if you have instant answers to my questions, then you are the ideal
person which could maintain this module. If you do not understand what all
this is about, and if sines and cosines put you off, do not consider
working on this module's innards.
=head2 For Whom? For Bug Reporters
This text is also for those who think they have found a bug
in the module or who want to offer an idea to improve the module.
Maybe the bug is already known and is waiting for a fix.
Maybe the bug was found and the fix is not successful. Maybe
the proposed improvement contradicts some other functionality
of the module.
=head2 For Whom? For Curious Users
Lastly, this text is aimed at any person curious enough to learn
a few astronomical facts. I tried to steer away from overly complicated
computations. Their place is in the Perl source, not in this text.
Yet, you will find here simple computations and mathematical reasoning.
=head2 Remarks About The Style
Some chunks of this text appear as a series of questions and answers.
This is not a FAQ. Rather, this is a elegant way to give a progressive
explanation of some subject. This method has already been used by
many other writers, especially Plato, Galileo and Douglas Hofstadter.
=head2 Other Remarks
In my explanations, I usually take the point of view of a person living
in the Northern hemisphere, between the Tropic of Cancer and the Arctic Circle.
For example, I will write that at noon, the sun is located exactly southward,
although any schoolboy from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina
and similar countries perfectly know that at noon, the sun is northward.
In a similar way, 21st of March is called the I<vernal equinox> or the
I<spring equinox>, even if it pinpoints the beginning of autumn in the Southern
hemisphere.
But using politically correct sentences would yield convoluted phrases,
which hinders the pedagogical purpose of the text and the understanding
of the described phenomena.
=head1 Sources
I will give here only the sources that provide lists of numerical values.
Books and articles with only a literary description of the subject are too
many to be listed here.
=head2 Unused Sources
Some sources provide a list of sunsets and sunrises, but I did not use
them because they do not explain which algorithm they use or because
I cannot control the parameters.
=over 4
=item The I<Almanach Du Facteur>
In France, it is (or rather it was) customary to buy almanachs from the postman
each year. In each almanach, you find a page giving the sunrise and sunset times
for all the days of the year. Unfortunately, the times are given in HH:MM syntax, not
including the seconds. In addition, even if you buy a provincial edition, the
sunrise and sunset times are given for Paris. Lastly, the algorithm is not
specified.
=item The I<Institut de Mécanique Céleste et de Calcul des Éphémérides> (IMCCE, Institute of Celestial Mechanics and Ephemerides Computation)
This L<site|https://www.imcce.fr/langues/fr/index.html>
(also available in L<english|https://www.imcce.fr/langues/en/index.html>)
used to give an HTML form to generate a table giving the sunrise and sunset times
for a location and a time span of your choosing. Unfortunately, this webpage
disappeared.
There is an available
L<webservice|http://vo.imcce.fr/webservices/miriade/?rts>
to give the same functionality, but I did not try it.
=back
=head2 Used Sources
=over 4
=item Paul Schlyter's Website
This L<site|http://www.stjarnhimlen.se/english.html>
provides a
L<C program|http://stjarnhimlen.se/comp/sunriset.c>
ready to compile and use, giving the
L<sunrise and sunset|http://stjarnhimlen.se/comp/riset.html>
times. This is the basis of the simple algorithm used in
C<Astro::Sunrise>. Its precision, as stated by the author,
is oneor two minutes, but it can be much less precise depending
on the location and date, especially when we are close to the
beginning or the end of the period when the midnight sun is visible.
Paul Schlyter's website includes also
L<many informations|http://stjarnhimlen.se/comp/ppcomp.html>
about computing the position of various celestial bodies.
This website is very interesting, but I preferred writing
my own version, describing the computation of only the sun
and not bothering with other celestial bodies.
=item The U.S Naval Observatory
L<The US Naval Obseravtory|http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/index.php>
gives a
L<HTML form|http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneYear.php>
to compute the sunrise and sunset times. These times are given
in HH:MM format. I would have preferred HH:MM:SS, but I will have
to deal with just HH:MM.
This website gives also
L<very interesting informations|http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/index.php>
about celestial computations, but without restricting itself to the sun,
like I am doing here.
=item Stellarium
Stellarium is a PC app to simulate a night sky. If you do not bother with
the main view giving a real time sky simulation, you can use it to obtain
the coordinates of a given celestial body at a given time when seen from
a given Earth location.
To be completed
=head1 Heliocentrism Or Geocentrism?
From those two assertions below, which one is true and which one is false?
=over 4
=item A
The Sun goes around the Earth.
=item B
The Earth goes around the Sun.
=back
Assertion A is false, everyone agrees. But assertion B is false too.
Oh yes indeed, will you answer, it should read actually:
=over 4
=item C
The Earth runs along an elliptic orbit with the Sun located on
one focus of the ellipsis.
=back
This assertion is false too. Each one of the following assertions
is nearer to the truth than assertions B and C (and A).
=over 4
=item D
The center of mass of the Earth-Moon binary system runs along an
elliptic orbit with the center of mass of the Solar System located
on a focus of the ellipsis.
And I will point that the center of mass of the Sun is not the same
as the center of mass of the Solar System. There are even times when
the center of mass of the Solar System is I<outside> the surface of the Sun.
The L<webpage|http://hp41programs.yolasite.com/solar-sys-bary.php>
about an HP-41 program states that on 15th March 1983, the distance between
both centers of mass was nearly 2.1 Sun radii.
=item E
The Earth runs along an orbit around the Sun, with noticeable perturbations
caused by the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, etc.
Which is a formulation equivalent to assertion D.
=item F
The movement of the Earth with the Solar System is a I<n>-body problem,
with I<n> ≥ 3. Therefore, there is no analytical solution.
=item G
The Solar System is a chaotic system. Even if we can predict with a reasonable
accuracy what the various orbits will look like within the next hundred million
years, this prediction is no longer possible for an interval of one milliard years
(one billion years for US).
=item H
The Earth moves in the general direction of the Hercules constellation
with a approximate speed of 220 km/s.
=item I
The Earth runs along an orbit around the center of the Milky Way, with noticeable
perturbations caused by the Sun, the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, etc.
=back
Assertions B and C are what Terry Pratchett, Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart call
I<lies to children> (I<Science of Discworld>, chapter 4, pages 38 and 39). These
are false assertions, but simple enough to be understood by a child and which, even
if false, leads children to a better understanding of the described phenomena and brings
them closer to truth. You cannot tell assertion C to a child and expect him to understand
it without telling him first assertion B. And it is worse with assertions D and next.
Moreover, these are I<lies to adults>. In the beginning, people would consider that
the aim of Physics was to build a mathematical representation of the real world,
getting closer and closer to the ultimate truth. Then, there was de Broglie's work
with the duality of wave and particle and the Copenhagen interpretation. Is the ultimate
nature of the electron (for example) a wave? No. Is it a particle? No. So what? We do not
care about the ultimate nature of the electron. The aim of Physics is to no longer
to provide a mathematical I<representation> of the real world, but to build
several mathematical I<models> of the real world. We know that intrinsically all
models are false, but each one has it usefulness to lead to make computations about
the real world.
Please note that I was talking about scientific methods. I was not dealing with
electoral campaigns and advertisements. Every sane adult knows for
sure that these are ridden with lies.
Other lies to adults you will find in the following: the light propagates instantly
from one place to another, the celestial bodies outside the Solar System are
motionless, they are located on a sphere call the I<Celestial Sphere>,
UTC time is equal to GMT time and, as I have already stated, all interesting locations
on Earth are between the Tropic of Cancer and the Arctic Circle.
=head2 Conclusion
All this to explain that in the following text, I will not refrain from using
the geocentric model where the Sun turns around the Earth in 24 hours or the
geocentric model where the Sun turns arount the Earth in 365.25 days.
"It is not necessary that the following hypothesis be true or even
resemble the truth. One thing is for sure that they provide calculations
in accordance with the actual observations"
Excerpt from Osiander's preface to Copernic's book. This excerpt was reused
by Jean-Pierre Petit as a foreword to
L<Cosmic Story|ww.savoir-sans-frontieres.com/JPP/telechargeables/English/cosmic_story_anglo_indien/cosmic_story_en.html>.
In Copernic's time, Osiander wanted to have heliocentrism accepted
by people who were certain that geocentrism was the one and only truth.
It is ironical that I use the same quotation to have geocentrism accepted
by people who believe that heliocentrism is the one and only truth.
=head1 Earth / Sun Movements
=head2 Basic Movements
In an heliocentric system pointing at fixed stars, Earth orbits around the
Sun in one year. In other words, in a geocentric system, the Sun orbits around
the Earth in one year, with an average speed of 0.986 degrees per day.
Also, the Earth spins around itself, making one turn in 23h 56mn 4s,
with a speed of 4.178e-3 degrees per second, that is, 360.986 degrees per day.
Q: I thought that the Earth was spinning in 24h!
A: While the Earth spins, the Sun orbits around it. And what we see is
the combination of both movements, which gives a combined speed of 360 degrees per day.
What the commoner is interesting in is to find the Sun at the same place in the
sky at regular times day after day. Only after this is achieved, the commoner
becomes a learned person and is interested in knowing the position of the Moon,
the stars and the planets.
Q: And why did you say "average" two or three times?
A: Because the angular speed of the Sun is not constant. We will get back
to this question later.
=head2 Coordinates
The ecliptic if the plane where the Earth's orbit around the Sun is located (when
using an heliocentric model) or where the Sun's orbit around the Earch is
located (when using a geocentric model). We define also the equatorial plane,
the plane which contains the Earth's equator. These two planes intersect with
a 23° 26' angle. The intersection is a line, named I<line of nodes>.
In some cases, it is more convenient to use a half-line than a line.
In this case, the line of nodes is a half line starting at the Earth center
and aiming at the Pisces constellation.
=head2 Other Movements
=head3 Weather And Climate
=head3 Equinox Precession
=head3 Nutation
=head3 Perihelion Precession
=head3 Other Drifts And fluctuations
=head3 The Equation Of Time And The Analemma