Hello Monks and happy new year...

...to prove how boring it would be without the reality of digital computing and space exploration, Ultima Thule was just observed. It is fresh off the press as a 'W' for people who look at Cassiopeia. I'd like to look at it with perl.

I know that the game is that I post the source I have. It's been a while since I've made such calculations. They were for the solar eclipse that started in Neskowin, Oregon:

$ cat 4.triton.pl 
use warnings;
use strict;
use 5.010;
use WWW::Mechanize::GZip;
use HTML::TableExtract;
use Prompt::Timeout;
use open ':std', OUT => ':utf8';
use constant TIMEOUT  => 3;
use constant MAXTRIES => 30;
use utils1;

## redesign for solar eclipse of aug 21, 2017
# declarations, initializations to precede main control
my ( $moon_seconds, $sun_seconds, $equal_sec, $equal );

# set time boundaries
my ( $before_bound, $after_bound ) = ( 2458070.47111, 2458071.47111);

# hard code 2 objects to look at (rows)
my $e1 = 4;    #venus
my $e2 = 7;    #jupiter

# hard code column
my $column     = 1;                 #right ascension
my $filename   = '2.jv.txt';    #output file
my $now_string = localtime;
open( my $jh, '>>', $filename ) or die "Could not open file '$filename
+' $!";
say $jh "Script executed at $now_string";
my $attempts = 1;
my ( $lower, $upper ) = ( $before_bound, $after_bound );
my $site = 'http://www.fourmilab.ch/yoursky/cities.html';
my $mech = 'WWW::Mechanize::GZip'->new;
$mech->get($site);
$mech->follow_link( text => 'Portland OR' );
$mech->set_fields(qw'date 2');      #julian date specified
my $ref_final;                      #reference to outlive what follows

# determine equality by contracting stochastically

while ( ( ( $attempts == 1 ) || ( $sun_seconds != $moon_seconds ) ) ) 
+{

    my $default = ( ( $attempts >= MAXTRIES ) ) ? 'N' : 'Y';
    my $answer = prompt( "Make query number $attempts?", $default, TIM
+EOUT );
    exit if $answer =~ /^N/i;

    my $guess = closetohalf( $upper, $lower );
    $mech->set_fields( jd => $guess );
    $mech->click_button( value => "Update" );
    my $te = 'HTML::TableExtract'->new;
    $te->parse( $mech->content );
    my $table = ( $te->tables )[3];    #ephemeris table

    # looking to get the whole row

    my $aoa_ref = $table->rows();
    #print_aoa( $aoa_ref );
    #my $inverted = invert_aoa( $aoa_ref );
    #print_aoa( $inverted );
    $ref_final = $aoa_ref;    # 
    my $row_ref1 = $table->row($e1);
    my @row1     = @$row_ref1;
    my $row_ref2 = $table->row($e2);
    my @row2     = @$row_ref2;
    my $moon     = $row1[$column];
    my $sun      = $row2[$column];


    $moon_seconds = string_to_second($moon);
    $sun_seconds  = string_to_second($sun);

    if ( $sun_seconds < $moon_seconds ) {
        $upper = $guess;
    }
    elsif ( $moon_seconds < $sun_seconds ) {
        $lower = $guess;
    }
    else {
        $equal = $guess;
        say $jh "equal, while condition fails at julian second $equal"
+;
        $equal_sec = $moon_seconds;
    }
    say $jh "$attempts @row1";
    say $jh "$attempts @row2";
    $attempts++;
}

say $jh "equal seconds is $equal";

print_aoa( $ref_final );

sub string_to_second {
    my $string = shift;
    my $return;

    if ( my $success = $string =~ /^(\d*)h\s+(\d*)m\s+(\d*)s$/ ) {
        $return = 3600 * $1 + 60 * $2 + $3;
    }
    else {
    }
    return $return;
}


sub closetohalf {
    my ( $up, $low ) = @_;
    $low + ( $up - $low ) * ( 0.4 + rand 0.2 );
}

$

[download]

Venus and Jupiter aren't moving fast enough. Instead, I ask that we focus on the question, when will the moon next conjoin with ultima thule? More specifically, when will they have the same right ascension from the point of view of Portland, Oregon? What other resources exist to determine this?

Thanks for your comment,

Aldebaran

In reply to locating ultima thule by Aldebaran

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