planning tool and timetables

[FrenchyArnaud]

Someone wrote here "You'll never forget the first time you saw the rings of Saturn" (Sorry I can't remember who, Alzeimer is kicking in)

And it's true. I won't forget it. Saturn is an easy but rewarding sighting. So would be Jupiter.

I really would like to see Jupiter, but Stellarium shows me that it sets just after the sun, so even if I was lucky enough to have a glance for the 10mn it is 5° up down to the horizon, probably I'd only see a fuzzy orange patch giggling like a drunk diva with a massive sunburn.

Maybe obvious, but I could not find it : is there some kind of tool to plan this ? Some software where you could input where you are, design a target, and that would return the timetables, rises_time, hign_time, sets_time. Ideally indicating if the Sun would be above or below the horizon at that point. So that I can say "At my location between 3rd march and the 7th june I will be able to see jupiter in the morning from 3.16am until sunrise at 5.21am" - and therefore plan accordingly. 

Thanks for your lights !

[RichM63]

You can pretty much do all you ask with Stellarium, by setting your location coordinates and then using the date/time advance tools. Cartes du Ciel will also allow this.

Or if it is just Jupiter that you want to  study then Jupiter 2 is a great little program, and it is written by a French guy.

A+

Rich

[GuLinux]

Hi, 

my software, SkyPlanner, does exactly what you said, mostly for deep sky objects, but it has also a planets section too (small, but it's there). 

For deep sky objects it also calculates automatically what's visible, based on your position, date and time, and equipment. 

 

You can find the link on my profile, site and signature. It's free (open source), and it's a web application, so no need to install anything. 

Cheers! 

[psamathe]

I have an app on my iPhone called Observer Pro which seems to do what you are after https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/observer-pro-astronomy-planner/id462392803?mt=8 but only for DSOs.

Nice visibility graphs (best time of day, best time of year, visibility, etc.)

Ian

[FrenchyArnaud]

@Psamanthe - It exists on Android, but it's rather expensive...

 

@Gulinux : this skyplanner really looks excellent ! The connection to dso-browser, and the layout of dso-browser is very exactly what I need. 

I see "Gulinux" so I take it you are initially a pinguin addict as I am. Are you able to compile the sources to have it running on a 32b LXDE on Debian ? (or Lubuntu. Or Xfce+Debian or Xubuntu.... any lightweight deb-based)

That is a software I would definitely pay for. The trouble is, I cannot rely on 3/4G when I am in the middle of absolutely nowhere, so I have this 10yo  EEEpc 904 running Stellarium ...  (Currently on Lubuntu 16.04) and having this sky-planner with me would be really great. 

[GuLinux]

1 minute ago, FrenchyArnaud said:

@Gulinux : this skyplanner really looks excellent ! The connection to dso-browser, and the layout of dso-browser is very exactly what I need. 

I see "Gulinux" so I take it you are initially a pinguin addict as I am. Are you able to compile the sources to have it running on a 32b LXDE on Debian ? (or Lubuntu. Or Xfce+Debian or Xubuntu.... any lightweight deb-based)

That is a software I would definitely pay for. The trouble is, I cannot rely on 3/4G when I am in the middle of absolutely nowhere, so I have this 10yo  EEEpc 904 running Stellarium ...  (Currently on Lubuntu 16.04) and having this sky-planner with me would be really great. 

You can bet I am

Yes, it should be able to run on a 32bit debian, but I never tested it on 32bit environments, so it's just a guess.

It also depends on how recent is your compiler (g++ 5, I think)

Another available option is to run it through docker (though I don't know if docker exists for 32bit)

 

Anyway, the most recommended usage of skyplanner is to produce printable plans, it is heavly optimized for printing, this way you can avoid dazzling your eyes with your laptop light, and use a red light torch on paper sheets instead

 

[FrenchyArnaud]

59 minutes ago, GuLinux said:

Another available option is to run it through docker (though I don't know if docker exists for 32bit)

Well, if you go this way, it's a web app... it should run on LAMP on any distro, given a few tweaks and extensions.

I understand it's primarily designed to get charts printed. There are a few issues for me as for this. For one I don't have a printer (ok it's lame, but still). More importantly it means you must decide what you will observe before you go. It also means you are printing charts that will be used once, unless you store them for a year, which would be a logistical nightmare. So the dynamic, on-screen version is better IMHO. And oh yes,  the screen of the EEEpc is masked in red film 

[GuLinux]

Quote

Well, if you go this way, it's a web app... it should run on LAMP on any distro, given a few tweaks and extensions

well.. no... it's a c++ web application... running with postgresql, so no "M" and no "P" in LAMP  You can also skip the "A", actually, as it's a standalone webserver

Quote

I understand it's primarily designed to get charts printed. There are a few issues for me as for this. For one I don't have a printer (ok it's lame, but still). More importantly it means you must decide what you will observe before you go. It also means you are printing charts that will be used once, unless you store them for a year, which would be a logistical nightmare. So the dynamic, on-screen version is better IMHO. And oh yes,  the screen of the EEEpc is masked in red film 

Well, this is a personal thing of course. Many stargazers use to plan in advance, so during the night they can concentrate on just finding the objects.

So the idea of this tool is to print a list of objects (not charts, though! you still need an atlas) ordered by transit time, so at each hour you already know what to observe.

But neverthless, your option on running on a local laptop is certainly valid, given that you can compile all the dependencies

If you can, I would recommend docker, so it can download and setup for you the database too.

If not, there's also the sqlite3 option, I used that only for local testing, but it should be alright too

[FrenchyArnaud]

47 minutes ago, GuLinux said:

Well, this is a personal thing of course. Many stargazers use to plan in advance, so during the night they can concentrate on just finding the objects.

So the idea of this tool is to print a list of objects (not charts, though! you still need an atlas) ordered by transit time, so at each hour you already know what to observe.

But neverthless, your option on running on a local laptop is certainly valid, given that you can compile all the dependencies

It is indeed personnal  

I did not realize that you can print the list of transits - that is great, because printing is a vast concept and printing to pdf to mobile phone is always a convenient option for me !

I will certainely not try and compile, I will first try the app on my phablet and, if it does not work, try and tether the phone to the laptop. THEN - if it does not work, I will see for other solutions

[GuLinux]

Just now, FrenchyArnaud said:

It is indeed personnal  

I did not realize that you can print the list of transits - that is great, because printing is a vast concept and printing to pdf to mobile phone is always a convenient option for me !

I will certainely not try and compile, I will first try the app on my phablet and, if it does not work, try and tether the phone to the laptop. THEN - if it does not work, I will see for other solutions

Right.. that's another very good option, even better, perhaps.

If you compile it and run it on your laptop, you will have everything working but DSS images, while printing on PDF you will have them.

A good help, since it's basically a preview of what you might see

[Waldemar]

I find this: http://dso-browser.com/  to be a very handy tool

 

Waldemar