Precession in Guide
Bill J Gray Oct 30 5:09 PM
Hi Roger,
The only way I can see to do this is to go into Ticks, Grids,
Etc., turn Grids on with a suitably large spacing (probably the
maximum available), and set the "Epoch" to D0, i.e., epoch of
date (rather than the usual "fixed" epochs such as B1950 or J2000).
Start animating with a suitably large step size (of decades or
centuries), and you'll see the coordinate grid wander with precession.
It will wander slowly around in the expected circle, complete
a loop, start out for the next loop... then keep going until,
by +30340, the polar axis lies in the plane of the ecliptic,
sort of the way that of Uranus does today. Seasonal variations
become extreme as large chunks of the world have continuous
sunlight in summer and continuous night in winter. Run the
animation backward, and you learn that our distant ancestors
faced similar problems. Yet another reason I tell people not to
trust Guide very much more than a few millennia from the present.
The standard IAU precession method wasn't really intended to
handle this sort of thing.
But run it from about 15000 years ago to 15000 years in the
future, and you'll have a good animation that will help to make
the basic idea of precession clear. (A gyroscope helps too,
of course!)
-- Bill