Entering a Time

The time that you enter should be ordinary clock time of the locality, or “Universal Time”. If you enter a Universal Time or Greenwich Mean Time, be sure to change the initials in the Zone box to “UT” or “GMT”. If necessary you can also enter a Local Mean Time or a Local Apparent Time which were the prevalent time standards prior to the late 19th century. If you enter time as Local Mean Time or Local Apparent Time then you should enter “LMT” or “LAT” in the Zone box.

There is no need to convert a time to Ephemeris Time (ET), as Solar Fire does this internally whenever it is necessary.

You may enter a time in any of the most commonly used formats. Any characters within the time may be in upper, lower or mixed case. Entered times are always immediately transformed into a standard display format if they are recognized. If they are not recognized as valid times then an error dialog box appears, after which a further attempt may be made.

The display format that Solar Fire uses is based on the time format settings within Windows, which may be set by using the Regional Settings icon on the Windows Control Panel. See Selecting a Time Format for further details.

Following are some examples of valid times, and the manner in which they are displayed by the program:

Description of Format

•You must enter at least an hour; minutes and seconds are optional. You can separate hours, minutes and seconds with a blank( ), slash(/), period(.), colon(:),semi-colon(;) or comma(,).

•You can enter time in the 24 hour format (with an hour from 0 to 23), or you can use an AM/PM format by typing either AM or PM after the time. If the hour number is less than 12, then there is no need to type AM.

•You can also enter any of the following words: "Noon", "Midday" or "Midnight".