|
This is a small application written in
Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition. It displays the time in
several formats useful for astronomy.
As this was compiled using the VB express
edition, the program will try to download support files from the
web unless you already have the .NET framework installed on your
PC. For this reason, if you don't want to or can't install these
files, I suggest you do not download the program.
It displays the time in local, UTC, Solar
and Sidereal formats. Local and UTC dates are also displayed for
those times in the middle of the night when they are different.
The program can use either the computer's time
zone or a user entered longitude to calculate the solar and
sidereal times.
The sidereal time algorithm used is this
program is the truncated formula which according to the US Naval
Observatory web site is accurate to +/- one second. To date the
author's testing has confirmed this.
On shutdown, the application saves any
longitude entered and whether or not the longitude was being
used at the time to a settings file for use next time the
program is activated.
To help preserve night vision, the program
uses red lettering on a black background, and the windows border
can be turned off (and back on again) by double clicking just
inside the border. The image on the right shows the program with
the windows border turned off.
Click here
to download a free copy of Al's
Astro Clock.
Build History
AlsClock "V1.0":
The original version of the program was
written to meet a request of an amateur astronomer on
IceInSpace. The guts
of the program was developed with this version.
Als' Clock "V1.3":
As a result of another request from
IceInSpace, another
version was written with much larger text to make it readable at
a distance from the PC screen. This was V1.3. Unfortunately, as
a result of a series of operators errors and other factors, some
critical design files for both V1.0 and V1.3 were lost. As a
result "V2.0" was reprogrammed from the start again (with some
cut and paste from the V1.3 program file).
Al's Astro Clock "V2.0":
New interface window, slightly larger than
v1.0. Larger text display on sidereal time and slightly larger
on solar time.
Go back to Out of this
World.
|