[Kstars-devel] expand use of libnova?

[Jason Harris]

Hello,

All of the code we use to calculate planet positions was lovingly
hand-crafted by yours truly, after much poring over celestial texts
and astronomical websites.

Recently, Jasem introduced a dependency on libnova[1], which is a
library that provides (among other things) an API for calculating the
positions of planets, comets, and asteroids.  In fact, it can do
almost any calculation that we'd need, from Julian Day to
rise/set/transit times, to atmospheric refraction, to angular
separation of two bodies.

Should we think about using libnova throughout the program?  In
principle, I would like to do so.  However, I am not sure about the
speed of their library, as I've never used it.

Discussion?

regards,
Jason

[1]: http://libnova.sourceforge.net