Right ascension/declinati​on to azimuth/elevation

Mapping from equatorial to horizontal coordinates - i.e. from RA/Dec to az/el (Alt/Az)
1.8K Downloads
Updated 22 Oct 2009

View License

Calculates azimuth and elevation angle in the local horizon system for a sky position given in equatorial coordinates (RA Dec J2000).

Function Call: [Az El] = RADec2AzEl(350,58, '2008/02/18 13:10:00',60,15,0)

Input:
RA - Right ascension (J2000) of sky position in degrees (0:360)
Dec - Declination angle (J2000) of sky position in degrees (-90:90)
UTC - Date and Time in UTC of format YYYY/MM/DD hh:mm:ss
Lat - Latitude of location in degrees -90:90 -> S(-) N(+)
Lon - Longitude of location in degrees -180:180 W(-) E(+)
Alt - Altitude of location in km

Output:
Az - Azimuth angle in degrees
El - Elevation/Altitude Angle in degrees

Cite As

Frank Breitling (2026). Right ascension/declination to azimuth/elevation (https://uk.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/25617-right-ascension-declination-to-azimuth-elevation), MATLAB Central File Exchange. Retrieved .

MATLAB Release Compatibility
Created with R2009a
Compatible with any release
Platform Compatibility
Windows macOS Linux
Version Published Release Notes
1.1.0.0

Small updates to the documentation.

1.0.0.0