-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At the end I segue into XML. My apologies for those who are put off by extreme computer-geeking. There's a great explanation of XML in the Pulvermacher paper. Brad Young wrote: | ...These characteristics are not consistent with most of my gen-X | contemporaries; nor, I fear, will it be with my kids' generation. It seems I've only met two others beyond Mike and Ed here in town who have a similar outlook on things regarding satellites. I do drag my children out to look at the lights whip across the sky. For them, I leave it as an artistic looking event. I fear that if I attempted explaining mechanical energies and velocities, I'd make their eyes glaze over. The older of the two is on the cusp of asking more questions, and I intend on involving him directly this summer as a helper. :) You've got to encourage wonder, IMHO. Otherwise a satellite can become just another unremarkable technological artifact like an airplane or a Styrofoam cup. "What do you suppose you'd see looking back at us from that little spot of light?" | Also, some of the software used and reporting conventions could use | a major overhaul, not in scope or quality, but user-friendliness | (please do not read as "dumbed-down"). The conventions are there from times past, but they do put a low burden on the computers which read the data. TLEs are a perfect example, as is IOD format. I'll refer to these as "punchcard" formats, even if they don't all strictly use 80 or fewer columns. A tool can be constructed which, when fed the XML, could produce formatted work-alike output in the necessary "punchcard" formats. This would be relatively easy to make. It would keep our trusted tools from becoming obsolete. It would confound future historians if there were an explosion in formats for positional reports. Can one eXtensible Markup Language (XML) format do everything? Yes, if so designed. It could encapsulate all the rotational or positional observation formats. This means everything we see in Alberto Rango's well-formatted flash timings, Russel Eberst's UK format derivative or Miles' original, Lewis' IOD type, and maybe even capture informal "look" data. But it would need an input tool so the burden isn't put on the user. An existing subschema for positional data would be a good start: http://www.mitre.org/work/tech_papers/tech_papers_00/pulvermacher_space/space_pulvermacher.pdf Please look to Section D.7, SatObservation.xsd. Even though the layout is probably foreign, there's a lot of human-readable text which will be readable. The meanings will be obvious, but I admit that the format takes some skill to implement. It is rather "turning the crank," though. This description, SatObservation.xsd, tells what's possible to have in the record, and only in the base data types does it indicate what is required. Rotational observations could also be handled with additions to the xsd file cited above. It's called "extensible" for a reason. Here are some other schema to glean ideas from. I especially like the idea of the antenna phase center, local weather, explicit citation of physical constants and horizon data presented in this one, but it's not all applicable to optical work: http://www.orbitml.com/schema/OrbitML_xsl.xsd http://www.orbitml.com/schema/observationsFile.xsd http://www.orbitml.com/schema/eventsFile.xsd The only thing missing in the second one is the "RA/Dec" format, but given enough location and weather information it should be possible to convert Az/El to it with sufficient accuracy. I might just take a whack at an IOD-to-SatObservation converter this weekend. John -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFH117pThFRLa48rEYRAqpoAKCGijIMNyDiqXHDvRnns1EVFQVbxgCeOC1T 81oimdium6D5K8un6EI7wjA= =lGH+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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