You will need a decent planetarium program (Cartes du Ciel, SkyMap, Starry Night etc) with an up dated list of comets to see what is visible from each of the scopes to plan which comet to chase (the sky alerts page at iTelescope gives a list of bright comets that are observable now). Before writing your own script, we suggest checking out our FAQ on writing your own script.įirst you need a comet that is 30 degrees above the horizon at minimum in the time you have planned, you also need to book a scope that will be appropriate to the brightness (or lack thereof) of the comet. Keep in mind, this is an advanced option. The other possibility is creating a Scripted Plan to select via the Reservation System. If the target you have chosen is not visible due to time or position in the sky you will see an error message. You can then set up an image sequence to image the target. It will show the following screen once you have selected it: You can take the image in real time using the Acquire Comet/NEO option, or create an Scripted Plan to be used in the Reservation System.Įither way, once you have completed the MPC process above you should get something like this:ĬK10X010 2011 09 10.7243 0.482463 1.000023 343.8091 323.2236 1.8391 20110827 10.0 4.0 C/2010 X1 (Elenin)įor the real time option, once you have this information, log in to your chosen telescope and select "Acquire Comet/NEO" from the left hand menu. Click the big ' Get Ephemeris/HTML' button and paste the resulting data in the text file you download.įrom here, you have two possible options. Search for the object you want to target in the large topmost box, input the observatory MPC code from the iTelescope Info page (eg, H06 Q62 I89 etc) and use the MPC 1-line Elements option.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |