Astro::Coords
=============

A wrapper class around Astro::SLA that simplifies the handling of
astronomical coordinate systems. It can be used to convert between
J2000, B1950, Galactic and super Galactic coordinates.  It can
calculate the azimuth and elevation of a source specified in
equatorial coordinates, orbital elements or by name (if a planet).
It can also determine whether the specified coordinates are observable
for the given telescope.

This software is still a beta release but is in use in a production
environment. The interfaces may still change slightly.

Requirements
------------

This class uses Astro::SLA, Astro::Telescope and Time::Piece.


Building
--------

  perl Makefile.PL
  make
  make test
  make install

The test calculates the azimuth and elevation of a 3 sources
including a planet and a comet (Hale Bopp).


Author
------

This module was written by Tim Jenness  <tjenness@cpan.org>
of the Joint Astronomy Centre.

Copyright (C) 2001-2003 Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council.
All Rights Reserved. This program is free software; you can
redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

TODO
----

  + Include parallax and proper motions
  + Add support for JPL ephemeris when calculating planet positions
  + Add support for Horizons web service when generating positions
    of planetary moons

Changes
-------

 v0.01 - initial test release to CPAN

 v0.02 - Add Astro::Coords::Calibration and Astro::Coords::Fixed

 v0.03 - Add isObservable method
	 Spun off Astro::Telescope into its own CPAN distribution

 v0.04 - Internal release

 v0.05 - - Check format of input arguments (for sexagesimal parsing)
         + Add rise, set and transit time calculation
         + Add Interpolated RA/Dec [Astro::Coords::Interpolated]
         + Add calculate method
         - Fix orbital elements [requires recent slalib]
         + Can now ask for J2000 for all coordinate types
         + Add name and comment method for tagging a coordinate object
