ECMAScript Experiments

Here are some experiments with ECMAScript (aka JavaScript or JScript) to accompany my article in the March 2000 Sky & Telescope magazine. See also the errata page for that article. More experiments will be added over time.

Surface Brightness Calculator

Dynamic OrbitViewer applet invocation for comets.

Dynamic OrbitViewer applet invocation for asteroids.

Simple square root example from the article.

Easter Date determination.

Julian Day to Julian/Gregorian Date conversion.

A Terrestrial Crater Impact Dimension script based upon a BASIC program from Sky & Telescope's web site.

Using a Java applet as a drawing canvas for ECMAScript code.

Dew Heater calculations.

Keith Burnett wrote a Moon circumstances calculator after reading my S&T 2000 article.

Peter Hayes' JavaScript Ephemeris page.

Peter Girard has suggested the creation of an ECMAScript code library for astronomical algorithms.

An idea I've had is to write a BASIC (which dialect: GWBASIC, QBasic, etc?) to ECMAScript translator, written in ECMAScript or Java. One could paste BASIC code into a text area on a web page, and have ECMAScript and HTML code generated on the fly. This would make the BASIC code on Sky & Telescope's web site available as interactive programs. Or, it could generate a listing, making Peter Girard's idea of a code library easier to achieve.

Here's a JavaScript quiz app I wrote for my daughter's primary school class more than a decade ago: Olympic Quiz .

Here are some general JavaScript, JScript, and ECMAScript links.