Bryan, Thanks for the link especially to the source as I am very interested in implementing something very similar. (for my QTH of course)
Thanks Josh Smith KD8HRX email/jabber: [email protected] phone: 304.237.9369(c) On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 2:41 PM, Bryan Klofas <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey Mark-- > > We also use pyephem for web-based pass times calculations at Cal Poly. > http://mstl.atl.calpoly.edu/~ops/passtimes/ > > Source is here, but it was written a few years back, and uses the older > (now depreciated) ephem.Body attributes. It also sometimes has trouble > with the formatting on the webpage, although that may be a firefox bug, > I'm not sure. > http://mstl.atl.calpoly.edu/~ops/passtimes/passtimes.py > -- > Bryan Klofas, KF6ZEO > > > Mark VandeWettering wrote: >> I just thought I'd drop a quick note here about some fun I've been >> having today with satellite orbit prediction in Python. When I >> started mucking around with satellites, I used "predict", which was >> pretty good, but at some point I wanted to answer some questions which >> weren't easy to answer using predict. Questions like "when will >> AO-51 be visible from both my home in CM87 and locations in Hawaii", >> or "what was the radius of the circle of visibility for AO-7 compared >> to ISS"? >> >> Luckily, I'm a programmer. In fact, I'm a programmer who programs >> for fun. So, I did a bit of research, and then coded up a version of >> G3RUH's "Plan 13" algorithm in Python, and then wrote some scripts to >> download elements from celestrak, and then a simple one to print data >> on the next pass of any named satellite. And, they worked pretty >> good. I've used them for the last year or so to do all my pass >> predictions. But there are still a couple of minor issues with the >> library. It didn't handle geosynchronous satellites very well. It >> implemented only the most basic of orbital models. I was never >> confident that the "is this satellite in eclipse" stuff working >> exactly right. >> >> Luckily though, it turns out that someone else has been busy writing a >> more complete library: PyEphem http://rhodesmill.org/pyephem/ >> >> It's a library whose primary purpose is to calculate the positions of >> astronomical objects. I've used it a couple of times to (for >> instance) figure out the size of Mars compared to Jupiter, and found >> it very easy to use. But today, I realized that it had a full >> implementation of the SGP4 and SDP4 orbital models built in, and could >> be used to predict satellite passes. As a proof of concept, I >> hacked together a 23 line script that could print the details of >> upcoming ISS passes. It seems to work great, and is really quite >> easy to use. >> >> You can find some of the simple example code at my blog: >> >> http://brainwagon.org/2009/09/27/how-to-use-python-to-predict-satellite-locations/ >> >> I'll probably be porting all of my existing scripts to use this soon. >> In the mean time, if you have a similar task, you might look to it to >> solve your custom satellite prediction problems. >> >> 73 Mark K6HX >> _______________________________________________ >> Sent via [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author. >> Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! >> Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb > _______________________________________________ > Sent via [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author. > Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! > Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb > _______________________________________________ Sent via [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
