[Kstars-devel] testing the new VLSR module

[Jason Harris]

Hello,

I had the opportunity to use the new KStars VLSR calculator module in my 
research today, so I thought I would give a quick report of its performance.  
I checked it against the IRAF "rvcorrect" program.

For both KStars and rvcorrect, I specified Las Campanas Observatory as my 
observing site, and the time of observation was set to 08:00 UT on 29 Aug 
2004.  

Using rvcorrect, I determined the heliocentric and LSR velocities for a 
measured (topocentric) radial velocity of 100 km/s, for targets at four 
positions on the sky (chosen to bracket the region on the sky 
of my actual targets in the Small Magellanic Cloud).  I then used the VLSR 
module of the KStars calculator to determine the heliocentric and topocentric 
velocities at these same four positions, using the V_LSR from rvcorrect 
(currently, V_LSR must be an input value in the KStars module).  Here are the 
results:

            ----- IRAF -----    ----- KStars -----
(RA, Dec)  : V_helio : V_LSR  :: V_helio : V_topo
(0.4, -74) :  93.45  : 83.42  ::  93.45  :  99.98
(0.4, -72) :  94.02  : 84.04  ::  94.02  :  99.97
(1.4, -74) :  95.03  : 83.78  ::  95.03  : 100.00
(1.4, -72) :  95.79  : 84.45  ::  95.80  : 100.00

So, the IRAF and KStars results are in quite good agreement.

Jason
-- 
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KStars: KDE Desktop Planetarium
http://edu.kde.org/kstars