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The python pyephem library is great... if you are on Earth. Has anyone built one if you were living on Mars? A search on this turns up the ephemeris of Mars many times, but not something that could tell you the location of the moons of Mars as seen on Mars, given your location on Mars, or the location of the planets, the Sun, or Earth.

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  • $\begingroup$ There are SPICE kernels that have the orientation data for other planets and some small bodies. Any software that can use them can do what you ask, I believe PyEphem will, also SpiceyPy can. The most useful one is pck00011.tpc at the link below, though there is a specific one for Mars. They are plain text files, so you can read about what's in them by opening them in a text editor. naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/generic_kernels/pck $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 30 at 14:48
  • $\begingroup$ There are even site ID numbers for 10 Mars landing sites so you don't need to bother with entering coordinates. Eg, here's some Sun azimuth & elevation data for the Perseverance site: ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/api/… $\endgroup$
    – PM 2Ring
    Commented Jul 1 at 5:30

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Skyfield is the successor to PyEphem (note that they are supported by the same person) and it is location agnostic as far as solar system bodies are concerned.

However to my knowledge, there is no equivalent for it's support of artificial Earth satellites which it supports via an implementation of the geocentric SGP4 propagation of Two Line Element Sets.

That means that in the future, if you have an observatory on the Martian surface and you want to calculate when Elon Musk's "Starlink, Mars Edition" satellites will ruin your science, you'll have to hope that this functionality has been added.


related and/or potentially helpful

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