A couple of vedic astronomy (jyautiSha) problems in stellarium

[विश्वासो वासुकिजः (Vishvas Vasuki)]

I like stellarium and am trying to improve it for use from the vedic stargazing perspective :

• 27 nakShatra grid line proposal here.
  
• Proposal to use IAST in english language skyculture files.
  
• Adding sanskrit devanAgarI skyculture transliteration

It is possible that there are others (eg +ajit and shrI vAsuki) who are better versed in the issues at hand than I and have some bandwidth. I welcome any guidance and participation.

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Vishvas /विश्वासः

[विश्वासो वासुकिजः (Vishvas Vasuki)]

+ श्रीरमणशर्मा

[Shreevatsa R]

+1

Related: I found this draft email I had (to be sent to the Stellarium developer mailing list) from 2015 (I have no idea why I never sent it, the draft looks pretty complete). It's about including planets (solar system bodies) too in Stellarium "sky culture", rather than only stars. This feature may already exist in Stellarium by now, just including the draft email below in case it's of any help/interest and someone wants to pursue both. (I haven't looked into Stellarium again recently to see whether it's still relevant.)

{{{

Subject: Include planets in sky culture?

Hi,

Firstly, Stellarium is wonderful, so thanks to the developers and everyone who's worked on it.

I have a question/request: the sky culture feature is nice, and it helps to see the names of the sky objects in another culture. I guess that in any old culture, even if there aren't many names for individual stars, there are likely to be names for constellations, and even more likely, for *planets* (and sun and moon), because they are the most distinctive objects in the sky, over a period of time. So it would be nice if Stellarium allowed the "sky culture" data to include names of planets as well, in addition to (as it currently does) star names and constellation names.

Just as a proof-of-concept, here are the names of some major "planets" (those the days of the week are named after) in a few cultures. The Indian ones are available from many sources, and the other three are from http://nineplanets.org/days.html There were also a few "Maori" names in skycultures/maori/references.txt in the Stellarium directory, so I included that as well.

(Formatted for fixed-width font.)

+-------+-----+--------+-------------+------------+---------+----------+----------------+----------+------------+
|Western|     |Sun     |Moon         |Mars        |Mercury  |Jupiter   |Venus           |Saturn    |Earth       |
+-------+-----+--------+-------------+------------+---------+----------+----------------+----------+------------+
|Indian |     |Sūrya   |Soma/Chandra |Mangala     |Budha    |Guru      |Shukra          |Shani     |Bhūmi       |
+-------+-----+--------+-------------+------------+---------+----------+----------------+----------+------------+
|Korean |     |Taeyang |Dal          |Hwasung     |Soosung  |Moksung   |Kumsung         |Tosung    |Jeegoo      |
+-------+-----+--------+-------------+------------+---------+----------+----------------+----------+------------+
|Chinese|     |Taiyang |Yueqiu       |Huoxing     |Shuixing |Muxing    |Jinxing         |Tuxing    |Diqiu       |
+-------+-----+--------+-------------+------------+---------+----------+----------------+----------+------------+
|Maori  |     |Rā      |Marama       |Tūmatauenga |Apārangi |Pareārau  |Meretūahiahi    |Rongo     |Papatuānuku |
+-------+-----+--------+-------------+------------+---------+----------+----------------+----------+------------+
|Maori  |     |Te Ra   |Te Marama    |Rangiwhenua |Takero   |Perearau1 |Tawera/Meremere |Perearau2 |Papa        |
+-------+-----+--------+-------------+------------+---------+----------+----------------+----------+------------+

And here's the IRC conversation from 23rd January. :-)

[20:36] svat: hi, is it possible to include the planets (and sun and moon) in the sky cultures? Different cultures/starlores are likely to have different names for these...
[20:45] daggerstab: svat: Solar System bodies are already included in translations. Adding them to sky cultures would be tricky. Can you point to a concrete example where that would be necessary?
[20:46] daggerstab: Oh, and the information on sky cultures in Stellarium is not terribly well verified.
[20:46] svat: daggerstab: well, someone may be comfortable with English as the language of the application, but just want to see the names in another culture...
[20:46] svat: daggerstab: yes, the latter I know :)
[20:49] svat: daggerstab: for instance, if I want to see the Maori name for the Moon, there isn't really a language I can pick. It seems that names of solar system bodies belong with the sky cultures rather than translation language, IMHO.
[21:06] svat: daggerstab: or, for a more concrete example: India has about two dozen major languages, the names of the planets are (more or less) the same in each, translations in most of these languages barely exist at best, and adding the names to a sky culture would take care of all of them. :-)
[21:19] alexwolf: svat: in current implementation of code for big solar system bodies add support of misc names not simple
[21:21] svat: alexwolf: hmm, ok, thanks. (But in principle the idea is an acceptable one, right? Even if it's hard to do in practice.)
[21:21] alexwolf: it nice idea :)
[21:23] alexwolf: svat: do you can write names of big solar system bodies from different cultures?
[21:24] svat: alexwolf: well, I hope the information exists on the net and I can find it :) It shouldn't be _too_ hard, speaking optimistically.
[21:26] alexwolf: svat: if you find names for 5 different cultures, then we trying add it ;)
[21:26] svat: alexwolf: deal! :)

}}}

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[विश्वासो वासुकिजः (Vishvas Vasuki)]

namaste shrIvatsa, I don't think it's a problem anymore - https://i.imgur.com/gRcwqcD.jpg .

I've created a branch at https://github.com/sanskrit-coders/stellarium , whence I'll start sending pull requests - anyone else wanting to pitch in is welcome.

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[Shreevatsa R]

Great, glad to hear that.

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[विश्वासो वासुकिजः (Vishvas Vasuki)]

सज्जनाः संस्कृतानुवादान् https://translations.launchpad.net/stellarium/trunk/+pots/stellarium-skycultures/sa/+translate इत्यत्र समर्पयितुम् अर्हन्ति। युगपत् https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-l10n-sa इत्यत्र प्रवेशायाभ्यर्थयन्तु (+ujjwal.raajput नियामकः )।

[विश्वासो वासुकिजः (Vishvas Vasuki)]

+ shrI PVR narasimha rAv of http://www.vedicastrologer.org/jh/ .

Sir, I request your help in obtaining a list of boundary lines between various nakShatra-s and rAshi-s, so that I may display them in the stellarium software. My dream is to be able to just open stellarium, look at the moon position relative to various nakShatra based boundary lines and instantly know which nakShatra+pAda and rAshi the moon is in. These boundary lines, which I imagine as being longitudes in the ecliptic grid system, can each by simply specified with two points in the celestial sphere. These points would ideally be specified in the equatorial coordinate system (eg: Point1 (RA: 20.6386585 Dec:2.4360874 ), Point2 (RA:20.6392918 Dec:1.4361323)), since that's what stellarium accepts.

I think you will be interested because this will make the vaidika astronomical system more accessible to the skygazers.

On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 11:07 PM, विश्वासो वासुकिजः (Vishvas Vasuki) <vishvas...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Narayan Prasad]

Sir,

   Attached please find the scanned copy of the page giving positions of different nakshatras.

   [From S. B. Dixit's भारतीय ज्योतिषशास्त्राचा इतिहास ].

   I thought it could be useful for your purpose.

   Regards

   Narayan Prasad

[Narayan Prasad]

Another table from p.184 of The Report of the Calendar Reform Committee

Regards

Narayan Prasad

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[विश्वासो वासुकिजः (Vishvas Vasuki)]

That's very useful, thanks!
=======================
A tip I got separately:

1) Take coordinates from calendar committee: I believe they give you the ecliptic coordinates i.e. long-lat with ecliptic as great circle plane

Report this message Delete this message

2) convert them to RA using NED: https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/forms/calculator.html …

2) Convert them to RA-DEC ie equatorial coords using NED: https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/forms/calculator.html …

Use these to locate points in Stellarium

11h11 hours ago

If you want to convert enmass for R language there is moonsun package with coord conversion facility / there are such for other langs too

​=======================

​Besides that, I can possibly deduce the currently accepted naxatra start positions from moon positions at naxatra start dates like - http://www.prokerala.com/astrology/nakshatra-finder/ 

I'll try to follow these leads 🙏

[Shreevatsa R]

Thanks for these pointers, they should be useful. 

I know nothing about jyotiṣha, so in the following I may be spreading false rumours :-) But:

I think one of the things you may run into, trying to reconcile data from different places, is that different people may follow different conventions for the calendar, some following direct astronomical observations (dṛk-gaṇita) versus following the algorithms/calculations in the Sūrya-siddhānta or whatever. If you take svāti as the star Spica you get something, etc. And even resolving this question may not straightforwardly map to clear answers for the observance of ritual (say), because there are fundamental issues: for example we observe Uttarāyaṇa-puṇya-kāla on Makara-saṅkramaṇa, even though now it "really" happens on winter solstice some 3+ weeks earlier (Jan 14/15 versus Dec 21/22/23). (And correspondingly dakṣiṇāyana etc.)

This sort of reconciliation is exactly what Saha's Calendar Reform Comittee tried to do, so that may be a good place to look. Anyway I really don't know anything so let me know where this ends up or when I can see these in Stellarium, will be curious :-)

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[विश्वासो वासुकिजः (Vishvas Vasuki)]

On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 10:48 AM, Shreevatsa R <shree...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for these pointers, they should be useful. 

I know nothing about jyotiṣha, so in the following I may be spreading false rumours :-) But:

I think one of the things you may run into, trying to reconcile data from different places, is that different people may follow different conventions for the calendar, some following direct astronomical observations (

​​

dṛk-gaṇita) versus following the algorithms/calculations in the Sūrya-siddhānta or whatever. If you take svāti as the star Spica you get something, etc. And even resolving this question may not straightforwardly map to clear answers for the observance of ritual (say), because there are fundamental issues: for example we observe Uttarāyaṇa-puṇya-kāla on Makara-saṅkramaṇa, even though now it "really" happens on winter solstice some 3+ weeks earlier (Jan 14/15 versus Dec 21/22/23). (And correspondingly dakṣiṇāyana etc.)

This sort of reconciliation is exactly what Saha's Calendar Reform Comittee tried to do, so that may be a good place to look. Anyway I really don't know anything so let me know where this ends up or when I can see these in Stellarium, will be curious :-)

​This has been in the back of my mind since I started. Those that seek to live in some imaginary universe disregarding dRk-gaNita and use outdated approximations will not have much use for stellarium anyway.​ My personal bias is to follow the inferred and express coherent intent of the distant sages and ​ancestors, without regard to the hard-to-justify popular rUDhi-s (eg: in the case of svara-s I concur with this note). In the particular case of jyautiSha and ritual timing, I easily side with the views expressed by the wise kauNDinyAyana-s of nepAl - http://indiafacts.org/of-vedic-system/ . But I understand that others would have other biases; and the stars would have drifted ever so slightly since 1950-s - so I have an inkling that ultimately we may end up with a few alternate "Indian sky-cultures".

[विश्वासो वासुकिजः (Vishvas Vasuki)]

There's been some progress here (and I took a break to go see the total eclipse, which was a nice experience)!

I finished writing code to produce the nakShatra-strip-boundaries - https://github.com/sanskrit-coders/jyotisha/blob/master/jyotisha/zodiac.py . nakShatra-strip-boundaries under Lahiri ayanamsha regime for the current date look like this: http://imgur.com/a/fxN3c . 

The stellarium folks seem fine with switching to IAST, barring details about how or where they source their corrections https://bugs.launchpad.net/stellarium/+bug/1710444 . Regarding the nakShatra boundaries, they seem to be scared off by some problems described in https://bugs.launchpad.net/stellarium/+bug/1710443/comments/30 . In any case, my version of the skyculture files are available at  https://github.com/sanskrit-coders/stellarium/tree/master/skycultures/indian .