Orrery Application v1.0 Build 603

Description:
Orrery is an application for Ewe enabled computers to show the Solar System in action. Orrery shows positions of the planets with respect to the Sun at any desired date. It may be animated for the future or the past. Orrery displays a variety of data, both angle and distance information.

The first orrery was conceived by English clockmaker and inventor George Graham (c.1674-1751) around 300 years ago. This initial model only showed the earth-moon system which orbits our Sun. Graham gave the design of this original model to the celebrated London instrument maker John Rowley, who was commissioned to make one for his patron Charles Boyle (1674-1731). Boyle's patronage of Rowley soon led to the elaboration of Graham's invention so that it included all the known planets and some moons of the solar system.

Orrery.ewe is an application for Ewe enabled computers to show the Solar System in action.
It graphically shows and animates the positions of the eight planets with respect to the Sun, as well as displaying angle and distance information.

To use this version of Orrery you must install a Ewe¹ VM (Virtual Machine) on your computer. Ewe is a version of Java which runs on a variety of desktop and handheld computers. It is very compact and efficient. It uses only about 2 Mbytes of memory.
To learn more about Ewe please read the introduction on the Bray Mobile Applications page.

Orrery is an application that shows a simulated view of the Sun and its eight planets from above the orbit plane. It will also display:

* The distance to the Sun and Earth for each planet.
* The angular separation between the Earth and each planet.
* A matrix of distances between each of the Sun and planets. The distance units can be Astronomical Units (AU), Kilometers, and Statute Miles. (one AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun.)
* A matrix of angular separation between each of the planets, in degrees.

The Orrery display can be animated with time steps as specified.

The dwarf planet Pluto is included in a very limited way. You can choose to have Pluto shown at a fixed position in the "Equal Distance" view, but no data is given for it.
It takes Pluto 90465 days to circle the Sun! In the animation mode of Orrery, Pluto would show very little motion. No "planetary theory" has been constructed for Pluto because since it discovery in 1930 it has moved less than 1/3 of it orbit around the Sun. Any orbital data included in this application would only be accurate for a "short period" of time.


Requirements:
- Pocket PC Windows Mobile
- Ewe Emulator:
for 240x320
for 480x640

More information:
http://davidbray.org/mobile/orrery.html

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