AstroCalc - Misses Conjunction Events

[Jon Seamans]

When searching for conjunctions between Neptune and the Crab Nebula, I found AstroCalc missed events that have even smaller angular separations than one it did find

Example:
Max Separation = 0.5°
Search Times = 1/2017 to 1/2070

Note, all times are UT.

Single Solution found:
         2062-11-03 13:14, Separation = 4'29" (a correct solution)

Solutions missed:
         2062-8-22 ~9:42, Approximate Separation = 2'05"
         2063-6-14 ~14:26, Approximate Separation = 1'41"
         2064-2-5 ~14:31, Approximate Separation = 0'45"
         2064-4-1 ~14:31, Approximate Separation = 2'10"

I manually scanned Stellarium in 1-day increments to determine the missed solution.
Maybe the time increments in the AstroCalc algorithm are too course?

Thanks.

[Jon Seamans (silvy5)]

This "bug" is regarding AstroCalc Phenomena in v15.0 and v15.1

[Alexander Wolf (alexwolf)]

Please try use not very wide range of dates ;)

[Jon Seamans (silvy5)]

Mmmm, I see I can reduce the search window (e.g. 2062 to 2065) and it does better, but interestingly I'm unable to extract 5 events in that 3-yr period - at most I can extract 2 in one time window. Being interested in long(er)-time prediction or historical searches, the utility unfortunately seems limited :( However, I can see that what I would like to do is computationally intensive at the least - I can put in on my wishlist anyway.

[Alexander Wolf (alexwolf)]

Current implementation of phenomena calculator uses iteration to finding a phenomena (with progressive changing of time step). This is better way what I find in the current environment, but I hope he can be improved in the future.

[Alexander Wolf (alexwolf)]

The bug report was moved to https://github.com/Stellarium/stellarium/issues/372