B Where Can I Find Accurate Planetary Event Data for an Astronomy Course?

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Accurate planetary event data for astronomy courses can be found through historical ephemeris searches, which can provide information dating back thousands of years. Users are particularly interested in the time intervals between Jupiter and Saturn's opposition and quadrature with Earth for educational purposes. While some ephemerides do not include quadrature data, Stellarium offers scripts that can toggle this information, making it a useful tool for educators. Additionally, software like REDSHIFT is available for a fee and can provide the desired data. Overall, leveraging historical ephemerides and tools like Stellarium can enhance the learning experience in astronomy.
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Looking for planetary data (oppositions, quadratures) for Jupiter and Saturn that spans at least 30 years.
Hi everyone,
I'm looking for a database of planetary events similar to this resource but that has a longer span of time that can be accessed (the site goes back to 2009). I haven't had success in my google searches. Does anybody know where I can find this information?

In particular I am looking for the time intervals between when Jupiter and Saturn are in opposition with the Earth to when they are in quadrature with the earth. This is being used for an introductory high school astronomy course (next academic year) when we discuss the Copernican cosmos. I'd like to use real data rather than quote averages from other sources when I ask students to determine the distances and periods of the planets according to this model. It's also instructive so see the variation in the time intervals to understand why epicycles were used.

I'm finding that the calculations using the data from the link above agree well with the accepted values except for Jupiter and Saturn. My guess is that this is because I initially used data that spans a few years which is a fraction of Saturn's orbital period. And, the data available in the link site only spans a little less than half of Saturn's orbital period.

I haven't yet checked whether using the 13 years for data helps correct the calculations for Jupiter. I initially only used data over about 5 years.

Thanks!
 
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Google for "historical ephemeris" The first hit I got covered back 9000 years. See what you need...
 
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jim mcnamara said:
historical ephemeris
...is definitely the keyword search that I needed. Thanks!
 
[add on comment]
Maris software has planetarium software called REDSHIFT which does what you seem to want. It costs about $US 50.00
[/add on comment]
 
Well the ephemerides (had to look up that plural!) that I've looked at don't include quadrature which was surprising. I don't think I'm going to spend money to get data for this one assignment, but I did find a Stellarium script that can toggle this information. For anyone that this may help: Stellarium scripts can be found here. The one that will find these events is the "Planetary Events" script.
 
brainpushups said:
Stellarium script that can toggle this information. For anyone that this may help: Stellarium scripts can be found here. The one that will find these events is the "Planetary Events" script.

Yup, Stellarium is a great prog.. I have been using it for many years :smile:
 
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