Anyone fancy writing a plug in?

[Ben Ritchie]

At the moment it'll run in full auto (as soon as the alert comes in it'll hijack whatever you were doing and head off elsewhere in the name of science - it'll start imaging too), "prompt me" which gives you a yes/no option or "information only" where it'll dump out the alert info but do nothing with it.

Fully automatic is CCDSoft only at the moment, I need to figure out how to fully automate AA (and don't have Maxim to try). It also needs a little intelligence to avoid going off to coordinates it can't reach.

... the alert parser is Rubbish too at the moment :oops:

[NickH]

Ben...You're a hero... amazingly quick work... and I suspect the alert parser will be relatively easy to fix up (just testing some xml parsing here for my day job)

The "is it above the Horizon" option, I guess can derive/integrate in with a lot of software, though, again whilst non trivial, will need some work.

maybe chuck some ideas at the EQMod/ASCOM group as is, save you doing all the coding?

[steppenwolf]

It is all heading in a very good direction , Ritchie - you know what, I'm going to set up a special GRB email address now so that I am available to test when the time comes!

Nick, the EQMod guys may well be interested in integrating it into their software - they are good like that and are always open to suggestions.

[Ben Ritchie]

The "is it above the Horizon" option, I guess can derive/integrate in with a lot of software, though, again whilst non trivial, will need some work.

I've written this code before (wrote something to find me G11 alignment stars at one point), just need to port it.

It is all heading in a very good direction , Ritchie - you know what, I'm going to set up a special GRB email address now so that I am available to test when the time comes!

It's usually Ben (unless you're my mother and i've been naughty ), but hopefully i'll have something suitable to beta-test shortly ... being able to change the email address you listen on might be a useful feature in that case

[Ben Ritchie]

Got to do some real work for a bit though

[NickH]

Aye...

Same here...(what joy...C++/ASM/COM/C# testing) (all in the same app...utter nightmare)

[NickH]

It is all heading in a very good direction , Ritchie - you know what, I'm going to set up a special GRB email address now so that I am available to test when the time comes!

Nick, the EQMod guys may well be interested in integrating it into their software - they are good like that and are always open to suggestions.

I have mentioned it on the ASCOM group, but Ben's so far ahead on this now, I think once his code is done, if someone wants to integrate/do any more, then that is really taking the spirit of "open source" to new levels

It will also open up the test platforms more once it's out to beta test (with code hopefully so that it can be tweaked/adapted)

I'm all goosebumpy over this...magic stuff Ben...really magic!

[NickH]

email or RSS feed/IM type approach. I guess all much of a muchness in reality, and parsing the data from a standard email I think may be easier

[Ben Ritchie]

I think once his code is done, if someone wants to integrate/do any more, then that is really taking the spirit of "open source" to new levels

It'll be GPL with source, so anybody's welcome to it... i've even commented/doc'd it

email or RSS feed/IM type approach. I guess all much of a muchness in reality, and parsing the data from a standard email I think may be easier

The only real issue here is if there's a Java API to make getting hold of the alert easy, Swift/BAT alerts can come by email or across a network (I think), so it was easy to write a bit of JavaMail code to poll an email address. As long as the API exists, code to get hold of the alert and parse it is fairly straightforward.

[NickH]

Cool

The neat thing with this idea, is that you can expand it to generic supernova alerts as well.. just by changing the parsing code/

:-)

I see potentially thousands of users for this... seriously...

[steppenwolf]

It's usually Ben (unless you're my mother and i've been naughty ),

Doh, I knew that All along in my mind's eye I have been thinking of you as RitchieJarvis - strange the way the brain works .....

Sorry, its all the excitement - although I have a feeling that my own excitement is about to subside as I have just remembered that all my CCDs are OSC so this will limit my contribution but I am still up for testing the software as I have a permanent connection to the internet in my dome

[Ben Ritchie]

Sorry, its all the excitement - although I have a feeling that my own excitement is about to subside as I have just remembered that all my CCDs are OSC so this will limit my contribution but I am still up for testing the software as I have a permanent connection to the internet in my dome

Regardless of the science element, I think it would be pretty cool for an amateur to capture one of these at all - until very recently even the professionals couldn't capture the optical afterglow. Like Nick said, these things are bright enough to be in reach of amateur kit ... so all it needs is for me to debug this and a bit of good luck to get a bright one at a time when someone can capture it...

[steppenwolf]

Regardless of the science element, I think it would be pretty cool for an amateur to capture one of these at all -

Very true!

[NickH]

What would make this fly is a relatively low cost, well calibrated/linear CCD setup..

Some good reading here

observatory.ou.edu/wrccd22oct06.pdf

[NickH]

Regardless of the science element, I think it would be pretty cool for an amateur to capture one of these at all -

Very true!

There are some already (South African chap, and some in the USA), but it's rare as hens teeth right now for amateurs..

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast14mar_2m.htm

This plug in...all that will change!

[Doc]

It is a gret idea but how often do these recordable GRB's occur?

[Ben Ritchie]

GRBs happen on pretty much a daily basis, one you could potentially capture where brightness, night, weather and location match up ... dunno, maybe one a month? But run this in the background and you'll have a chance maybe.

Still needs luck though, but beats "just another M42"

[NickH]

5 in one day this year (March 19th I think...)

pretty much every day as Ben says...and then expand the plan to SN and Nova bursts...and you have a very very neat solution.

Naysayers - 0

Doers - 1

:-)

[EA2007]

Still needs luck though, but beats "just another M42"

.....would surely become 'just another GRB' ;~)

I am sure that marty and alan from glam will want a code for 'cloud lifing' the valleys are rubbish for observing...350 days of drizzle at Ponty! And they can't do observing after 9 with their scope...stupid uni h&s regulations. Plus if they do get time, the chavs who are ([removed word]) on the otherside of the valley have their headlights on...sorry had to add that bit, enjoy lunch!

[Doc]

Neat....

Supernova bursts sound very cool.

Rare I know but to catch one of them.

[NickH]

Marty and Al won't have to worry too much about cloud soon...

You wait till you see the other project I am involved with......

"A vi-----va Espana"...

14 inch Maksutov/TMB's/TV101is's/Pentax scopes/Ethos EP's... anyone... (remember the post asking people about big mounts....)

Tis all coming together quite nicely.. though IMHO we have not got the mount I wanted (an AP1200 or 3600), the option we have gone with, will do the job well..

(FYI, the plan is to make this a commercial facility eventually, at a hopefully very competitive rate..., at the moment it's planned for educational outreach, only an hour or so from Malaga, nice dark site, near a national park)

[NickH]

The great thing here is that not only can the CCD brigade image them, but the visual fans with either good star hopping or GOTO, may (if it's above say mag 13 ish) see them as well.

Can you imaging watching in real time a GRB fade away, that's how fast some of can them tail off. Not much else in the deep sky is that dynamic, and stick a DG optics grating/star analyser on your CCD, and you could do some spectroscopy on the event too..

Some more useful reading for anyone who fancies having a go with this

http://www.britastro.org/vss/ccd_photometry.htm

[NickH]

Ben, take a look at this post on the EQ MOD yahoo group

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/EQMOD/message/14405

basically

" Looks like its pretty much sorted then. All that is needed is for that

client app to incorporate the standard ASCOM chooser to select a

server (ie, EQASCOM) and it'll work no problem (and EQASCOM will do

the horizon limit protection if you want it to)."

May save you some work

[Ben Ritchie]

Cheers Nick, i'm calling into the ASCOM chooser via COM - if it will do protection against invalid slews then that does save some effort.

[mcrossley]

Ben, if I read this right, then you are writing an independent applet rather than a plugin?

Mark