[Kstars-devel] Refraction question from KStars

[Victor Carbune]

Hi Alexey,

Ana (CC'ed here) is working as part of Google Code-in on studying
better our alternatives to compute the refraction correction
coefficient.

She has implemented both our version of the computation (from Meeus)
and a version from the Fundamental Astronomy book.
She is currently writing a report regarding how fast the methods
converge for unrefract, and how different are the correction values
obtained using one algorithm versus the other.

A question she came with and I haven't manage to explain is why do we
have in our code the formula from Meeus multiplied with the factor
1/60 [1]?
I have to mention that she initially implemented the one from Meeus
and got some big values of the refraction correction (order of 1-2
degrees), so I guess there must be some reason behind it, which I
can't identify.

Thanks,
Victor

[1] http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/KDE/kdeedu/kstars/kstars/skyobjects/skypoint.cpp?revision=1186610
(line 732)