astronav

ASTRONAV: A rust library featuring algorithms for positional astronomy

Purpose

To create a pure rust implementation using popular positional astronomy algorithms

Current features

• Methods to get the Altitude and Azimuth of Stars using RA (Right Ascension) and Dec (Declination) values.
• Methods to get the Sun's Position, Sun Rise, Sun Set and other related things of the Sun using the Structs available in coords::noaa_sun and coords::sun modules.
• The module coords::noaa_sun is available only as a feature flag --features "noaa-sun".
• Time and date functions to retrieve the below, available in the time module
  • Julian Day Number
  • Julian Time
  • Greenwich Mean Sidereal Time
  • Local Mean Sidereal Time
  • Day of the Year etc

Notice regarding the Sun related modules:

The Sun related modules coords::noaa_sun and coords::sun, cannot be fully trusted (yet) for a higher degree of accuracy. The calculations are made using certain generally available algorithms from certain popular Almanacs such as the one written by Meesus, and the algorithms published by NOAA. For example, when you take the SunRise, the SunSet and the Noon time using the Structs made available, you would typically see up to 2 mins of variation when compared with what is shown in popular apps like Stellarium. The same applies for angles such as Azimuth, Zenith, Declination, Hour Angle etc. However, we must keep in mind that there is no single source of truth available online to these things and getting precise results are extremely difficult than we think.