Re: SatSpy 2.5
Mike McCants (mikem@fc.net)
Tue, 4 Nov 1997 17:10:42 -0600 (CST)
>--- On Tue, 4 Nov 1997 11:08:29 PST Mike_Spreitzer.PARC@xerox.com wrote in
>part:
>
>>What I'd like is a prog that does SDP4 and can print a star chart.
>
>Try satspy version 2.5 located at: http://www.satspy.com
But SatSpy 2.5 has stars to only 5th magnitude. It could be
weeks before a 12th magnitude geosync comes close enough to
a 5th magnitude star to allow that star to be used as a
suitable reference star to try to actually spot the sat.
Much better: Get SatSpy to display its "Look Angle Ephemeris".
Then plot some points on Uranometria and see when the geosync
goes near an 8th or 9th magnitude star.
It would appear that SatSpy is computing RA and Dec for the
"epoch of date". But since 1997.8 is fairly close to 2000,
its look angles should be close enough. Don't try to use
AAVSO epoch 1950 star charts.
With an elset that was only 4 days old, I compared SatSpy's
SDP4 look angles against its SGP4 look angles and there was no
difference between the two.
Mike McCants