Hi All,

Just wondering if anyone can recognise the software used at @ 2:19, it appears to be able to track a satellite visually and adjust scope accordingly!



Many Thanks

Graham

Hi Graham,

Here is something we did for Webtreatz. It works absolutely fine and seeing your mount tracking the ISS without touching the mount is cool. www.webtreatz.com/index.php/tutorials/35...53-satellite-tracker have fun.

Carl.

Hi Carl,

I have that up and running and it is cool but what I had in mind is something that if I see something I can slew the scope to it and 'click track' and it tracks it, wheather its an aeroplane, satellite or spaceship. as opposed to knowing what your looking for and finding the TLE's etc..

Graham.

Graham I dont think what your looking for exists (at least outside of military circles). In order to track something you need to know where its going. Alternatively you can do something resembling autoguiding where you determine the motion from successive images, I suppose it could be done but it would be a non-trivial task.

Downloading the TLE files is easy just download the file and import it and your up and running.

They say in the bit that it's software they developed.
In fairness to them the images are cracking but
boy they don't half toot their own horn.

Frank_Ryan_jr wrote:

boy they don't half toot their own horn.

You can sing that.

FWIW, I also came across this image - amazing detail!!
antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070628.html

Look at the aperture and focal length used!

michaeloconnell wrote:
FWIW, I also came across this image - amazing detail!!
antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070628.html [/quote]

Crikey! They used a TRACKED 25" SCOPE to get that! It's like looking through polaroid via the cargo bay of the Shuttle about a couple miles from it...

Some excellent pics there!!

Can you break down HD video to frames for stacking?

The software looks like stacking software, when the object moves, the selection window follows it, then I guess it has to speak to the scope to tell it to over move in the direction the selection window moves..

Graham

I've been in touch with Mike previously about another matter so you could contact him via his web site

www.astrospider.com/

I found a kind of 'how to' on the other guys website,

Philip Masding Sat Track

Does the schemitic make sense to any of the learned folk here?

I will drop him an email to see if he is willing to part with a copy!

Graham

Looks very interesting alright. The schematic describes the process of determining the apparent motion of the object and then moving the scope to compensate. Should work 'in theory'. I just wonder how it might work in practice. What if it passed near a bright star might it lock onto the star? Also you will need a camera capable of pretty decent frame rates. I 'suspect' that a webcam might not be fast enough. You might need one of those 60fps jobs like a DMK or lumenera.

Graham: You cant really stack the images because satellites appear to change position and orientation from our point of view VERY quickly indeed. In my experiments even after 1/2 second two images can;t just be overlaid. What you do is search through your movie and pick the very best frame you can find and then process that one a bit more.

Method looks to be PID Loop control - used extensively in Industry to control changing variables in a manner that avoids oscillation about a desired set point. E.g if one wanted to maintain a temperature one would heat, cool and measure but there is a tendency to overshoot so the heating and cooling systems fight each other and temperature oscillates. PID loop control helps minimise or prevents this.

For more detail than you probably want see

lorien.ncl.ac.uk/ming/pid/PID.pdf

I'm sure one would be able to find algorithms for use on the PC in the pipeline between capture and control corrections to mount.

An ambitious adventure, me thinks, but very best of luck if you pursue this.

Mark

Graham

I tried to find something more digestable and to see what software might be around. I didn't really have much success.

One problem is that it is often referred to simply as "PID control" and that little acronym is very common in web links and anything to do with software where it mostly refers to "Process ID".

All I could find is that it appears to be used in some (maybe all?) adaptive optics telescopes for the adjustment of the multiple mirrors.

I was suprised not to find any significant reference to its use in autoguiding. EQAlign was one (free) guiding package that makes reference to the algorithm - but I don't think that package would do what you want to do.
But I enclose a link for completeness.

eqalign.net/e_eqalign.html

Mark

Thanks for that Mark,

I will take a look! wheather I understand it or manage it, I will still take a good look!!

Thanks again for the links!

Graham.