[MacPerl] Parsing astronomical data in Perl

[Brian McNett <brianmc@telebyte.net>]

Okay, I'm cheating.  What I *should* do is work out the problem (perhaps 
with help from the MacPerl mailing list, and then post the full-blown 
solution to the StarMap List).  Forgive me.  I'm attempting to build on 
some synergies between two disperate groups, in the hopes that I'm not 
the only person with an interest in both topics.

First some background (for the MacPerl folks) at Winch Chung's 3D Starmap 
site:

http://www.clark.net/pub/nyrath/starmap.html

I should note that the Mac version of the program for parsing the Gliese 
3.0 data still has a nasty bug in it which corrupts the output data.  I 
haven't had the inclination to play with the source (in C), and Winchell 
no longer has access to a Mac.  Regardless of which I'd really like to 
start fresh.  The source for the C program is GPL'd, and I'm not adverse 
to using it as "inspiration."

Gliese 3.0 is the "Preliminary Version of the Third Catalogue of Nearby 
Stars",  GLIESE W., JAHREISS H. <Astron. Rechen-Institut, Heidelberg 
(1991)>.  A revision is in the works but not yet available.  Basically 
this is a catalog of every known star within 25 parsecs of Sol.

The math for converting R.A., Dec, and parallax to cartesian x,y,z 
coordinates (in parsec units) is fairly simple trigonometry, and not (I 
expect) beyond the capabilities of Perl.

The main obstacle is the data format (described in the documentation for 
the catalog, which, though standard for astronomical data (that is to 
say, a raw ASCII file with no field delimiters (carriage returns for 
records)), is fairly nonstandard).  It should fall quickly to the 
appropriate regex, however.

My longer term goal is a replacement for the old "Orion Spaceflight 
Simulator".  Attempts to contact that programs author, Robert P. Munafo, 
have failed, so we must preforce start from scratch.  That said, I'm not 
thinking of doing the whole thing in Perl, just a few preliminary 
utilities and such.

I freely admit to being lazier than the average programmer, which is why 
I'm not just tackling this problem solo.

If there are perler's of any stripe on the StarMap list your input is 
welcome, but keep the discussion to the StarMap list, as the MacPerl list 
is for MacPerl specific issue (for the most part).  I'll be posting 
occasional code snippets to both lists, and eventually the full program 
will be available at <http://pacific.telebyte.com/~brianmc/>

My apologies for not going into further detail, but I risk going off 
topic for BOTH discussions!

--Brian



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