Re: (1907) Views from the Ground

To generate the position of each star/planet/moon requires
six orbital elements for each object of interest, including
the object you're viewing from.  Furthermore, the formulae
involved, while not horribly complicated, are a pain to solve.
I know, I've done it before.  You'd also need other information
like mass, luminosity/albedo, and on and on to cover the other
points you mentioned.

All this is waaaaaay out of the scope of the Traveller rules.
If you're still seriously considering this and there is no
commercial software currently available, I'd recommend you
get a good book on astrophysics (a background in higher
calculus as about all you need, although more is helpful)
and devote at least a month of your evenings to the problem.

Figuring the size of an object viewed is much much easier.
A little trig and:

                          D
  theta = 2 * ArcTan ( ------- )
                        2 * X
X = distance to object
D = Diameter of object
theta = angular size of disc

And for reference, our sun and moon have a disc about half
a degree or 30 arc minutes across.  You can use this formula
on your car, house, dog, or whatever is convenient to get
an idea of other sizes.
- - --
John H. Kim
[email removed]
[email removed]