west wrote:
What Astronomy program would you recommend that can be used, for instance,
to predict the time of rising of Venus in Hawaii exactly 2 years from now or
the true ecliptic longitude and geocentric distance of the Sun at any given
instance? I think in college Astronomy courses you would have to write your
own program. In that case which program would you recommend? May have to be
under Linux OS, from what I am reading. I know that 20 years ago most
computations were written in Basic (my speed). What are they using now? All
comments are welcomed and thanks.

Cordially,
west

West, if you're somewhat of a "greenie" like me, but highly interested
in astronomy, especially identifying objects in the night sky and their
distances and celestial coordinates, I would recommend Starry Night
Enthusiast. It's about $60 bucks here in the states, but worth every
single penny. It's a web-interactive program put together by some
pretty damned smart guys in Canada. Unlike so much of this stuff aimed
totally at the "geeks with sliderules" crowd, it's totally intuitive,
and you can see the sky as it actually exists in real time from any
vantage point on earth merely by plugging in your location. And with a
point and click, you can immediate identify what planet, what star,
what constellation or what galaxy you're looking at with a written
description. You can also find out where any given celestial object is
in real time with a simple search. Really neat.

But it does far more than just this if you're the kind of person really
into all the technical stuff, for you can also navigate to all of that,
too. Really great for a beginner with a high quality scope, otherwise
they'd never know what they're looking at at any given time.

Sincerely, Turnip.