Hi Bob Ill try and provide some of the answers but dont really know why you have a problem so dont know how detailed to go -- dont want to write a manual if not necessary :-)) Okay the basics: I assume you have the program installed okay and you have set up the OPTIONS under the COMMON at extreme left of top of screen display- eg set your position,time zone,date and time formats etc. In the STARS option make sure you have the BSC and SKY2000 catalogs selected, you can leave the other options for the moment at the default values and play with this later. Click on the HEAVENSAT icon. Program loads. Go to SELECT ( middle lower half of screen).Select Satellite Source or USER list. Will take you to the TLE directory where you have installed your TLE database/s. Select which database you want. Click APPLY then OK and will take you back to main screen which tells you how many satellite elements have been loaded. Now , assuming you want passes, click on PASSES. Then set the date , time and duration - if night time observing I usually set the time of twilight or thereabouts, set duration from 1 to 5 hours--choose what you want - , sun el < = -6,sat el>10,sat mag<15 and click BEGIN. You can select APULSES and the minimum or max distance from a bright star, select occultations of stars,moon,planet or sun etc and iridium flares. All satellite passes for the satellite element set selected and in the time interval defined will be shown on the screen. You can set how the data is displayed horizontally,one line per satellite sorted on various parameters such as catalog number, common name etc - the choice is yours from the OPTIONs menu. Double click on the satellite you want - no use looking for satellites not making passes unless you define the duration as 24 hours say and remove the sun altitude restriction etc. After clicking on the satellite the screen display changes and you will be given a wide angle view of the sky with lots of satellites plotted on the screen with your choice at the center. You can now do several things- zoom in on the satellite by using the + in a circle at top right of screen where there are a lot of icons. Passing your mouse over each one will tell you what the icon does - the + will zoom in, the - will zoom out. To show the satellite trajectory click on the "hemisphere" symbol shown - 11th down from top - this will then show the satellite trajectory, Click on the "lock" and the satellite will stay centered in middle of screen whilst you play. Click on the "clock" to set the time your want or real time, and then on right arrow icon at top for the program to run in "real time" relative to the time you chose. Click on the icon above the "bincoulars" and a time slider will appear - this you can use to move the time and see how the satellite moves across the sky- the span of this time slider is set in the OPTIONS menu. There are of course many other things you can do - for example you can can show the satellite path on a map of the earth as well as a 180 degree view of the sky centred on your pole ( north pole for northern hemisphere). HEAVENSAT is very forgiving so its a simple matter to explore all the options - Im learning all the time. If you click on SATELLITES - 4th item from left at top of screen - you can select EPHEMERIS. This will take you to the part where you can calculate detailed pass detail - you can select what order you want etc -- just be careful how many satellites you have in the database- if you have 13000 satellites you will then get predictions for all those that are visible in the duration you set! You can also filter out satellites that meet certain specifications etc.... As I said there is a LOT to HEAVENSAT so it is worth while playing and exploring the options. To adequately describe all of them will take a very lengthy document!- probably why there is no official manual as the program is continually being developed. Hope this helps Cheers Greg ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri May 01 2009 - 13:27:24 UTC