-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Texas weather has finally been consistently good enough that I can test some software I finished in May of 2007. The tool takes a NORAD vehicle ID, an ISO8601 time string, and a step resolution in seconds. It generates the highest position above the observer (for El-over-Az mounts only at the moment) and a motion plan which would allow a suitably equipped telescope to track the >orbital plane< of the vehicle before and after its appearance. The first successful test was earlier this evening. I'm using the HST elements from the 07219.16530683 epoch. The HST passed through the center of the field of view of my telescope at 02:32:47.92 UTC +/- 0.1s. It was admittedly toward one edge owing to limitations on my elevation measurement capabilities. This is a few seconds early, as the software predicted the pass to cross the field at 02:33:00.00 UTC at Az 158.78 degrees El 25.54 degrees. No compensation for atmospheric refraction is currently in effect. The tool uses Paul Crawford & Andrew Brooks' "Dundee" orbital propagation code. This version's newest file is dated 5 August 2006, just a little over a year ago. The telescope is a 150mm f/8 Newtonian with a 32mm eyepiece and 1200mm focal length. Its FOV is about 1.5 degrees. The telescope is not currently automated, but I'm writing a stepper motor driver for the 5-phase motor I have (Verilog) which will allow it to follow the orbital plane, though there's more software to write to support the single-axis motion plan generation. My .sig (below) has the details of the site location. I plan to make web-based access to the tool available sometime in the next month. John - -- 30d8m42.6sN 97d52m43.8sW/30.145167 -97.878833 220m WGS84 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGuTnLThFRLa48rEYRAlF1AKC0f0be44tl3OYBxECcDge69LNGzwCfQQgD dsiAY65MxrA1XluufrOvRpc= =abvy -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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