Ted's Toolbox Applet

Things you CANNOT do with the applet (but you can with the application)

Plot or Export Solar Data from the Solar Plotter Tool

Save your Latitude and Longitude Preferences. You must type in your location on each panel which uses it.

Here's the help file if you need some information on what all these tools do...Ted's Toolbox Help, or some more help below

(Be sure you have JRE 1.5 or later installed, get it here)

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Explanatory text from the Ted's Toolbox Application page:

	Time Tools, consists of time conversions and time interval calculations
	GPS Tools, consists of GPS time calculations, K-point, Time of week, Z-Count etc.
	Lunar Tools, consists of Lunar illumination and phase calculations. Contains a nice picture representing the moon's current phase.
	Solar Tools, consists of Rise/Set times, solar position data and a Solar Plotting Tool

Hints: The Time Offset from GMT is needed to display the Rise and Set Times correctly for your latitude and longitude. In the US, the following Time Offsets from GMT can be used for your specific Time Zone:

Time Zone:
Hawaii Alaska Pacific Mountain Central Eastern

During Daylight Savings Time -9.0 -8.0 -7.0 -6.0 -5.0 -4.0

During Standard Time -10.0 -9.0 -8.0 -7.0 -6.0 -5.0

See here for a Map displaying the Time Zone offsets from Greenwich Mean Time for the entire world.

	Coordinate Tools, consists of geodetic (Lat/Long/Height) to Earth-Centered Earth-Fixed coordinate conversions. Also converts latitudes and longitudes to degree-minute-second format
	Sidereal Tools, calculates the sidereal time (Greenwich Hour angle) for a given time as well as calculating the Earth's nutation parameters (nutation in longitude and nutation in obliquity)
	Utility Tools, consists of a number converter, converting numbers between binary, octal, integer and hex and a color chooser tool with enhanced color viewing tools.

Known Deficiencies:

On the Windows operating system, during daylight savings time, the current time display in the toolbox will be one hour off of the correct time unless you have the "Automatically adjust clock for daylight saving changes" option selected in the Date and Time properties panel.

Usage Notes:

The toolbox has tool tip hints for all functions, however there is no explanatory text describing each of the tool outputs. In general, any editable field is an input field. For example, on the color chooser tool the Hex/Integer color number can be entered in the field below the color sliders. Pressing the enter key once the number is entered will change the sliders to the color represented by the number entered.

Where Latitudes and Longitudes are required:

Your Latitude is measured from -90.0 to 90.0 (negative south of the equator)
Your Longitude is measured positive East of the Prime Meridian (0 degrees longitude) and negative west of the Prime Meridian
Altitudes are in meters

The following explanation from version 1 is nice, but Version 2 does this for you.
Latitudes and Longitudes must be in decimal format (not in degree/minute/second format) and can be converted thusly:

(Positive example: North Latitude)     15 12 34 N

    15 degrees 12 minutes 34 seconds = 15 + 12/60 + 34/3600 = 15.2094444

(Positive example: East Longitude)     115 43 52 E

    115 degrees 43 minutes 52 seconds = 115 + 43/60 + 52/3600 = 115.7311111

(Negative example: South Latitude)     34 56 12 S

    34 degrees 56 minutes 12 seconds South = -(34 + 56/60 + 12/3600) = -34.9366667

(Negative example: West Longitude)     104 23 03 W

    104 degrees 23 minutes 3 seconds = -(104 + 23/60 + 3/3600) = -104.3841667