# JPL planetary ephemerides access software in C

The software is available as "public domain" at our FTP server.

# C version software for the JPL planetary ephemerides.

## Version 1.4, March 13, 2014

Version (1.4) works with DE200, DE403, DE404, DE405, DE406, DE421, DE422, DE430 and DE431.

CHANGES FROM VERSION 1.3:

added support for DE430 and DE431. The main change is to allow for more than 400 ephemeris constants, as required in case of DE430 and DE431. Some minor improvements are also done. Works in a standard, 32-bit Linux environment.

The original JPL datafiles, FORTRAN code and documentation can be found at:

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?planet_eph_export

## Version 1.3, February 19, 2012

Version (1.3) works with DE200, DE403, DE404, DE405, DE406, DE421 and DE422.

CHANGES FROM VERSION 1.2:

added support for DE421 and DE422. In fact only some definitions were added to the jplbin.h header file. The testeph.c file is a copy of that file from version 1.2. Only the formulas for calculating the differences between test points and calculated values are updated in accordance with the JPL Fortran file testeph.f . All other sources and files are obsolete, since Linux binary ephemerides can be obtained from JPL.

## Version 1.2, June 23, 1997 (this README.txt file was updated March 1, 2008)

File list at the FTP server:

   Size   date     time   file
10218 2007-04-20 10:38 asc2eph.c
6405 2007-04-20 10:38 conv.c
9098 2007-04-20 10:38 convm.c
1892 2007-04-20 10:39 jplbin.h
33421 2007-04-20 10:39 testeph.c
409808 1998-06-03 00:00 testpo1.405


CHANGES FROM VERSION 1.1:

• added support for DE405 and DE406,
• ASC2EPH.C can work with incomplete source file set,
• added CONVM.C - new program for converting and merging multiple binary files,
• bug in libration calculations fixed,
• some minor changes and bug fixes

 The original JPL datafiles, FORTRAN code and documentation can be found at:
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?planet_eph_export


This version (1.2) works with DE200, DE403, DE404, DE405 and DE406.

This file describes public domain software for using and manipulating JPL export planetary ephemerides, written in C language.

In original JPL export packages you can find several FORTRAN source files for reading and testing ephemerides.

Here you can find C versions of ASC2EPH and TESTEPH programs and additional two programs: CONV and CONVM, for converting original JPL supplied Unix binary files to DOS/LINUX binaries, without using any additional source files. Please note, that we assume you do not rename any of the original, JPL supplied files.

ASC2EPH.C and TESTEPH.C are manual translations of the original JPL FORTRAN code, slightly changed and adapted for C language. They are designed to keep FORTRAN-based structure of the binary ephemeris files so they can be shared between C and Fortran programmers working both under DOS and LINUX on PC-based machines. ASC2EPH uses original JPL supplied source (ASCII) ephemeris files. There is no need for editing them to replace 'D' with 'E' in exponent parts of double precision numbers.

IT IS NECESSARY TO ADJUST MANUALLY SOURCE FILES before you compile and run them. First, look at the file: JPLBIN.H, used by ASC2EPH.c and TESTEPH.C It contains the definition of DENUM, JPL ephemeris number. Some variables obtain their values depending on DENUM (eg. RECSIZE - the record size ). Second, look at lines with fopen() calls in ASC2EPH.C, TESTEPH.C and CONV.C Adjust them for your environment, adding a path before filenames where necessary.

Program CONV.C is an additional tool for obtaining DOS/LINUX, FORTRAN/C binary files with JPL ephemerides DIRECTLY from JPL supplied binary Unix files (*.unx). It simply reverses the order of bytes in each integer (4 byte) and double (8 byte) number stored in the single JPL Unix binary file found on the original CD-ROM for example. Additionally it can produce the subset of the whole ephemeris - you have to specify starting and final JED epochs.

New program (v.1.2): CONVM.C is designed for simultaneous merging and converting original JPL supplied binary UNIX files (you can obtain them from an anonymous FTP site: ftp://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/eph/planets ) into a single, binary ephemeris file, readable with FORTRAN and C under both DOS and Linux. It works similarly to CONV.C. You can specify smaller interval of time than the original ephemeris time span.

All source files are rich of comments and ( I hope ) therefore are self explanatory.

On July 8, 1997 JPL released corrected file TESTPO.405, without fictitious "test points" for 5-th and 6-th components of nutation. You can find this file at: ftp://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/eph/planets/test-data. There is a new file: testpo.406 there!

PLEASE NOTE that due to including of nutation and librations in the test points file (GREAT!) you can expect differences greater than 1.0e-13 when using TESTEPH program. Some values of librations have more than three digits before decimal point and we do not have 17 significant digits on PC-based machines! JPL have changed (June 23 version of TESTEPH.F) the formula for the difference calculation from absolute (del = |xc-xo|) to relative: del = |xc-xo|/(|xc|+|xo|). I have applied this correction in my software and found that now almost all del values are greater than 1e-13, generating software alert. So I decided to comment out this modification. Instead I used the old formula and I found that for all points in TESTPO.405 I have obtained del < 1e-13. This happened even for libration value for JD=2524897.5: 19440.0251465376386. My calculated value was: 19440.0251465376386 ! I have 18 correct signifficant digits ! I have not switched to long double type, I still use standard 8 byte double precision arithmetic .

All suggestions, bug reports or questions may be directed to the author:

Piotr A. Dybczynski, (dybol@amu.edu.pl)

Please send me a word if you use my software with success also.

April 19, 2007.