REQUEST: Satellite planning

[ee5cd7d5d]

Hi @mworion !
Great work with the MW4! We have been using it at the TU München for some time now and so far it's working great with our equipment.
We were discussing the idea of using it to program several satellite observations instead of tracking a single satellite each time. Something like an observation session, such that when one observation has been made then the next starts and so on. Before I start playing with the code myself I was wondering if something like that is on your roadmap? Is it a feature that you would consider in the MW4?
Thanks! And keep up the awesome work! 👍

[mworion]

Pedro,
guess you are using a 10micron mount for satellite tracking. Otherwise It would not make sense. I would like to learn what you are doing with MW4. Right now I have to finish up the first release of 2.0.
I though of a small planning tool, which selects a list of satellites to be tracked during the next night depending on a set of constraints and parameters. Still this was not intended to be a scheduler. But anyhow MW4 is open source and you are invited to play around with it. If you don't mind and have some parts done, you also might contribute and add some features as well.
Michel

[ee5cd7d5d]

Hi @mworion !

That would be awesome! I might be able to test this weekend... As you might now the weather in Munich is pretty bad this week, I was planning to go one of these days to do some maintenance but i won't be able to do any observations due to the weather.

I think it's really cool that you're interested in meeting in person. Our observatory is located at the main TU Munich building in the city center, maybe we can meet there this weekend or one of the coming weeks? What do you think?

[mworion]

Coming weekend (Fri, Sat or Sun) would work for me, after that I'm on holiday. And yes it's raining all day long....

[ee5cd7d5d]

Sounds good! We're planning on going on Sunday evening, I'll post here depending on weather and stuff. Will that work for you? The TU München building is Arcisstraße 21 just to clarify :)

[ee5cd7d5d]

@mworion it seems like we will not go tomorrow due to weather conditions. You mentioned you're on vacation the coming days, should i just text here when we go one day?

[mworion]

Yes please. There are for sure many more opportunities, there is no hurry.

[mworion]

Let’s give it a try.

…

Am 16.08.2021 um 22:20 schrieb Pedro Rodriguez ***@***.***>: Sounds good! We're planning on going on Sunday evening, I'll post here depending on weather and stuff. Will that work for you? The TU München building is Arcisstraße 21 just to clarify :) — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#153 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABSTMFE3CDNVNBJVPEWXRJLT5FXKTANCNFSM45LXGCDQ>.

[mworion]

Pedro,
in between, Could you make a list of criteria auf how you would check them against which value for the search?
I definitiv will implement some extended search and export. The scheduler itself we have to discuss. So any ideas how you would like to select would be good to know.
Michel

[ee5cd7d5d]

Hi Michel,
that looks pretty good! And the performance you managed is astounding. There is always a "but" though 😉 but: when doing observations for a particular night one can only search through the satellites that have been downloaded, and there is no chance to search through all the files, which means that I need to set the file I am searching first (for example 100 Brightest satellites), and maybe the satellite I am looking for is not there, and I have to click and filter all the files. There is also no way I can get simply "all visible satellites passing within the next hours" as I can get here. Some questions:

• Wouldn't it make more sense to load everything from every file and then add a filter? I suppose that would heavily impact performance...
• Let's assume for instance I want to track "any Cosmos upper stage". How would I go about it?
• Alternatively, can I add custom TLE files? Like if I get a custom file from CelesTrak, can I just add it? Sorry I did not have time to look at the code in this regard 😄

In any case it's definitely much much better for my purposes! I will test as soon as I get a clear sky and let you know.

By database search I meant directly querying CelesTrak (see here ) instead of using files. What do you think of that idea?

[mworion]

Hi Pedro,
a custom file is actually not included, but simple to realize. If you have an overall DB with all sat information or additional ones to these I choose from celestrak, please let my know.
I checked against the single sat data API from celestrak, but this is hard to download many data. To just get a single sat, it might be usable, but the all the search has to be done before !

[ee5cd7d5d]

Hi Michael,
I was afraid you would say the CelesTrak API does not perform 😞 I unfortunately do not know of any other database. The websites I use for observations are not really databases per se, they are rather user-oriented.
Alternatively reading from a custom file would be very helpful, because then I can simply compose a file with "interesting satellites" and keep it up to date, and that would solve most of the use cases I can think of... What do you think?

[mworion]

Hi Perdo,
how many custom entries do you need ? Adding them to the list is quit easy. So I just added one "Custom", which expects a files custom.txt with the TLE entries like the others in /data directory. You might test it next beta.
Michel

[ee5cd7d5d]

Hi Michel,
I would like to test a bit with the new custom file, but I expect if I want to do observations for a night I would need max. 100 entries. If I decide to observe for instance Starlink satellites, then one would have 1000+ satellites in the file (I think how they have like 1700...)
I think that should be alright with the performance.

[mworion]

If you right now use the active sat database, you could judge about the performance: in this file there are about 4500 satellites with its data.

…

Am 20.09.2021 um 19:00 schrieb Pedro Rodriguez ***@***.***>: Hi Michel, I would like to test a bit with the new custom file, but I expect if I want to do observations for a night I would need max. 100 entries. If I decide to observe for instance Starlink satellites, then one would have 1000+ satellites in the file (I think how they have like 1700...) I think that should be alright with the performance. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#153 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABSTMFH2OQR65IY3ICGT2KDUC5SB5ANCNFSM45LXGCDQ>.

[mworion]

I store all downloaded TLE files under data, so I would keep the solution as well for the custom.txt file.

[ee5cd7d5d]

@mworion Works like a charm! That's one of tonight's satellites as downloaded from the custom TLEs file

[mworion]

Pedro,
added some more filters (apparent magnitude of satellite) and improved the GUI. So v2.1.0b7 will show this. Coming close to release.
Could you describe your experience in centering the sats?
I would be happy if you could use the internal maths as well (probably for the same sat) and help me tuning this feature as well.
Michel

[ee5cd7d5d]

Pedro,
added some more filters (apparent magnitude of satellite) and improved the GUI. So v2.1.0b7 will show this. Coming close to release.
Could you describe your experience in centering the sats?
I would be happy if you could use the internal maths as well (probably for the same sat) and help me tuning this feature as well.
Michel

Yes I can check the new version tomorrow. I can also test the tracking if the sky is open enough.

Could you elaborate what you mean with centering the sats? And regarding the usage of the internal maths? I'm not sure what you mean 😃 Usually i just select the target and the mount takes care of the rest. The centering of the sat is done either manually or by ensuring that the mount model is accurate enough. I thought about using a tracker, but that's far off for now, as our current priority is the automation of the dome.

[mworion]

Pedro,

During tracking you have on the right side three sliders / button setups to change tracking position in relation to satellite. On for time (meaning along the tracking path - the most important part) and two for the axis RA / DEC. This should work whenever you track a satellite. Beside the Handpad this is the way centering manually the satellite from MW4 side.

Automation of the dome should be working as well (also subject to test as I don't have a dome).

The interesting part is the internally calculation: This is done not in the mount, but MW4 calulates the satellite track of its own and transfers the data in steps to the mount, which finally follow the way points. I made a comparison between mount calculated path and MW4 calculated path. The difference is only mac 10 arc sec. There is a important "but": If I use the same time base that is the case, but when doing a model, the mount could correct it's internal time according to the real stars. This correction is not accessible from outside (e.g. MW4). This delta is also not reflected in the time gathered from the mount itself, because I guess that the corrections is applied after the mount calculated the "nominal" track and then doing the model corrections afterwards.

This means, that MW4 tracking path is shifted along the track by +- 1s. This could be corrected with the first slider. If possible you could test this and report back if that works. If so, the assumptions were correct a I could work with them.

Why doing the MW4 calculations at all you might ask: A could add constraints in term of avoid flips, repsect horizon lines etc. in the calculation whereas the mount itself does not.
Michel

[mworion]

Planning is now out in v2.1x

[ee5cd7d5d]

Fantastic! Will test it today. Weather should be good. By the way, it seems like it's a little difficult to allow someone external to the TU Munich in the observatory :( but I will try to organize a visit concept. It's also more difficult because of corona... :(

[ee5cd7d5d]

Hmmm i can't find any planning tab? Or is it integrated in the current ones and I'm just being dumb? 🤣

[mworion]

Hi Pedron,
sorry to tell I had to revert the sat scheduler as it broke in some areas the UI event queue. The idea was to select a sat from the list and add it to the scheduler. The scheduler sorts the sat passes by time and you could start it / stop it. But that's it.
Any comments ?

For a possible visit: Please take your time. I'm definitely interested in visiting the site, but it should not be stressful :-)
Michel