Hello everyone,

I'm an artist who's looking for advice on how to calculate the moon's
position for a piece of sculpture (for a temporary exhibition
primarily geared for children opening this coming April in the
Netherlands).

The idea of the piece is this: a life sized standing figure should be
constantly pointing at the moon's position -- 24 hours a day whether
it is above or below the horizon. The figure is to be driven by two
computer controlled motors, one to turn the figure to face the correct
direction (azimuth angle) and the other to raise and lower the
figure's arm to indicate the correct elevation.

What I'm looking for is either an existing program that can provide
these two coordinates to the software driving the motors (to drive the
motors I will be using Real Basic http://www.realbasic.com) or advice
on how such a program or script might be written. The program must run
on Mac OS X.

Please note I am an absolute neophyte when it comes to astronomy or
celestial mechanics. After playing around with some astronomy software
on my Mac I've understood the need to specify the observer's location
(geophysical coordinates) and, of course, the date. I had hoped that I
could mine the azimuth angle and altitude out of such an astronomy
program but now understand that the position of heavenly bodies is
calculated in RA and DEC (and have heard that conversion between the
RA and DEC and azimuth angle and altitude is complicated).

Is there an easy way for me to do what I want to do?

(Anyone want to collaborate?)

Any help or advice here would be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards,

-- Paul