[Kstars-devel] Predicting conjunctions

[Akarsh Simha]

Hi

I was trying to see if we could predict conjunctions of planets, so
that it could be incorporated into KStars.

What I thought was that we could first roughly calculate when the
occultation will happen next using circular orbits and such
approximations and then look around that point in time to find the
least separation.

However I found the trigonometry very tedious, so I tried some
approximation saying that the difference in the heliocentric
longitudes between the planets should go to zero. It happened to work
(mostly a coincidence!) for Mars and Jupiter. I was all excited, but
it failed for Saturn and Pluto - and it is a wrong algorithm.

Can someone suggest a better way of getting this?

Regards
Akarsh.