Shortly, I will be beginning my third year at University in Computer Science, I am a software developer and I will be required to work on a final year project.
My idea for my final year project is to write a desktop application which would allow the user to specify a date/time and it would return all of the positions of the planets at that point in time.
I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction of how I would begin to do the math or calculate this, as I'm aware that position is relative and a bit open ended – any scope refinements to my project would be gladly accepted too as I'd like to incorporate other things.
Just to reiterate: This is not a programming question, and I'm not asking for someone to 'do my project for me' but any helpful pointers would be appreciated.
Best Answer
I would take a look at Stellarium, its an opensource application that does the very same thing. You could read the code, which I believe for the most part is in C++.