Philip_Taylor

Thanks for the suggestions. Many controllers support input of satellite TLEs and generation of a track. But the TLE may well not be that accurate. What I was looking for was something that actively monitors (at 1 Hz+) the apparent satellite position and generates offsets for the axes to track the satellite accurately. The best option I have found so far is something called 'pypogs' which is software for an "automated closed-loop satellite tracker". https://github.com/esa/pypogs This sounds like what I need but it is a substantial piece of Python code that is not packaged to simply install and work easily. And it's not clear how it interacts with the telescope mount.

No replies, so I assume the answer is no. A more specific question - is it possible to use PHD/PHD2 on an altaz mount telescope and guide such that it produces alt and az guiding offsets? This, in principle, is what I need.

Is anyone aware of off-the-shelf software (free or otherwise) that would enable guiding on a satellite? I would be using an altaz mount and tracking using the satellite TLE. But I would like to track it more precisely by measuring the satellite's apparent position frequently and calculating offsets. Combining image processing software (e.g. Open Vision Control: http://openvisionc.sourceforge.net) to generate track offset commands might do the trick, but I'm wondering if there is anything already existing that does this out of the box? Some possible software called Satellite Chaser (https://sites.google.com/view/satellitechaser/home) seems to have disappeared. Philip

Thanks I had not spotted that, I will try it out, Philip

I'm developing software to automate a guiding system and the first stage is to identify and characterise the stars (and other objects) in the guide camera field. Unfortunately, I'm obliged to use Windows for this system (I usually use Linux). Has anyone got Sextractor running on Windows? Using CMake & Visual Studio I've spent a lot of time trying to get it to compile and build, without success - I keep getting obscure errors with undefined symbols when linking. Alternatively, can anyone recommend a suitable replacement for Sextractor which is known to work on Windows? Philip Taylor