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Anyone fancy writing a plug in?

NickH

By NickH
in Discussions - Scopes / Whole setups

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NickH

NickH

Posted
Posted

Had an idea...talked it through with the guys at Uni of Glamorgan, they think it's a goer..

So...here goes...

GRB's ...popular and in the news at the moment

Thousands of amateur telescopes, covering the entire globe..

email alerts/feeds from major orbiting satellites to amateurs/pro observatories when a GRB goes off

So..

Plug in/app for any ASCOM/StarryNight/TheSky/Cartes etc type app, to take the coordinates from say an RSS feed/email (from a nominated source), and plumb them directly to the scope. Much like TLE type data for satellites in format.

Warning comes up on screen in the middle of any observing/imaging session saying. This can be enabled/disabled by the user at will

"A GRB detection has been made, your scope/time/coordinates/position mean that you can observe this event" (e.g. possibly light curve), would you like to slew to the GRB's estimated position YES/NO"

Instant Amateur GRB light curve network...

Beats


  • [li]Email arrives, maybe you miss it..[/li]
    [li]Lug gear outside..[/li]
    [li]Manually punch in coordinates[/li]
    [li]Light may have already gone[/li]

And i'll happily code review and test it if anyone fancies a blast..

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Whippy

Whippy

Posted
Posted

Cracking idea Nick. Alas, I'm no coder, nor would I be able to use directly with my imaging rig (not enough wires) but as I tend to pop indoors occasionally whilst on a session, the RSS feed with the RA/DEC would be nice.

Tony..

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steppenwolf

steppenwolf

Posted
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This sounds like a cool idea - during an imaging session I am either at the dome with a network link or inside running the dome PC remotely via a network and both are connected to my ADSL router so I'd be up for involvement but sadly I am no programmer.

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EA2007

EA2007

Posted
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Who'd you speak to at Glam Uni? Alan no doubt...he knows his stuff, just make sure he's not engrosed by the snooker if its on t.v., otherwise you'll never get his attention!

Forgive my pessimism in ths next bit, but GRB's although bright, are usually very distant, I would guess (and its a guess here) that small ground based scopes such as what we amateurs have, will not be able to pick up these GRB's..I say pick up the GRB's, the only part of a gamma ray burst we can really detect here on earth is the 'afterglow' from the material cooling some hours and days after the main event. However, if you can get that afterglow in a smaller scope........good stuff!

Just my opinion...I may be quite wrong! Good idea though

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NickH

NickH

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It was Allan and Martin (both of whom seriously know their stuff!), and one GRB this year reached Mag 5.6 i think (afterglow). Most are within range of CCD's on 3-14 inch backyard scopes

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008AIPC.1000..185M

Mag 21 okay could be pushing it, but 12.8 is well within reach of most amateur equipment.

The light curve measurements would contribute some real science..

Someone with a knowledge of ASCOM and COM (if you can write Perl/Python/ and a whole heap more) should be able to write this.. it's literally a realtime translater, and basic UI, nothing fancy.. http://ascom-standards.org/About/CompatLang.htm). In fact a plug in for MS WWT would be ideal, as it's already "Net" enabled, but better to target all of the commercial/freeware toolsets which many of us use, rather than platform specific.

I posted the request on the ASCOM group, hopefully someone there will take an interest and give it a go!

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Ben Ritchie

Ben Ritchie

Posted
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I've written some code to drive a mount via the ASCOM driver from Java, and it'll also drive CCDSoft or AstroArt to take an integration too. Parsing the flash email coordinates to give the RA and DEC should be trivial... so might just do it :D

Not sure how to make it a plug-in for anything though, would need to look into that. At the moment it's a stand-alone Java application that would take control of your mount and CCD for you. Can even autofocus!

The light curve measurements would contribute some real science..

Putting my 'pro' hat on, the age-old problem with this is that although it's (relatively) easy to get an image of something, it needs someone capable of doing the full photometry on it to be of 'real' scientific value as opposed to an interesting amateur project. So you need to deal with CCD linearity, calibration etc. - it's the same problem as why you can't take an image of an open cluster and create an HR diagram from it, CCD saturation and non-linearity buggers it up.

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NickH

NickH

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Ben

I will contact the people at Glamorgan on this now. Swift do send them out, I am not on the sub list, but I believe they get pager/sms type messages with info.

Fantastic, and thanks for stepping in!

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Ben Ritchie

Ben Ritchie

Posted
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Ok, think they look like this - just need to figure out where to sign up and write a quick parser!

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

TITLE: GCN/SWIFT NOTICE

NOTICE_DATE: Sun 09 Nov 08 07:02:23 UT

NOTICE_TYPE: Swift-BAT GRB Position

TRIGGER_NUM: 334112, Seg_Num: 0

GRB_RA: 330.787d {+22h 03m 09s} (J2000),

330.935d {+22h 03m 44s} (current),

329.951d {+21h 59m 48s} (1950)

GRB_DEC: -54.719d {-54d 43' 06"} (J2000),

-54.676d {-54d 40' 31"} (current),

-54.961d {-54d 57' 37"} (1950)

GRB_ERROR: 3.00 [arcmin radius, statistical only]

GRB_INTEN: 4962 [cnts] Image_Peak=227 [image_cnts]

TRIGGER_DUR: 1.024 [sec]

TRIGGER_INDEX: 148 E_range: 25-100 keV

BKG_INTEN: 30968 [cnts]

BKG_TIME: 25308.75 SOD {07:01:48.75} UT

BKG_DUR: 8 [sec]

GRB_DATE: 14779 TJD; 314 DOY; 08/11/09

GRB_TIME: 25326.61 SOD {07:02:06.61} UT

GRB_PHI: -90.09 [deg]

GRB_THETA: 20.35 [deg]

SOLN_STATUS: 0x3

RATE_SIGNIF: 14.93 [sigma]

IMAGE_SIGNIF: 9.10 [sigma]

MERIT_PARAMS: +1 +0 +0 +0 +2 +4 +0 +0 -8 +0

SUN_POSTN: 224.79d {+14h 59m 09s} -16.98d {-16d 58' 58"}

SUN_DIST: 85.15 [deg] Sun_angle= -7.1

(East of Sun)

MOON_POSTN: 353.24d {+23h 32m 57s} +0.67d {+00d 40' 29"}

MOON_DIST: 58.31 [deg]

MOON_ILLUM: 80 [%]

GAL_COORDS: 339.02,-48.92 [deg] galactic lon,lat of the burst (or transient)

ECL_COORDS: 310.83,-39.56 [deg] ecliptic lon,lat of the burst (or transient)

COMMENTS: SWIFT-BAT GRB Coordinates.

COMMENTS: This is a rate trigger.

COMMENTS: A point_source was found.

COMMENTS: This does not match any source in the on-board catalog.

COMMENTS: This does not match any source in the ground catalog.

COMMENTS: This is a GRB.

COMMENTS: This trigger occurred at longitude,latitude = 141.30,8.81 [deg].

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mcrossley

mcrossley

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Nick

It doesn't have to be a plugin, it could be stand alone and just connect to the scope via POTH. It would be fairly trivial to knock up a (wait for it!) Vista Gadget that did this, maybe half an hours work (ever the optimist). It could of course be a little VB app as well for you Luddites :D

Mark

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steppenwolf

steppenwolf

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I like the idea of using POTH as this makes it so very flexible - when I am imaging, I have both Cartes du Ciel and MaximDL working together through POTH and it would be trivial to connect a third device and all three would talk together and share co-ordinates but we would need a warning flag rather that the scope just heading off to the GRB's position (or at least the option of not having this happen without warning!).

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Ben Ritchie

Ben Ritchie

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It responds to email alerts ... stuck it on the ASCOM simulator for now because it scared the Rubbish out of me when my HEQ5 suddenly came to life behind me! I'd put a test message on the email address, left a rather long polling time (5 mins) and forgot that this thing would wake the mount up when it picked the email up... :D :?

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