Hello all, I've known about (and admired) your group for some time, and the recent NYT article spurred me to get involved. I'm an old timer. I've been involved with satellites mainly through AMSAT since 1980. In 1982-83 I wrote a software package for orbit prediction and determination. I used it to determine the orbits of AMSAT-OSCAR-10 and AMSAT-OSCAR-13 after their kick motor firings. AO-10 was in 1983 and AO-13 in 1988 so that's been a while! I can't remember if I gave my software to anyone in this group. So I'm wondering if I did, and if so whether any part of it is still being used to produce your element sets. That would be cool. I wrote it to accept radio range and range-rate observations, but it was structured to easily accept the alt/az angles that optical observations produce. Some time ago I got a Meade LX-200 and wrote software to drive it to follow an element set. I meant to go on and add the ability to tweak the tracking to follow the satellite's actual position and refine the orbit, but that project went on the back burner with many others. I figure by now this capability is probably old hat and everybody has it. Is that the case? --Phil ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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