Updated Position for Moving Asteroids

Voyager Feature Requests
1

Hi Leo,
I use Voyager and Viking for my asteroid lightcurve research. When I follow near Earth objects, they can move out of the frame. When this happens I do not use voyager because it does not seem to know the object has changed position since the last slew. For these fast moving objects I have to revert to an older piece of software and I would rather not do that.

Can you add a feature that will look up the updated RA and Dec for moving objects?
Perhaps the feature could be activated with a check box in RoboClip for moving objects or a check box under the pointing tab in the sequence. There is a re-align to object option now, but that does not seem to work for moving objects.

It would be most helpful if it would work with multiple objects in the research/mosaic and also in sequences.

Thanks for your consideration!

Regards,

Russ

2

Hi Russ, for astrometry and Research we have developed a pointing by name and offset (to obtain a displacement of target) block in DragScript. You will found under mount group. In this case the search by name will done using the connected planetarium. Have you any info on how to implement the update of position in another way ?

All the best
Leonardo

3

Leo,
Thanks for the information. I forgot about the pointing by name in dragscript. I have it working now very well thank you.

Regards,

Russ

4

Hello.
Is there a way of updating the asteroid position directly in the sequence?

With the method described in this thread, you can point to the asteroid and do Camera Expositions manually in Dragscript. I understand this.

But in this way you miss the rest of options you have in the Sequence (focus, guide, Meridiam Flip, etc).

Another option should be:
DragScript:

  1. Focus
  2. Point to Asteroid
  3. Sequence Asteroid (without focusing and without pointing) for example 10 exposures
  4. Goto 2

Perhaps that should do the job.

But it should de fantastic if you could update the position within the Sequence.

Fernando

5

I tried that approach yesterday and had a problem.
After the Meridian Flip, the mount points to the original position described in the Sequence at the beginning of the night.

So if the Meridian Flip is some hours after the first initial position, instead of calculating the updated position after flip, it goes back to the original position until the end of that sequence (in my case 10 images).

6

Yes, the position of the object is set in the sequence and not updated. The way I have done this is with a drag script and making a loop that uses pointing by name.

I have a feeling this will be much easier with Voyager advanced. But I dont know for sure as I have not yet seen it in action.

Could someone who is beta testing Voyager advanced chime in?

Regards,

Russ

7

Cartes de Ciel provides a feature to do offsetting based on 2LE orbital parameters for comets and asteroids. Is there way to use the planetarium position each time ? ( I happen to use CdC with Voyager)
CdC also interacts with PhD2 to provide an offset tracking rate for guiding on the moving object. I don’t know whether that offset rate remains mostly stable over the course of the time you need or if you can script CdC to update it periodically. you may have Voyager resetting phd2 as part of the calibration process to also consider.
HTH
Mike