Bill Gray Feb 5, 2013
On 02/05/2013 03:02 PM, Jost Jahn wrote:
> About twenty years ago when I have enough time to programming I wrote a
> program for the good old Atari ST to check all virtual (at the sphere)
> and physical (in space) encounters of al known numbered asteroids at
> this time.
>
> My trick was to divide the sphere in many small slightly overlapping
> patches and the space in many small cubes (but not too small) and then
> calculate for one day all asteroids and sorting them into those patches
> in sphere and in space (just the designation). The calculation was very
> rough, about 1/10 precision of those patches. These patches and cubes
> was just 1-byte in a relational file. I count the number of objects up
> and saved the name in a seper ate reational file.
>
> Then I must only make a run through all those patches and each patch
> (byte value>2), which has more than 1 object I calculated much more
> precise. Because I don`t take gravitational perturbances into account
> the result was not good, but nice enough.
>
> Today with computing power I would do the same and when I run throug all
> sphere patches and cubes I would do then (not before) a precise
> calcultion with gravitational perturbations.
>
> I think this reduce the computing time very good. I need only some days
> to run a complete year for all asteroids on the golld old Atari ST
>
> Just my two cents...